Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen
The Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen , German company for the operation of state railways , was a private railway company that was founded in 1863 to operate railway lines built by the Dutch state.
Emergence
Since the construction of railway lines by private companies in the Netherlands stagnated in the 1850s and the country fell behind in the development of its railway network compared to other European countries, the Van Hall / Van Heemstra cabinet passed a first railway law in 1860 after violent political disputes (Spoorwegwet ) , which was passed on August 18, 1860 and provided for the construction of railroad lines by the state. On the basis of this law, a total of ten railway lines were built and put into operation between 1863 and 1878. They mainly opened up the northern and southern provinces of the Netherlands, which until then had no rail connection.
These railway lines should not be operated by the state, but by private operating companies. For this purpose, the Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen was established in The Hague on September 26, 1863 , usually called Staatsspoorwegen or Staatsspoor (SS for short ). However, it did not receive a monopoly on the operation of the state railway lines; rather, the operation of each line should be assigned individually. In fact, the SS received the concession for nine of the ten "state lines" built according to the law of 1860 and also for most of the lines built later by the state; only a few of these routes were operated by the oldest and largest private railway company in the Netherlands, the Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij ( Hollandse Spoor for short , HSM for short ). The SS became the second largest Dutch railway company after the HSM.
Lines
On October 5, 1863 was the leg Breda - Tilburg line Breda- Eindhoven the first railway connecting the SS opened. The route from Harlingen to Leeuwarden followed on October 27, 1863, and was later extended to Groningen and Nieuweschans . On December 23, 1863, the Roosendaal - Bergen op Zoom section of the Roosendaal - Vlissingen railway, which was completed by 1873, was opened. From 1865 the line from Arnhem to Deventer went into operation, which was extended to Groningen in 1870. On November 21, 1865, the SS opened their first railway line in the southeast between Maastricht and Venlo . This southern main line was extended to Breda and Moerdijk in 1866 . The line between Utrecht and Boxtel , which opened on November 1, 1869, completed the southern route network.
In addition to the state lines, the SS also took over the operation of numerous smaller local railways in the course of time.
Further company history
In 1868, the headquarters of the SS was in Utrecht in a building that today as Hoofdgebouw I listed building. After the Dutch state took over the Nederlandsche Rhijnspoorweg-Maatschappij in 1890 , the SS also operated its lines, including the oldest Dutch steam tram between The Hague and Scheveningen . In 1917, Staatsspoorwegen and HSM founded the joint operating company Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), which from 1920 pushed forward the standardization of rail operations in the Netherlands. For this purpose, among other things, all SS locomotives had to be converted, as the NS took over the arrangement of the HSM with the engine driver on the right and stoker on the left; with the SS it was the other way round. On January 1, 1938, the two legally independent companies finally merged to form NV Nederlandse Spoorwegen .
literature
- Josef Overmann: The Dutch state railway operating company. Archives for Railways, 1913, p. 1491