Society and lifestyle, Business and economy, Transportation
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak, is a passenger railroad service that provides medium- and long-distance intercity service in the contiguous United States and to nine Canadian cities.
The Union Pacific Railroad is a freight hauling railroad that operates 8,500 locomotives over 32,100 route-miles in 23 states west of Chicago and New Orleans. The Union Pacific Railroad system is the second largest in the United States after BNSF Railway and it is one of the world's largest transportation companies. The Union Pacific Railroad is the principal operating company of the Union Pacific Corporation ; both are headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), also known formerly as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railroad incorporated in 1881. The railroad is owned by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001.
The Canadian National Railway Company is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec that serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN's slogan is "North America's Railroad". CN is a public company with 24,000 employees. It had a market capitalization of 32 billion CAD in 2011. CN was government-owned, having been a Canadian Crown corporation from its founding to its privatization in 1995. In 2011, Bill Gates was the largest single shareholder of CN stock.
Deutsche Bahn AG is a German railway company. Headquartered in Berlin, it is a private joint-stock company (AG), with the Federal Republic of Germany being its single shareholder. Deutsche Bahn describes itself as the second-largest transport company in the world, after the German postal and logistics company Deutsche Post / DHL, and is the largest railway operator and infrastructure owner in Europe. Deutsche Bahn was the largest railway company in the world by revenue in 2015. It carries about two billion passengers each year.
The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England, the Midlands, and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838. It was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who chose a broad gauge of 7 ft —later slightly widened to 7 ft 1⁄4 in —but, from 1854, a series of amalgamations saw it also operate 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in standard-gauge trains; the last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The GWR was the only company to keep its identity through the Railways Act 1921, which amalgamated it with the remaining independent railways within its territory, and it was finally merged at the end of 1947 when it was nationalised and became the Western Region of British Railways.
British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages between 1994 and 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Commission, it became an independent statutory corporation in 1962 designated as the British Railways Board.
The Société nationale des chemins de fer français is France's national state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the country's national rail traffic along with Monaco, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network. Its functions include operation of railway services for passengers and freight, and maintenance and signalling of rail infrastructure. The railway network consists of about 32,000 km (20,000 mi) of route, of which 1,800 km (1,100 mi) are high-speed lines and 14,500 km (9,000 mi) electrified. About 14,000 trains are operated daily.
Via Rail Canada is an independent Crown corporation, subsidized by Transport Canada, mandated to offer intercity passenger rail services in Canada.
Society and lifestyle, Business and economy, Transportation
East Japan Railway Company is a major passenger railway company in Japan and one of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as JR Higashi-Nihon in Japanese. The company's headquarters are in Yoyogi, Shibuya, Tokyo.
Thalys is a French-Belgian high-speed train operator originally built around the LGV Nord high-speed line between Paris and Brussels. This track is shared with Eurostar trains that go from Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam to London via Lille and the Channel Tunnel and with French domestic TGV trains. Thalys serves Amsterdam and Cologne as well. Its system is managed by Thalys International and operated by THI Factory.
Society and lifestyle, Business and economy, Transportation
Greater Anglia is a train operating company in Great Britain owned as a joint venture by Abellio, the international arm of the state-owned Dutch national rail operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen, and the Japanese company Mitsui. It operates the East Anglia franchise, providing the majority of commuter/regional services from its Central London terminus at London Liverpool Street to Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and parts of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire as well as many regional services throughout the East of England.
The Southern Pacific was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1998 that operated in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies, the names that represented the Southern Pacific system were Southern Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific Company and Southern Pacific Transportation Company.
Society and lifestyle, Business and economy, Transportation
Swiss Federal Railways is the national railway company of Switzerland. It is usually referred to by the initials of its German, French and Italian names, either concatenated as SBB CFF FFS, or used separately. The Romansh version of its name, Viafiers federalas svizras, is not officially used.
Metro Trains Melbourne, known colloquially as simply Metro, is the franchised operator of the suburban railway network in Melbourne, Australia. Metro Trains Melbourne is a joint venture between MTR Corporation (60%), John Holland Group (20%) and UGL Rail (20%).