Swedish State Railways
 | |
| Government agency | |
| Founded | 1 June 1888 |
| Defunct | 1 January 2001 |
| Headquarters | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Products | Rail transport |
The Swedish State Railways (Swedish: Statens Järnvägar) or SJ, originally the Royal Railway Board (Swedish: Kungl. Järnvägsstyrelsen), was the former government agency responsible for operating the state railways in Sweden.
It was created in 1887 as a government department belonging to the Ministry of Civil Affairs (sv:Civildepartementet), with the task of managing all state-owned railway lines in Sweden, and was transferred to the Ministry of Communications (sv:Kommunikationsdepartementet) in 1920.
In 1988, the rail tracks themselves were transferred to the Swedish Rail Administration (Swedish: Banverket), and in the upcoming years parts of SJ were gradually transformed into limited companies. SJ was disbanded in 2001, with the assets transferred to seven separate companies, all owned by the Swedish government:
- SJ AB, usually called SJ, the passenger train operator
- Green Cargo, which operates freight trains
- Jernhusen, real estate
- EuroMaint, train maintenance
- Unigrid, information technology
- TraffiCare, which provides terminal services, e.g. train cleaning and switching
- TrainTech Engineering, currently a part of Interfleet Technology, the technical unit.
Some of them have been sold to other companies, but SJ AB, Green Cargo and Jernhusen are still (2010) fully government owned. Apart from these companies, Statens Järnvägar for a time existed as a governmental agency. It controlled some property, but had no regular railroad activities. It was dismantled by the end of 2012.
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