National Railway Company of Belgium

National Railway Company of Belgium (Dutch: Nationale Maatschappij der Belgische Spoorwegen, or NMBS; French: Société nationale des chemins de fer belges, or SNCB; German: Nationale Gesellschaft der Belgischen Eisenbahnen) is the national railway company of Belgium. The company formally styles itself using the Dutch and French abbreviations NMBS/SNCB. The corporate logo designed in 1936 by Henry van de Velde consists of the linguistically neutral letter B in a horizontal oval.

In 2008 NMBS/SNCB carried 207 million passengers a total of 8,676 million passenger-kilometres over a network of 3,536 kilometres (of which 2,950 km are electrified, mainly at 3000 V DC and 351 km at 25 kV 50 Hz AC). In 2017, that number rose to 230 million passengers carried, and Belgium has a rail network of 3,602 km of main railway lines (or 6,399 km of mainline tracks).

The network currently includes four high speed lines suitable for 300 km/h (190 mph) traffic: HSL 1 runs from just south of Brussels to the French border, where it continues to a triangular junction with LGV Nord for Paris Nord and Lille Flandres (and London beyond that), HSL 2 runs from Leuven to Ans and onward to Liège-Guillemins, HSL 3 runs from Liège to the German border near Aachen and HSL 4 connects with HSL-Zuid in the Netherlands to allow services to run from Antwerpen-Centraal to Rotterdam Centraal.

Station Info / Train Map