List of unused railways

This is a list of unused railways, comprising railways and rail infrastructure on which some construction work took place but which were never used for revenue traffic as intended: These are projects which failed completely, receiving no revenue traffic.

Because much of the Italian railway network was promoted and paid for by government authority, the abandonment of uncompleted lines often had a political dimension.

The railroad history of the United States is marked by many companies which began construction work but never completed any of it.

This state had a high number of interurban electric railway proposals, many of which began construction.

Work was done on prototypes of the following newly invented motive power systems, which proved to be failures by either not entering commercial operation at all or needing speedy abandonment once installed.