The Norwegian State Railways ( or NSB) was a state-owned
railway company
A rail transport company is a company active within the rail industry. It can be:
* a manufacturing company,
* a rail transport operations, railway undertaking providing services through operating rolling stock,
* a railway infrastructure manager ...
that operated most of the
railway network in Norway. The
government agency
A government agency or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government (bureaucracy) that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, s ...
/directorate
[PolSys, Norwegian State Railways](_blank)
/ref> was created in 1883[Historisk oversikt](_blank)
Norwegian National Rail Administration to oversee the construction and operation of all state-owned railway
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...
s in Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
. On 1 December 1996, it was demerged to create the infrastructure operator Norwegian National Rail Administration
Jernbaneverket () was a government agency responsible for owning, maintaining, operating and developing the Norwegian railway network, including the track, stations, classification yards, traffic management and timetables. Safety oversight ...
, the train operator Norwegian State Railways
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
*Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
*Demographics of Norway
*Norwegian language, including the two ...
and the Norwegian Railway Inspectorate. The name was taken by the train operator, although the infrastructure operator remained a government agency and is the legal successor.
History
Norway's first railway, the Trunk Line, was opened in 1854. It was built and run as a private company, although with some government ownership. This was followed by two wholly state-owned railways, the narrow-gauge Hamar–Grundset Line in 1861 and the standard-gauge
A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), international gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge in Europe, and SGR in East Africa. It is the ...
Kongsvinger Line in 1862, with the latter branching from the Trunk Line at Lillestrøm. Several more were built over the next two decades. In 1871 the national railway was connected to the Swedish rail infrastructure.[Kongsvingerbanen]
/ref>
By the 1880s, the pace of railway construction ground to a halt due to economic and political problems. In 1883, the Norwegian State Railways was established and railway construction started up again. The Norwegian State Railways also bought up many private railways to integrate them into the national railway network. In 1920 the Bratsberg Line was acquired by the government. The Trunk Line was first formally acquired in 1926, despite having formed a central part of the network for half a century.
World War II
In January 1942, NSB gave the "green light for putting prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...
(POWs) to work on the construction of the Nordland Line. The POWs were forced to perform labour under conditions that were inhumane, and jørn Westlie, author of the 2015 book, ''Fangene som forsvant'' ("The Prisoners Who Disappeared"), shows that NSB was fully informed about the prisoners' situation", according to a 2015 Klassekampen
(Lit. translation: ''"The Class Struggle"'') is a Norwegian daily newspaper in print and online. Its tagline is "The daily newspaper of the Left". The paper's net circulation was 33,265 in 2022, and it has around 111,000 daily readers on paper ...
article.NSBs skammelige historie
/ref>
Of the 100,000 Soviet POWs that came to Norway, 13,000 were put to work on the Nordland Line.[ Over 1,000 died as a result of hecold,]
starvation and exhaustion (out of a total of 13,700 dead "foreign POWs, political prisoners
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although ...
and forced laborers" in Norway between 1941 and 1945).
According to Westlie, "NSB transported Jews to the outward shipping from the Oslo harbor (...) the NSB employees did not know what fate awaited the Jews. Naturally they understood that the Jews would be shipped out of the country by force, because the train went to Oslo harbor".
Furthermore, Westlie points to "dilemmas hat
A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...
NSB's employees found themselves in when the NSB leadership cooperated with the Germans".[
" jarne Vik was to be made the ]scapegoat
In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of a pair of kid goats that is released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities, while the other is sacrificed. The concept first appears in the Book of Leviticus, in which a goat is designate ...
for cooperation with the Germans," writes Westlie, even though "many of the darkest chapters are from the period before Vik" became chief, according to Halvor Hegtun.
There was no investigation of the agencies r NSBafter the war. However, the former chief Vik was not to be prosecuted if he "did not work for NSB again".[
]
After World War II
In 1952 a plan of electrifying operations was adopted.[jernbane]
/ref>
In 1970 the Dovre Line
The Dovre Line () is a Norwegian railway line with three slightly different lines which all lead to the historic city of Trondheim (city), Trondheim.
Definition
*Dovre Line is the main line between Eidsvoll Station and Trondheim Station, used b ...
was electrified.[ In 2002 the freight operations were split to the subsidiary ]CargoNet
CargoNet AS is the primary operator of freight rail transport, freight trains on the rail transport in Norway, Norwegian railway system.
It was originally formed as NSB Gods after Vy, NSB (now Vy) was split into separate passenger and freight ...
, and the maintenance department became Mantena.
Reactions to World War II activities
"The transportation of Jews that were to be deported and the use of POWs on the Nordland Line is a dark chapter of NSB's history", according to
''kommunikasjonssjef'' Åge-Christoffer Lundeby in NSB in 2015.
Later, Bjørn Westlie said this about the extermination of Norwegian Jews: "Who else would be more responsible than the NSB? For me, the NSB's use of POWs and the deportation of Jews must be viewed as one: namely, that the NSB thereby became an agency that participated in Hitler's violence against these two groups, who were the Nazis' main enemies. The fact that the pertinent NSB leaders received awards after the war confirms the NSB's and others' desire to conceal this".
Directors-general
The title was changed from director-general to chief executive officer in the late 1980s.
*1883–1899: Lorentz Henrik Müller Segelcke
*1910–1912: August Fleischer (acting)
*1912–1919: Christian Emil Stoud Platou (acting)
*1919–1922: Theodor Holtfodt
*1924–1938: Eivind Heiberg
*1939–????: Waldemar Hoff
*1944–????: Bjarne Vik (Nazi Collaborator)
*1945–1946: Løken (acting)
*1946–1950: Egil Sundt (acting)
*1950–1951: Olav Holtmon (acting)
*1951–1966: Halvdan Eyvind Stokke
*1967–1978: Edvard Heiberg
*1978–1988: Robert Nordén
*1987–1988: Tore Lindholt (acting)
*1988–1990: Kjeld Rimberg
*1990–1990: Tore Lindholt (acting)
*1990–1995: Kristian Rambjør
*1995–1996: Osmund Ueland
Preserved locomotives
Norwegian State railways class 21 2-6-0 No. 377 'King Haakon VII' is preserved at Bressingham Steam and Gardens
Bressingham Steam & Gardens is a steam museum and gardens located at Bressingham (adjacent to a garden centre), west of Diss, Norfolk, Diss in Norfolk, England. The site has several narrow gauge rail lines and a number of types of steam engines ...
.
See also
* The Holocaust in Norway
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norwegian State Railways (1883-1996)
Defunct railway companies of Norway
1883 establishments in Norway
Defunct government agencies of Norway
Government agencies established in 1883
Railway companies established in 1883
Government railway authorities of Norway
1996 disestablishments in Norway
Railway companies disestablished in 1996
Government agencies disestablished in 1996