Railway transportation safety provides guarantees for ensuring the safety of passengers’ lives and property and the smooth transportation of goods. The current status and future directions of railway transportation safety were studied in China through two bibliometric analysis methods. The results show that railway transportation safety research can be divided into passive constraint stage, active constraint stage and active management improvement stage. The research focuses on the safety operation protection system, grassroots station safety management, prediction and evaluation of transportation safety accidents, and factors affecting transportation safety accidents. The future of railway transportation safety should focus on the integration of information technology for safety management, intelligent technology for train operation safety, and dynamic monitoring of the external environment of railways.