US has the largest railway on earth by a large margin
Australia has longer, more control complex trains (leading, trailing and midway locomotives).
To the best of my knowledge the US has never once had a single train 7 km in length with 680+ cars and a gross tonnage of 99,734 tonne - Australia has set a record with such a train and moves smaller (but still at that scale) trains daily.
( That's over 4.3 miles in length carrying 109,938 short tons for any readers from Liberia, or Myanmar )
Tech-wise Australia also operates the world's first (and still only?) fully autonomous rail heavy haul routes.
Comparing USA's freight rail network to Australia's on those numbers paints a misleading picture. 3/4 of it is iron ore and coal being carried relatively short distances (few 100s of km) from inland out to the nearest coastal port, and most of that is away from any significant population centers.
By ton-mile, USA takes 5-6x more than Australia and much more interesting and varied conditions and freight types and destinations - not just ferrying it from a hole in the ground, across highway 1, then into a bunker at a shipping terminal.
Again, same freight tonnages as the US .. and with fewer people == vastly greater rail performance per capita, and similar tonnages in absolute numbers.
The US is just another G20 country, and one sliding down the rankings on freedom, and democracy.
But in either case it is almost entirely these isolated short private coal and ore export lines that have no interconnection or interaction with the rest of the country's freight nor does it remove freight from any roads that the rest of the population would be using. These are virtually entirely in isolation from the rest of the country or economy or transport network and are built by and for mining multinationals. In the context of a country's governance or transport infrastructure or general rail networks, they don't say anything. If they were there or not there or private road and oversize road trains instead, it would not change anything about the rest of the country's transport.
If you look into detail and not just very simple 'we transport this much cargo' you see the US system has many disadvantages and is not nearly as amazing as some US people barging make it seem.
Frankly given the historical strength of railways in the US into the 20th century, the near perfect geography for rail and the lack of ports its quite embracing how little things are done with rail.