The Ethiopia- Djibouti corridor linking Ethiopia to the port of is now the dominant gateway forrnthe country with over 95 percent Ethiopia imports and export using this route. Recent investmentrnin road and rail along the Djibouti corridor have the potential to significantly reduce transportrncosts and time and are a key element encouraging greater interest from investor in opportunitiesrnto develop manufacturing export capabilities in Ethiopia. Multimodal transport system is modernrntransport and freight distribution system all over the world is tending towards the adoption ofrnbest practices. The study examined to assess the role of rail transport to the multimodal operatorrnperformance of Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Enterprise. Factors that measure the role andrnperformance are delivery performance or timeliness, cost effectiveness and reliability in termsrnoperation liability. The study used exploratory research methodology and survey techniques torncollect data related to the topic understudy. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches werernused in data analysis. In particular, primary data collected through questionnaire and thernsecondary data were collected from journal and reports. Mainly the data was analyzedrnStatistical Package for Social Science Version 20.0 software. As the major finding of the resultrnshows rail transport increases the average of cargo traffic, reduce transit time, lowering the costrnof logistic and improves customer satisfaction. Therefore, rail transport is one among the majorrnfactors which can accelerate the growth in economies. Despite of this contribution to multimodalrntransport performance, the situation of railway transport is in a poor state. It is noted that, therngovernment have invested mainly in road infrastructure improvement, while neglecting railways.rnThe responsible factors for this decline includes lack of efficient rail system, low capacity of railrntransport, poor emphasis in rail to dry port intermodal and limited financial resources. Thisrnimplies that there are strong and positive relationship between rail transport and the multimodalrnoperation performance. Finally, the study recommends that the government should promoternrailway sector in order to improve the delivery performance of multimodal transport system.