On 5 May 1835 a railway line connecting the cities of Brussels and Mechelen opened (officially).
Belgium was the first state in Europe to create a national railway network and the first to possess a nationalized railway system.
Why Belgium? Industrialization.
They had just become independent of the Netherlands in 1830, and they wanted to be the middlemen between the factories of the Ruhr in Prussia and the ports of the Scheldt River.
England had done the same thing in 1825, but it was a private corporation.
It's interesting to see how that decision, to go public instead of private, shaped the history of that part of the Continent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport_in_Belgium