The Canadian National Railway (known as Canadian National Railways before 1960) is a Canadian railway. Formed between 1919 and 1923 by the merger of the Canadian Government Railways with several railways that had recently been nationalized, the company was privatized in 1995. The railway is the largest in Canada and one of the largest in North America, reaching from Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and the Gulf of Mexico in the south.