Nederlandsch-Indische Spoorweg Maatschappij
N.V. Nederlandsch-Indische Spoorweg Maatschappij, abbreviated to NIS, NISM or N.V. NISM was a private-owned railways company in charge of rail transport in Java, Dutch East Indies. The company's headquarters were in Semarang, Central Java. The company started its maiden route from Semarang to the Vorstenlanden and in 1873 they also built their line to the Willem I Railway Station of Ambarawa–Kedungjati and Batavia–Buitenzorg lines. Later the network expanded to Bandung and Surabaya. It was absorbed into the present Kereta Api Indonesia after Indonesian independence in 1949. It was the main competitor to Staatsspoorwegen as state-owned railway company and established on April 6, 1875.
The company's registered office is in The Hague, but it mainly operates from an administrative headquarters building in Semarang which was designed by Cosman Citroen and was renovated in 2009.
History
In 1842, after a railway system had been successfully implemented in the Netherlands in 1837, the Dutch States General repeatedly urged the Dutch government to build a railroad network in their colony of Dutch East Indies. It was not until in 1864 that the colonial government, under the command of L. A. J. W. Baron Sloet van de Beele, built the first railway line in Java. This company was established on August 27, 1863: the concession was granted to W. Poolman, Alex Frazer and E.H. Kol, the founders of the company, to build the line from Samarang to Yogyakarta.Construction started on Friday, June 17, 1864, from Kemidjen village, Samarang. They named the station Samarang or Samarang NIS as the starting point of the line to Tangoeng via Allas-Toewa and Broemboeng. By 1870, of the line had been built, and by 1917, a total of km had been operated in. With a branch line, the total track length is.
The first narrow gauge,, of NIS railway line stretched from the governor's office in Buitenzorg to the capital city of Batavia for and had branches to Meester Cornelis around and Kleine Boom for around. After a two-year construction period, the line opened on January 31, 1873, and quickly proved profitable. The short town line to Kleine Boom was abandoned in 1891, because it had no connection to the rest of the NIS rail network and the port activities had been transferred to Tanjung Priok, and the line itself was removed in 1897. On 1 November 1913, the Batavia NIS station was sold to Staatsspoorwegen along with the Buitenzorg–Batavia line and it was closed in 1929 after Batavia-Benedenstad had been built. By the end of 1918, the NIS had 57 locomotives, 35 passenger cars, 136 baggage cars and 1,393 freight cars. There were almost 23,000 train movements, with a total distance of around 1.23 million km. In 1917, nearly 4 million passengers were carried, of whom 3.99 million passengers were in class 3. By 1928, the NIS had carried 13.8 million passengers.
By 1936, the second-class network had been extended to a length of, while the second mainline,, had a total length of. The company received compensation for the Staatsspoorwegen rail transit between Batavia and Surabaya. The board of directors was based in Den Haag, while the Committee van Bestuur managed business in the colony. At the end of 1937, there were 37 employees in the senior service, 274 employees in the middle service and 3,557 employees in the regular service.
The first maintenance workshop was in Semarang and around 1915, it was moved to Yogyakarta. There is also a small workshop in Cepu.
During World War II, the Beijnes diesel-electric train car order had to be cancelled. Likewise, the high-performance steam locomotives ordered from Werkspoor could not be delivered after the German occupation in June 1940. For strategic reasons, the Solo-Gundih line was given a third rail to allow narrow gauge,, locomotives to operate from Semarang to Solo via Gambringan. Many of the NIS Class 380 locomotives, later designated as the C52 series, were taken to other areas by the Japanese. Although the locomotives were returned after the war, they fell into disrepair due to a regauging of the track to cape gauge size.