Nederlandse Spoorwegen

Nederlandse Spoorwegen (English: Dutch Railways), or NS, is the principal passenger railway operator in the Netherlands. Its trains operate over the tracks of the Dutch national railinfrastructure, operated by ProRail, which was split off from NS in 2003. Freight services, formerly operated by NS Cargo are now part of the DB Schenker group since a merger in 2000. NS handles 1.1 million passengers every day, with 4,800 scheduled trains. The NS was founded in 1938 when the two largest Dutch railway companies, the Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij (HSM) and the Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen (SS), formally merged. These two companies, however, had been intensively cooperating as early as 1917. There were both...