1930 poster for cross-channel service of Chemin de Fer du Nord and the Southern Railway

Chemin de Fer du Nord (CF du Nord), often referred to simply as the Nord company, was a rail transport company created in September 1845, in Paris, France. It was owned by de Rothschild Frères of France and N M Rothschild & Sons of London, England.

Baron James de Rothschild served as the company's first President from its inception until his death in 1868. From the Gare du Nord station the company built in Paris, the line led north to the English Channel, first connecting in 1846 to Douai and Lille. In 1847, lines were added to Amiens and Valenciennes and then into the Belgian cities of Kortrijk and Ghent. In 1848, construction brought the railway to Boulogne-sur-Mer and Saint Quentin, Aisne.

In 1855 Baron Rothschild commissioned photographer Edouard Baldus to do a series of photographs of the various landmarks on the railway line between Boulogne-sur-Mer and Paris. The photographs were used to create an album for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as a souvenir of their visit to France that year. The album can be seen today in the photographic collection in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.Also, composer Charles Valentin Alkan, may have been commissioned to write a piece with the same title (Le Chemin De Fur). Its amongst one of the first pieces to mimic the sounds of a train and has never been officially recorded. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-oOur4jUe0

In 1937 it was nationalised to become part of the Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français (SNCF).

[edit] Locomotives of the Nord

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