National Railway Company of Belgium.html |
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| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1926 |
| Headquarters | Brussels, Belgium |
| Industry | Rail Transport |
| Products | Rail Transport |
| Revenue | ▲ € 3.010 billion (2005) |
| Operating income | ▲ € 43,2 million (2005) |
| Net income | ▼ € -116 million (2005) |
| Employees | 37,865 (2005) |
| Subsidiaries | B-Cargo Publifer Syntigo and more |
| Website | http://www.b-rail.be/ |
The Nationale Maatschappij der Belgische Spoorwegen (NMBS, Dutch) or Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Belges (SNCB, French) is the Belgian national railway operator. It was created in 1926. The NMBS/SNCB is an autonomous government company. In 2005, the company was split up into three parts: Infrabel, which manages the railway infrastructure, network operations and network access, the public railway operator NMBS/SNCB itself to manage the freight (B-Cargo) and passenger services, and NMBS/SNCB-Holding, which owns both public companies and supervises the collaboration between them. Essentially, this was a move to facilitate future liberalisation of railway freight and passenger services in agreement with European regulations. Several freight operators have since received access permissions for the Belgian network.
In 2004 the NMBS/SNCB carried 178.4 million passengers a total of 8,676 million passenger-kilometres over a network of 3,536 kilometres (of which 2,950 km are electrified, mainly at 3000 V DC and 351 km at 25 kV 50 Hz AC).
Tickets are relatively cheap and service frequent, in part due to the high population density, and in part to large government subsidies. The NMBS/SNCB is permanently updating its rolling stock.
The network currently includes two high speed lines suitable for 300 km/h (190 mph) traffic: HSL 1 runs from just south of Brussels to the French border, where it continues to Paris and Lille (and London beyond that), HSL 2 runs from Leuven to Liège. HSL 3 will run from Liège to the German border near Aachen and HSL 4 will connect with HSL-Zuid in The Netherlands to allow services to run from Antwerp to Rotterdam. Both lines are equipped with ERTMS (ETCS level 2 + GSM-R, access and fall-back in level 1).
See also
External links
- Bueker.net - Map of the Belgian and Dutch rail networks.
- SNCB/NMBS website (note that the travel planner, when applied to a foreign country, e.g. the Netherlands, may recommend odd detours, due to the selection of train services in the database)
- Timetables
- List of train stations
- w:nl:Lijst van NMBS-stations
- Collection of Google Earth locations of SNCB/NMBS stations (Requires Google Earth software) from the Google Earth Community forum.
