Canadian National Railway
Canadian National Railway
Canadian National system map
Reporting
mark
CN
Locale
Canada, central United States
Dates of
operation
1918–
Track gauge
1,435 mm (4 ft 8½ in) (standard gauge); 3 ft 6 in
(1,067 mm) narrow gauge) on trackage in Prince
Edward Island until 1930 and in Newfoundland
until September 1988
Headquarters Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The Canadian National Railway (reporting mark CN) is a
Canadian Class I railway operated by the Canadian Na-
tional Railway Company headquartered in Montreal,
Quebec.
CN is the largest railway in Canada, in terms of both
revenue and the physical size of its rail network and is
currently Canada’s only transcontinental railway com-
pany, spanning Canada from the Atlantic coast in Nova
Scotia to the Pacific coast in British Columbia. Following
CN’s purchase of Illinois Central (IC) and a number of
smaller US railways it also has extensive trackage in the
central United States along the Mississippi River valley
from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
The railway was referred to as the Canadian National
Railways (CNR) between 1918 and 1960 and as Canadian
National/Canadien National (CN) from 1960 to present.
The Canadian National Railway is a public company
with 22,000 employees and market capitalization of 21
billion USD in 2008.[1]
History
The Canadian National Railways (CNR) was created
between 1918 and 1923, comprising several railways that
had become bankrupt and fallen into federal govern-
ment hands, along with some railways already owned by
the government. In 1995, the federal government privat-
ized CN. Over the next decade, the company expanded
significantly in the United States, purchasing Illinois
Central Railroad and Wisconsin Central Transportation,
among others. Now primarily a freight railway, CN also
operated passenger services until 1978, when they were
assumed by VIA Rail. The only passenger services run by
CN after 1978 were several mixed trains (freight and pas-
senger) in Newfoundland, and a couple of commuter
trains on CN’s