Northern Rail (often referred to simply as Northern) is a British train operating company that has operated local passenger services in Northern England since December 2004. Northern Rail's owner, Serco-Abellio, is a consortium formed of Abellio and Serco, an international operator of public transport systems. When it won the Northern England franchise, the consortium had already secured the contract to operate north-west England's Merseyrail network in 2003. The current managing director of Northern Rail is Ian Bevan.

Northern Rail resulted from the taking over of the Arriva Trains Northern franchise and part of the First North Western franchise. Most of the remainder of the First North Western franchise is now operated by First TransPennine Express, though a small part is operated by Arriva Trains Wales.

Serco-Abellio was announced as the 'preferred bidder' for the Northern franchise by the Strategic Rail Authority on 1 July 2004, and signed the agreement to operate the franchise on 19 October 2004. However, the new operator did not actually take over from the previous operator (First North Western and Arriva Trains Northern) until 12 December 2004. This was because Serco-Abellio assumed that some Class 142 Pacer trains would be freed up in the near future when Manchester Metrolink services started between Manchester and Oldham. Due to a substantial delay in extending the Metrolink, it became clear that this was not going to be the case.