Rail transportation is not, as one might expect, a homogenuous market but extremely fragmented and even with huge differences from continent to continent, i.e. in North America freight transport is dominating whereas in Europe passenger transport prevails. A first segmentation splits infrastructure from vehicles. In a second layer of segmentation we distinguish between light rail vehicles, heavy metros, regional trains, intercity trains, high speed trains with and without tilting, maglev trains, freight vehicles and locomotives. Finally, we find aluminium applications in wheels, suspension parts, brake equipment, traction equipment, body structure, hang on parts and interior trim. On the infrastructure side best use of aluminium is in the field of power supply. In order to have the best solution for each application, all forms of products such as castings, forgings, flat rolled products and extrusions are needed and the engineers are using a broad choice of different alloys for all the requirements such as structural strength, decorative aspect, electrical conductivity, wear resistance, weldability, corrosion resistance etc. Innovation cycles in rail transportation are very slow, mainly because the expected life of vehicles is over 30 years and so no fleet owner will run the risk of getting vehicles with non-proven components, i.e. where a safe life of over 30 years cannot be shown. In the following the most important aluminium applications are shown and discussed.