Norway's first railway, the Trunk Line, was opened in 1854. It was built and run as a private company, although with some government ownership. This was followed by two wholly state-owned railways, the narrow-gauge Hamar–Grundset Line in 1861 and the standard-gaugeKongsvinger Line in 1862, with the latter branching from the Trunk Line at Lillestrøm. Several more where built over the next two decades. In 1871 the national railway was connected to the Swedish rail infrastructure. By the 1880s, the pace of railway construction ground to a halt due to economic and political problems. In 1883, the Norwegian State Railways was established and railway construction started up again. The Norwegian State Railways also bought up many private railways to integrate them into the national railway network. In 1920 the Bratsberg Line was acquired by the government. The Trunk Line was first formally acquired in 1926, despite having formed a central part of the network for half a century.
In January 1942NSB gave "green light for putting POWs into construction work of the Nordland Line. The POWs were forced to perform labour under conditions that were inhuman, and Westlie shows that NSB was fully informed about the prisoners situation", according to a 2015 Klassekampen article. Of the 100 000 Soviet POWs that came to Norway, 13 000 were put to work on the Nordland Line. Over 1000 died as a result of cold, starvation and exhaustion. "NSB transported Jews to the outward shipping from the Oslo harbor the NSB employees did not know what fate awaited the Jews. Naturally they understood that the Jews would be shipped out of the country by force, because the train went to Oslo harbor". Furthermore, Westlie points to "dilemmas NSB's employees found themselves in when the NSB leadership cooperated with the Germans". " Vik was to be made the scapegoat for the cooperation with the Germans, writes Westlie, even though many of the darkest chapters are from the period before Vik" became the chief, according to Halvor Hegtun. There was no investigation of the agencies after the war. However, the former chief Vik was not to be prosecuted if he "did not again work for NSB".
In 1952 a plan of electrifying operations was adopted. In 1970 the Dovre Line was electrified. In 2002 the freight operations were split to the subsidiary CargoNet, and the maintenance department became Mantena.
Reactions to World War Two activities
"The transportation of Jews that were to be deported and the use of POWs on the Nordland Line is a dark chapter of NSB's history ", according to kommunikasjonssjef Åge-Christoffer Lundeby in NSB in 2015. Later Bjørn Westlie said about the extermination of Norwegian Jews: "what else than co-responsible was NSB ? For me, NSB's use of POWs and this deportation of Jews must be viewed as one: namely, that NSB thereby became an agency that participated in Hitler's violence against these two groups, who were the nazism's main enemies. The fact that the pertinent NSB leaders received awards after the war, confirms NSB's and others' desire to conceal this". on the Ofoten Line
