Thalys

Thalys (French: [talis]) was a brand name used for high-speed train services between Paris Gare du Nord and both Amsterdam Centraal and German cities in the Rhein-Ruhr, including Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen and Dortmund, both via Brussels-South.

Thalys was created out of a political ambition formalised in October 1987 to establish a network of international high-speed railway services between the cities of Paris, Brussels, Cologne and Amsterdam. The Thalys name was created in January 1995. The company procured a fleet of Alstom-built TGV trains to operate its services as they were viewed as the only existing rolling stock suitable to the task.

On 4 June 1996, the first Thalys-branded train departed from Paris. Early services were more reliant on slower conventional lines as many of the intended new high-speed lines were still under construction. Service speeds improved with the opening of Belgium's HSL 1 line in December 1997 and the Dutch HSL-Zuid in December 2009, alongside other infrastructure works. Thalys's busiest route was the Paris–Belgium corridor; various airlines, such as Air France and KLM, opted to discontinue flights directly competing with Thalys's high speed services.

From 1996 to April 2022, the service was managed by Thalys International, which was 70% owned by the French national railway company SNCF and 30% owned by the Belgian national railway company NMBS/SNCB. It was operated by THI Factory, which was 60% owned by SNCF and 40% owned by NMBS/SNCB. Between 2007 and 2013, the German national railway company Deutsche Bahn had also held a 10% stake in the company.