Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Dutch. (October 2024) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Dutch article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 228 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Dutch Wikipedia article at [[:nl:Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|nl|Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

The Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Staatsspoorwegen (Dutch pronunciation: [maːtsxɑˈpɛi tɔt ɛksplʋaˈtaːtsi vɑn ˈstaːtspoːrˌʋeːɣə(n)]; "Company for the Exploitation of the State Railways") or SS was a private railroad founded to use the government funded railways.^[1][2] The company existed until 1938, when it formally merged with the Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij (HSM) to form the Nederlandse Spoorwegen. The SS was, along with the HSM, the largest railroad company in the Netherlands.^[3]

In the 19th century, the government constructed a number of state railroads, the staatslijnen, to (major) cities and regions not yet served by the other railroads, but for which it was deemed important to connect them to the country's rail network. These lines were primarily located outside of the relatively densely populated Holland region, where the HSM ran services on the main lines. The SS was then founded as a private company to use these lines.

In 1890 the SS began to use the lines previously run by the defunct Nederlandsche Rhijnspoorweg-Maatschappij, and in 1919 it also began to use lines run by the Nederlandsche Centraal-Spoorweg-Maatschappij.

The company was formally merged with the HSM to form the Nederlandse Spoorwegen in 1938, although independent operations had stopped earlier.