The history of rail transport in Poland dates back to the first half of the 19th century when railways were built under Prussian, Russian, and Austrian rule. Of course, "divided Poland" in the 19th century was the territory of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and not that one of today's Republic of Poland. After Polish independence was declared on 11 November 1918, the independent Polish state administered its own railways until control was surrendered to German and Soviet occupiers during World War II.

The Warsaw-Vienna Railway was a railway system which operated since 1845 in Congress Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. The main component of its network was a line 327.6 km in length from Warsaw to the border station at Maczki in Sosnowiec with the Austrian Empire, and since 1867 the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There the line reached the Austrian railway network, offering connections to Vienna and beyond. It was the first railway line built in Congress Poland and the second in the Russian Empire, after a short stretch of 27 km between Tsarskoye Selo and Saint Petersburg which opened in 1837. The line used the standard European gauge, as opposed to all other railways in the Russian Empire which used the broad gauge, hence it formed a system physically separated from other Imperial Russian railways.