Railway transport infrastructure is a linearly distributed asset that requires an effective performance management system to meet sectional and overall business objectives. In particular, an effective performance measurement system with relevant analysis technique in an ongoing manner is necessary to facilitate continuous improvement. Maintenance performance measurement (MPM) is essential to quantify the impact of past maintenance decisions and actions and also to support new decisions. This article presents the challenges of implementing and using MPM systems for maintenance decisions in the railway industry. Thereafter, a risk matrix with maintenance performance indicators is introduced as a complementary analysis tool to identify weak links on a railway line. A case study of a section on the heavy haul line of the Swedish Transport Administration railway network is presented to demonstrate the application of the risk matrix tool for continuous improvement. The results identified the bottlenecks on the line section, which are improvement opportunities for maintenance performance in terms of service quality and capacity target of the infrastructure manager