A notable feature of Perth's urban rail network is that a significant portion of it operates in the median of freeways, with dedicated bus-train interchanges and extensive Park & Ride (P&R) facilities provided at certain stations.

[11] The northern route was chosen in July 1878, and the contract for the construction of the railway was awarded to John Robb at a cost of £74,591/19/5 later that year.

[10] Governor Harry Ord turned the first sod on 3 June 1879, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of British settlement of Western Australia.

[11][17] On 21 February 1896, a 20-kilometre (12 mi) new route for the Eastern Railway between Midland Junction and Mount Helena via Swan View opened.

[19] 18 WAGR ADG class railcars were added to the network in 1954, marking the first time that diesel trains were used for suburban services.

[19] The introduction of diesel railcars reduced the time to get to Perth from Fremantle, Bellevue or Armadale, and resulted in an increase in patronage.

This increase was only temporary though, with patronage dropping below 10 million per year in 1964 due to the widespread adoption of cars.

The report proposed the construction of freeways throughout the Perth metropolitan area and for railways to Morley and Whitfords.

[25][26] In 1970, the Perth Regional Transport Study recommended that the rail system be replaced with busways, but the subsequent Tonkin government decided against this after looking at public opinion on this.

On 2 September 1979, the Fremantle line was controversially closed to passenger services by the Charles Court Liberal government.

Following the closure, the Fremantle corridor saw a 30 percent drop in patronage and a petition with over 100,000 was presented to parliament.

[28] The Liberal government was defeated in the 1983 state election and several months later, the Fremantle line reopened on 29 July 1983.

[30] New engineering standards were developed to permit trains to fit into and safely run within freeway medians.

The line opened to partial service on 21 December 1992 with three stations operational (Leederville, Edgewater and Joondalup).

All the stations along the line from Perth to Joondalup opened in March 1993, along with reforms to the bus network in the northern suburbs so that buses fed into interchanges along the railway.

The first Transperth B-series trains arrived in June 2004 and the new Nowergup rail depot on the Joondalup line opened.

This project will necessitate the closure of the Armadale and Thornlie lines for eighteen months, which started on 20 November 2023.

[11][56][57] The Tonkin government decided to restructure the operations of suburban transport, and so in 1974, the management of suburban rail services was placed with the Metropolitan (Perth) Passenger Transport Trust (MTT), the operator of bus services in Perth since 1958.

[11][27][58] The MTT contracted out the operation of rail services to WAGR,[27][58] which was rebranded Westrail in September 1975.

[11][58] WAGR underwent a restructuring in 2000 with the sale of its freight business to Australian Railroad Group.

[64][57] On 1 July 2003, the WAGR Commission, Transperth, school bus services and regional bus services were merged to form the Public Transport Authority (PTA), which oversaw all public transport in Western Australia as one organisation for the first time.

As of December 2021, the Transperth rail network is 181 kilometres (112 mi) long, the third largest in Australia.

The maximum speed of this line is 130 kilometres per hour (81 mph) within the section between Bayswater and High Wycombe.

In the Airport line and Perth City Link tunnels, where space is limited, a rigid overhead conductor rail is used.

The exceptions are Claisebrook, Perth Stadium, Thornlie, Cannington, and Victoria Park stations.

The exceptions are Bassendean, Bayswater, Claisebrook, East Perth, Maylands, and Midland stations.

Factors limiting accessibility include non-compliant ramps, a lack of tactile paving, large platform gaps, and pedestrian level crossings.

All currently under construction stations on the heritage lines are planned to be opened with 150-metre (490 ft) platforms as part of Metronet improvements.

[85] The Public Transport Authority has three depots plus one under construction: Train patronage in Perth from July 2023 to June 2024 was 59,723,266.

The least used stations as of October 2017 are Seaforth, with 136 boardings per weekday, Success Hill, with 139, Challis, with 259, Karrakatta, with 260, and Woodbridge, with 266.