Railways are large, geographically dispersed assets, consisting of numerous systems, subsystems and components, for which considerable amounts of data and numerous indicators are generated for monitoring their operation and maintenance. Proper assessment of operation and maintenance performance is essential for sustainable and competitive rail transportation. Composite indicators (CIs), or indices, can simplify the performance measurement by summarising the overall performance of a complex asset into a single figure, making it easier to interpret than multiple indicators and plots. In this article, a CI termed ‘rail infrastructure integrity index’ is developed and verified in a case study. The results show that CIs can be used for benchmarking and assessing the overall performance of railway sections in a single figure, indicating which sections need further study. Their implementation should allow data users to do sensitivity analysis and decomposition for traceability.Keywords: rail infrastructure; composite indicator; integrity index; dependability; RAMS; benchmarking