page_title: Canadian National Railway
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Canadian National Railway / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Allan Fleming and the CN director of communications, Charles Harris, at the launch of the logo at Montreal, 1960 Français&#160;: Allan Fleming et le directeur des communications du CN, Charles Harris, au lancement du logo à Montréal, 1960
context_page_description: The Canadian National Railway is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, that serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States.
  CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue and the physical size of its rail network, spanning Canada from the Atlantic coast in Nova Scotia to the Pacific coast in British Columbia across about 20,400 route miles of track. In the late 20th century, it gained extensive capacity in the United States by taking over such railroads as the Illinois Central.
  CN is a public company with 24,000 employees, and as of July 2019 it had a market cap of approximately CA$90 billion. CN was government-owned, having been a Canadian Crown corporation from its founding to its privatization in 1995. As of 2019, Bill Gates is the largest single shareholder of CN stock.
  The railway was referred to as "Canadian National Railways" between 1919 and 1960.
context_section_description: The Canadian National Railways (CNR) was incorporated on June 6, 1919, comprising several railways that had become bankrupt and fallen into Government of Canada hands, along with some railways already owned by the government. 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 passenger) in Newfoundland, and several commuter trains both on CN's electrified routes and towards the South Shore in the Montreal area (the latter lasted without any public subsidy until 1986). The Newfoundland mixed trains lasted until 1988, while the Montreal commuter trains are now operated by Montreal's EXO.
  On November 17, 1995, the Government of Canada privatized CN. Over the next decade, the company expanded significantly into the United States, purchasing Illinois Central Railroad and Wisconsin Central Transportation, among others.
caption: Allan Fleming and Charles Harris, CN director of communications, at the launch of the CN logo at Montreal in 1960
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