Abstract: Yangtze River Middle Reaches clusters, formed by the urban cluster around Wuhan in Hubei Province, the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan city group in Hunan Province and the cluster around Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province, will create a new economic growth engine by promoting urbanization and help address the imbalanced regional development across China. Based on the data of railway passenger traffic flow and with the aid of social network analysis, the evolution of rail passenger traffic linkage and spatial pattern in Yangtze River Middle Reaches clusters has been discussed from external connectivity and internal connectivity two aspects. The results are shown as follows. Firstly, from 2009 to 2015, the intensity of three central cities in Yangtze River Middle Reaches clusters tends to “Wuhan > Changsha > Nanchang” both in external contact and internal contact, and “Matthew effect” is increasingly significant. Secondly, there is a different predominating direction of external contact among Wuhan, Changsha and Nanchang, and an obvious spatial mismatch phenomenon. Thirdly, great changes have taken place in rail traffic status of 31 cities in Yangtze River Middle Reaches clusters during 2009~2015, for instance, Wuhan, Changsha and Nanchang, consolidated and upgraded their positions of rail hubs, match with their position of three major strategic pivot gradually. However, the centralized degree of rail passenger transport network in Yangtze River Middle Reaches clusters is still in a lower level, and centralized tendency is not obvious, thus, Yangtze River Middle Reaches clusters has characterized by a multi-center pattern with a lower level. Finally, during the period of 2009~2015, the spatial pattern of rail passenger contact network has changed from the “pentagon” shape to the “品” shape, and contacts among interprovincial neighboring cities remain to be further strengthened; Furthermore, it’s time for Nanchang and cluster around Poyang Lake to perfect their rail network construction in order to enhance their support function in “triangle” in the central China.