The Norfolk Southern Railway (NS) is a major Class 1 railroad in the United States, owned by Norfolk Southern Corporation. The company operates 21,500 route miles in 22 eastern states. It also operates through the District of Columbia, and province of Ontario, Canada. The most common commodity hauled from the mines in the states of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia is coal. The railroad also offers an extensive inter-modal network within eastern North America. As of May, 2006, Norfolk Southern has been selected as the Group A Gold Harriman Award recipient for a record 17 consecutive years beginning in 1989. The Harriman Award is intended to recognize railroads with outstanding safety achievements.

Norfolk Southern was created from a set of predecessor railroads which dates back to the early 19th century. Prior to the current times, the three main branches of the current corporate family tree were for many years themselves systems; Norfolk and Western (1881), Southern Railway System (1894) and Conrail (1976). Each of these grew from being local and regional lines into bigger, corporations.

NS was created in 1982 from the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and the Southern Railway Company, both profitable companies. An earlier company, also named the Norfolk Southern Railway, serving primarily North Carolina and the southeastern tip of Virginia, had been acquired by the Southern Railway in 1974. The older company was the namesake for the 1982 combination. Headquarters for the newly established Norfolk Southern were established in Norfolk, Virginia. The 1982 combination of the profitable Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway was done to compete in the eastern United States with the Chessie System-Seaboard Coast Line merger which had been approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1980, resulting in formation of CSX Transportation.

Largely an eastern United States railway, the Norfolk Southern directly owns and operates 21,500 miles of track in 21 states: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. In addition, Norfolk Southern owns track in Washington D.C. and the Canadian province of Ontario. It operates three primary hubs in its system, in Harrisburg, Chicago and Atlanta.

Furthermore, Norfolk Southern has rights to operate its trains with its own crews on competing railroads' tracks. These tracking rights permit Norfolk Southern to operate as far west as Dallas, Texas, as far north as Waterville, Maine, and as far south as Miami, Florida. NS locomotives also occasionally operate on competitors' tracks throughout the United States and Canada due to the practice of locomotive leasing and sharing undertaken by the Class I railroads.