Beginning in 1917, the operators of the Dutch railroads were forced to coordinate their efforts in order to face the growing competition from new forms of transport. In 1938 this coordinated effort was followed by the centralization of the constructors and train operators into the Nederlandse Spoorwegen.
Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) is the main public transport railway company in the Netherlands. It uses the tracks and other railway network infrastructure supplied by ProRail and it runs trains over 2000km of electrified railway.
With more than one million passengers a day and hundreds of possible points of departure and arrival, NS is the company that transports people by rail in the Netherlands. NS, which employs more than 20,000 people who work out of hundreds of small and large offices, is one of the largest companies in the Netherlands.
The divisions of NS are:
- NS Reizigers (NSR):
responsible for passenger train services and for employing train drivers
and conductors.
- NS Stations:
in charge of the operation of railway stations, including supplying
space for the many small shops and kiosks.
- NedTrain:
responsible for trains.
- NS Vastgoed:
owns 48 kmē of land, often near stations, and develops and operates
these areas as public traffic nodes, offices and apartments.
- NS Commercie:
responsible for marketing, sales and customer service.
- NS Internationaal:
operator, in conjunction with NS Reizigers and foreign partners, of
international trains such as the Thalys, the ICE, the night train to
Paris in summer, and charter trains.
- Nedkoleje:
in a joint venture with Polish Railways (PKP), operates trains in West
Pomeranian Voivodship (Zachodniopomorskie), Poland.
- NedRailways:
in a joint-venture with Serco, has won a concession for 25 years to
operate Merseyrail services in and around Liverpool, UK.
In dealing with the general public these distinctions are not made and
the terms Nederlandse Spoorwegen and NS are used.
In recent years new private railways have appeared that now operate some
regional lines. In the last few years, private operators (Noordned,
Syntus, ACTS, Shortlines) have appeared on the
Dutch railway network.
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