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Purpose This paper aims to investigate the reliability, availability, maintenance and safety analysis method for railway network operation. Design/methodology/approach The reliability of the railway network is proposed based on the accident frequency and the topology of the railway network. Network efficiency and capacity are proposed to evaluate the availability of the railway network. The maintenance of the railway network is analyzed from the perspective of accident recovery time. The safety index of the railway network is proposed to measure the safety of railway stations and sections and the K-means method is proposed to find the safety critical stations and sections. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated through a real-world case study. Findings The case study shows that the proposed model can produce a big-picture averaged view of the network-wide safety level and help us identify the safety critical stations and sections by considering both the expected reduction of network efficiency and capacity. Practical implications The potential application of the proposed model is to help the safety managers determine the investments in safety management of each section and station and then increase the safety and robustness of railway network operation. Originality/value The safety analysis of the railway network should consider the reliability, availability and maintenance of the railway network. In this paper, the reliability of the railway network is proposed based on the accident frequency and the topology of the railway network. Network efficiency and capacity are proposed to evaluate the availability of the railway network. The maintenance of the railway network is analyzed from the perspective of recovery time. Finally, the safety index of the railway network is proposed to analyze the safety critical stations and sections.