page_title: Canadian National Railway
section_title: Contraction and expansion since privatization
hierarchical_section_title: Canadian National Railway / History / Contraction and expansion since privatization
caption_attribution_description: English: Historic railway depot in Hammond, Louisiana, with modern elevated passenger platform. View is toward the North on the Canadian National Railway.
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: Following the successful IPO, CN has recorded impressive gains in its stock price, largely through an aggressive network rationalization and purchase of newer more fuel-efficient locomotives. Numerous branch lines were shed in the late 1990s across Canada, resulting in dozens of independent short line railway companies being established to operate former CN track that had been considered marginal. This network rationalization resulted in a core east–west freight railway stretching from Halifax to Chicago and Toronto to Vancouver and Prince Rupert. The railway also operated trains from Winnipeg to Chicago using trackage rights for part of the route south of Duluth.
  In addition to the rationalization in Canada, the company also expanded in a strategic north–south direction in the central United States. In 1998, in an era of mergers in the US railway industry, CN bought the Illinois Central Railroad (IC), which connected the already existing lines from Vancouver, British Columbia to Halifax, Nova Scotia with a line running from Chicago, Illinois to New Orleans, Louisiana. This single purchase of IC transformed CN's entire corporate focus from being an east–west uniting presence within Canada (sometimes to the detriment of logical business models) into a north–south NAFTA railway (in reference to the North American Free Trade Agreement). CN is now feeding Canadian raw material exports into the U.S. heartland and beyond to Mexico through a strategic alliance with Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS).
  In 1999, CN and BNSF Railway, the second largest rail system in the U.S., announced their intent to merge, forming a new corporate entity North American Railways, headquartered in Montreal to conform to the CN Commercialization Act of 1995. The merger announcement by CN's Paul Tellier and BNSF's Robert Krebs was greeted with skepticism by the U.S. government's Surface Transportation Board (STB), and protested by other major North American rail companies, namely Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and Union Pacific Railroad (UP). Rail customers also denounced the proposed merger, following the confusion and poor service sustained in southeastern Texas in 1998 following UP's purchase of Southern Pacific Railroad two years earlier. In response to the rail industry, shippers, and political pressure, the STB placed a 15-month moratorium on all rail-industry mergers, effectively scuttling CN-BNSF plans. Both companies dropped their merger applications and have never refiled.
  After the STB moratorium expired, CN purchased Wisconsin Central (WC) in 2001, which allowed the company's rail network to encircle Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, permitting more efficient connections from Chicago to western Canada. The deal also included Canadian WC subsidiary Algoma Central Railway (ACR), giving access to Sault Ste. Marie and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The purchase of Wisconsin Central also made CN the owner of EWS, the principal freight train operator in the United Kingdom.
  On May 13, 2003, the provincial government of British Columbia announced the provincial Crown corporation, BC Rail (BCR), would be sold with the winning bidder receiving BCR's surface operating assets (locomotives, cars, and service facilities). The provincial government is retaining ownership of the tracks and right-of-way. On November 25, 2003, it was announced CN's bid of $1 billion CAD would be accepted over those of CPR and several U.S. companies. The transaction was closed effective July 15, 2004. Many opponents – including CPR – accused the government and CN of rigging the bidding process, though this has been denied by the government. Documents relating to the case are under court seal, as they are connected to a parallel marijuana grow-op investigation connected with two senior government aides also involved in the sale of BC Rail.
  Also contested was the economic stimulus package the government gave cities along the BC Rail route. Some saw it as a buy-off to get the municipalities to cooperate with the lease, though the government asserted the package was intended to pro
caption: Properties of the Canadian National Railway in the United States serve, in many instances, as routes for Amtrak. Pictured is the Amtrak station in Hammond, Louisiana, refurbished with a modern passenger platform. This segment of the Canadian National Railway was built in 1854 to form part of the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern railway, which later became part of Illinois Central.[citation needed]
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