With a total length of 2600 km, Vietnam Railways network connects residential area to cultural, agricultural and industrial center, except the Mekong river delta area.

Vietnam Railways is linked to China railways according to 2 directions:

• From Lao Cai province to Van Nam province.
• From Lang Son province to Quang Tay province.

When it is more developed, Vietnam railway network is possibly linked to Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia railways network via which to Singapore and Laos railways.

Vietnam Railways is using 3 kinds of gauge, namely 1000 mm-gauge, 1435 mm-gauge (standard gauge) as well as 1435 mm and 1000 mm-gauge (mixed gauge). The length of Vietnam railway network and gauge are represented in this table:

The length of Vietnam railway network

The length of gauge

Vietnam Railways uses twin-block concrete sleeper, wooden sleeper and iron sleeper. 43 kg/m rail type and hard rail fastener are used in most of the rail network. Some kinds of elastic fastener are currently used in some divisions.

BRIDGE AND SEWER

There are 1.790 railway bridges with a total length of 45.368 m and 31 combined bridges with a total length of 11.753 m, in that numbers 36.056 m is on Hanoi - Ho Chi Minh city railway line, accounting for 63%.

There are 180 temporary steel beam bridge with a total length of 18084 m , accounting for 31% of the total rail bridge length. The total length of concrete bridges is 13274m, in that number 9179 m is on Ha Noi - Ho Chi Minh city railway line.

There are 4.860 sewers with a total length of 71.439 m.

TUNNEL There are 39 tunnels with the length of 11512 m, in that number 27 tunnels are on Ha Noi - Ho Chi Minh city railway line with the length of 8.335 m.

SIGNAllING AND TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEM

Electric-used block system with colour-light block equipment is used in most of the routes in the North. Semi-automatic block system is used in Ha Noi - Ho Chi Minh city railway line.

Regarding information system, 1 channel or 3 channel-transmission equipment made in Hungary in the mid years of 1972 and 1979 are used in Vietnam Railways. High-frequency radio system is used in emergency storage system of some divisions.

The open-wire system is much used in long-distance information transmission. The 2-core copper cable is used in local information system.

Since 1998, in Ha Noi - Ho Chi Minh city railway line, Vietnam Railways has applied television using Microband ATM technology and multi-channel statistic transmission with the speed of 64 kb per second hired from Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Corporation.