Russia was and is the largest country in the world. Its geography of north–south rivers and east–west commerce, plus, importantly, the mostly flat terrain, made it very suited to develop railroads as the basic mode of transportation.
Today Russian Railways, a state-owned railway company, is one of the biggest railway companies in the world with 950,000 employees [1] and a monopoly within Russia. The total length of line used by the Russian Railways is, at 85,500 kilometres (53,130 mi),[2] one of the largest in the world, exceeded only by the United States.[3]