Société nationale des chemins de fer français

The French state originally took 51% ownership of SNCF. For a period of 45 years (until 1 January 1983), the other 49% belonged to shareholders of financial companies that succeeded the former companies. Since then, SNCF is wholly owned by the French state.

The state invested large amounts of public subsidies into the system.

World War II

Following the Armistice of 22 June 1940 until August 1944, SNCF was requisitioned for the transport of Wehrmacht forces and armaments. The invading German troops had destroyed nearly 350 French railway bridges and tunnels. According to differing estimates, SNCF surrendered between 125,000 and 213,000 wagons and 1,000–2,000 locomotives.

France's railway infrastructure and rolling stocks were a target for the French Resistance aimed at disrupting and fighting the German occupying forces. This allowed SNCF employees to perform many acts of resistance, including the formation of the Résistance-Fer movement in 1943. Nearly 1,700 SNCF railway workers were killed or deported for resisting Nazi orders. 150 Résistance-Fer agents were shot for their acts of resistance, 500 of them were deported. Half of those deported died in concentration camps.

During the Holocaust in France, German occupying forces in France also requisitioned SNCF to transport nearly 77,000 Jews and other Holocaust victims to Nazi extermination camps. Later, these deportations were the subject of historical controversy and lawsuits (such as the Lipietz case) in France as well as in the United States (where subsidiary Keolis is (as of 2010) a transportation contractor) to the present day.

In 1992, SNCF commissioned French academics to write a history of SNCF activities during World War II. The resultant report was published in 1996.

In 2006, some sources claimed that SNCF billed Nazi-occupied France for third-class tickets for Holocaust victims transported to extermination camps, although passengers were transported in cattle cars. In 2003, a source reported that after the liberation of France SNCF continued to seek payment for transporting Holocaust victims to Germany. However, historian Michael Marrus has written that claims that SNCF billed for third-class tickets and continued to seek payment after the war ended were made as part of a legal case brought against SNCF, and did not match with historians' understanding of what happened. Marrus argues that SNCF had no margin of maneuver during the German occupation and that the actions of SNCF employees were not ideologically motivated. According to Serge Klarsfeld, president of the organization Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France, SNCF was forced by German and Vichy authorities to cooperate in providing transport for French Jews to the border and did not make any profit from this transport.

In December 2014, SNCF agreed to pay up to $60 million worth of compensation to Holocaust survivors in the United States. It corresponds to approximately $100,000 per survivor.

Modern era

In the early 2000s, SNCF sought to get a contract from the state of California for a bullet train project between Los Angeles and San Francisco. SNCF recommended that the train take the most direct route between the two locations to reduce the complexity and cost of the project, but the SNCF's recommendations were cast aside by California politicians who wanted to divert the train through various communities, raising the cost and complexity of the project, as well as the expected travel time. SNCF pulled out of the project in 2011 and went to Morocco to help the country construct a bullet train service. By 2018, Morocco's bullet train started service while the California bullet train project was not close to being operational in 2022, with some saying that the project would never be completed.

In May 2014, the company had discovered that 2,000 new trains they ordered at a cost of 15 billion euros were too wide for many of France's regional platforms. Construction work started to reconfigure them.

On 1 January 2015, Réseau Ferré de France (RFF) merged with SNCF Infra and the Direction de la circulation ferroviaire (DCF) and became SNCF Réseau, the operational assets of SNCF became SNCF Mobilités, and both groups were placed under the control of SNCF.

Jean-Pierre Farandou, then head of the state-owned railway operator, informed on 26 July 2024 that SNCF's high-speed rail network Eurostar suffered from multiple instances of coordinated sabotage, causing significant disruptions to train services. The incident occurred just hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympics, which was considered a high-risk event. The affected lines were located in the western, northern, and eastern regions of France, impacting not only domestic trains but also those travelling to neighboring Belgium and London via the Channel Tunnel. It was expected that roughly 800,000 travellers were impacted because of this arson attack on French railway networks.

Design

The industrial designer Paul Arzens styled many of SNCF's locomotives from the 1940s until the 1970s. A particularly distinctive type is the "broken nose" style of electric and diesel locomotives.

In April 2019, Stagecoach were banned from bidding for any franchises including the West Coast Partnership which has meant that Virgin and SNCF have now had to withdraw from the shortlist.

SNCF operations

Since the 1990s, SNCF has been selling railway carriages to regional governments, with the creation of the Train Express Régional brand. SNCF also maintains a broad scope of international business that includes work on freight lines, inter-city lines and commuter lines. SNCF experts provide logistics, design, construction, operations and maintenance services. SNCF operates the international ticketing agency SNCF Connect, formerly oui.sncf/Voyages-sncf.com and Rail Europe, previously Loco 2.

SNCF has employees in 120 countries offering extensive overseas and cross border consulting. Those projects include

Israel: Assistance and Training. SNCF International provides assistance to Israel Railways in every area of rail operations including projects to upgrade the network's general safety regulations. Other assistance and training programmes involve Infrastructure and the Traction Division.

Taiwan: Operations Training. SNCF supervised the prime contractor responsible for construction of the Taiwan Railways Administration's main high-speed rail line. It also trained rail traffic controllers, drivers, and crew members. On behalf of the Government of Taiwan, SNCF managed the high-speed railway Command Control Centre.

United Kingdom: Maintenance. In 2007–2008, SNCF-International consultants audited the maintenance practices applied to the track, signalling and overhead electric power line on British high-speed rail lines connecting London to the Channel Tunnel. In addition, it conducted an audit of the maintainer's performance from the service quality and cost control standpoint, made recommendations for improvements, and proposed a three-year Business Plan.

South Korea: HSR Electrification Design. SNCF advised Korean Railroads on the electrification of tracks between Daegu and Busan and on linking existing conventional tracks to the new high-speed line. SNCF also assisted in selecting and inspecting high-speed rolling stock and trained 400 senior manager, engineers, and executives in a broad range of skills, including signalling, catenaries, track, rolling stock maintenance, HSR operation, safety management, marketing, and passenger information systems. Until the end of 2009, SNCF assisted Korea in maintaining its high-speed.

Spain: Signalling System. SNCF partnered with ADIF (Spanish railway infrastructure provider) in the study, supply, installation, and maintenance of the standard EU railway signaling system along the Madrid-Lleida high-speed line. On behalf of the Spanish Government, SNCF designed and led maintenance operations on this line over a two-year period.

France: Lead Infrastructure and Rolling Stock Maintainer – The SNCF maintains 32,000 km (20,000 mi) of track, 26,500 main sets of points and crossings, 2,300 signal boxes, 80,000 track circuits, over 1 million relays, etc. It also maintains 3,900 locomotives and 500 high-speed trains. Each of SNCF's TGV trains travels more than 39,000 km (24,000 mi) a month – enough to circle the globe. Each year SNCF's Human Resources Department provides over 1.2 million hours of training to its over 25,000 employees.

Morocco: Design, construction and operations for the Al Boraq bullet train service between Tangier and Casablanca