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rail freight transport
Canadian National Railway Company

Reported fleet size
—
No published figure available
Container capacity
—
Not a ranked container line
Gross tonnage on record
19,682
Summed over 3 ships reporting tonnage
In brief
The Canadian National Railway Company (French: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) (reporting mark CN) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. It is one of Canada's two main freight rail companies, along with Canadian Pacific Kansas City.
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 approximately 20,000 route miles (32,000 km) of track. In the late 20th century, CN gained extensive capacity in the United States by taking over such railroads as the Illinois Central.
CN is a public company with 24,671 employees and, as of July 2024, a market cap of approximately US$75 billion. CN was government-owned, as a Canadian Crown corporation, from its founding in 1919 until being privatized in 1995. Today as a publicly held entity the company counts philanthropist Bill Gates as one of its largest shareholders.
Origin
Canadian National Railway was founded in 1919 by one named founder on record. Portraits are shown only where a freely licensed photograph exists and its photographer is known.

Corporate profile
Corporate structure
Owned by
Subsidiaries and units (6)
Fleet on record
Composition of the 4 vessels this registry attributes to Canadian National Railway. Bars are true proportions of that set, not of the company's full fleet.
By shipbuilder
Delivery history
Ships delivered in each of the last 10 years, counted from the recorded build year of vessels attributed to this company, with the running total of its fleet on record. No deliveries fall inside this window — this company’s vessels on record were all built earlier.
| Year | Deliveries | Ships delivered | Gross tonnage added | Fleet on record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 0 | — | 4 | |
| 2018 | 0 | — | 4 | |
| 2019 | 0 | — | 4 | |
| 2020 | 0 | — | 4 | |
| 2021 | 0 | — | 4 | |
| 2022 | 0 | — | 4 | |
| 2023 | 0 | — | 4 | |
| 2024 | 0 | — | 4 | |
| 2025 | 0 | — | 4 | |
| 2026 | 0 | — | 4 |
Vessel records
| Ship | IMO | Type | Flag | Built | Gross tonnage | Deadweight | Length | Builder |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7927843 | Research / survey | Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 1982 | 13,105 | — | 122.4 m | Saint John Shipbuilding |
Ships in registry counts individual vessel records attributed to the company here. Reported fleet is the company’s published total. They measure different things and are shown separately on purpose.
In context
Counts over companies and vessels actually held in this directory — not over the world fleet, which is larger. Nothing here is estimated.
With 4 vessels attributed to it here, Canadian National Railway is the 213th largest of the 965 operators in this directory that hold at least one ship on record, against a median of 2 across that group. That is a count of individually identified hulls, not the company’s published fleet size — the two are different measurements and both are shown above where available.
Canada is the country of registration for 23 commercial operators in this directory, among which Canadian National Railway ranks 4th by ships on record. Between them those companies hold 92 vessels here. See every operator registered in Canada.
Founded in 1919, Canadian National Railway is 107 years old. This directory holds 60 operators founded within five years either side of that date, whose median fleet on record is 1 ships. The median founding year across all commercial operators here is 1966, and the oldest on record dates to 1514.
Same country
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44 on record · est. 1960
Algoma Central
13 on record · est. 1990
Alaska Marine Highway
11 on record · est. 1948
Marine Atlantic
3 on record · est. 1986
CP Ships
3 on record · est. 1880
Teekay
2 on record · est. 1973
Bay Ferries
2 on record · est. 1997
St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation
1 on record
Provenance
Company and vessel recordsWikidata item Q624798, released under CC0. Counted figures on this page are counts over those records.
Written summaryQuoted from Canadian National Railway on English Wikipedia, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Published fleet figuresNo published fleet figure is available for this company.