thumb|Former head office of the Chemins de Fer du Nord in Paris (right), with the [[Gare du Nord in the background]]
The Chemins de fer du Nord ( or CF du Nord; ) often referred to simply as the Nord company, was a rail transport company founded in September 1845 in Paris. It was owned by, among others, de Rothschild Frères of France, N M Rothschild & Sons of London, Charles Laffitte and Edward Blount, and Baron Jean–Henri Hottinguer. Baron James de Rothschild served as the company's president from its inception until his death in 1868.
History
A royal ordnance, dated 10 September 1845, granted the CF du Nord a concession to build a railway from Paris to Valenciennes and Lille, with branch lines to Dunkirk and Calais, and lines from Creil to Saint-Quentin and Fampoux to Hazebrouck. From the Gare du Nord, the station the company built in Paris, the Paris–Lille railway led north towards Belgium, connecting to Amiens, Douai and Lille in 1846, with a branch line from Douai to Valenciennes. The new line made it possible to travel by train from Paris to Brussels and further.
The network was rapidly expanded in the following years:
In the arts
In 1855, Baron Rothschild commissioned photographer Edouard Baldus to take a series of photographs of the various landmarks on the railway line between Boulogne-sur-Mer and Paris. The photographs were used to create an album for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, as a souvenir of their visit to France that year. The album can be seen in the photographic collection in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.