Classification of Deutsche Reichsbahn goods wagons (1920-1945)

Author: Sithiporn Sastrasinh, USA

The old Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRB) was set up in 1920, under a provision in the Weimar Constitution, to take over the seven individual state railways in Germany at that time. Its existence ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, although the name "Deutsche Reichsbahn" continued to be used by the railways in each occupation zone for a few more years after the war, and later on also as the name for the national railway of East Germany. During its lifetime the DRB underwent quite a few changes in its structure and organization. Its name was also changed twice. At first it was known as Deutsche Reichsbahn. Then in 1924 it was reconstituted as an autonomous entity called Deutsche Reichsbahn Gesellschaft. The word Gesellschaft was eventually dropped when the railway was put under more direct control by the government after the Nazis came to power. Throughout all these changes the DRB used basically the same classification system for its goods wagons, with occasional modifications or additions of new supplementary symbols and type regions. As a matter of fact, to label this classification system the one used exclusively by the DRB, as I did here, is somewhat misleading because the railways in Germany continued to use this classification system after the Second World War. In the case of the Deutsche Bundesbahn, it did not revise this classification system until 1952.

The DRB used the type symbols, consisting of the main type symbols and supplementary symbols, together with the type regions for its goods wagons. The names of various towns in the Reich territories, many of which corresponded to DRB's railway operating districts or divisions (Reichsbahn Direktion; RBD) were used for type regions. The type region names were chosen arbitrarily; there was no other connection between a particular type of goods wagon and the RBD or town name that was assigned to it. The uses of both type symbols and type regions for classification purpose may sound superfluous, but the DRB actually devised this scheme to reduce the confusion in its classification system. The DRB inherited more than 600,000 goods wagons from its predecessors. Needless to say, even with the main type symbols and supplementary symbols it was not always possible to differentiate between different types of goods wagons. For example, an Om wagon would be any four or six wheel open wagon with side walls higher than 0.40 m and a loading capacity between 15-20 t. An Om Ludwigshafen, however, was an open wagon with side boards built by individual state railways before there was an agreement concerning the standardization of goods wagons. Om Breslau and Om Essen, on the other hand, were open wagons constructed according to the design agreed to by all state railways (Verbandsbauart). In addition to the type symbols and type regions the DRB also used blocks of numbers as a part of its classification system. Thus, V Altona numbers 101 to 2000 were wagons for animal transport of earlier designs (Länderbahnbauart) and V Altona numbers 2001 to 6002 were Verbandsbauart designs.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank John Oxlade for allowing me to use his web site to post this article and for his patience and encouragement. Any error or omission in this article is my sole responsibility. It would be appreciated if any reader who finds any mistake or who has any suggestion could send that information to me. (EMail: SSas-Seney@worldnet.att.net)

Markings for ownership on goods wagons

At first, the word Deutsche Reichsbahn and the heraldic eagle of the Reichsbahn were the markings used to show the ownership on the goods wagons. On box cars and open goods wagons (gondolas) the words Deutsche and Reichsbahn were in two separate lines with the heraldic eagle below. In flat cars and other types of wagons with limited space the words Deutsche Reichsbahn was in one line with the heraldic eagle to its left. The heraldic eagle was not always applied and it was finally taken off from all goods wagons in 1928. Only the words Deutsche Reichsbahn remained. In 1942 the ownership marking was changed to the abbreviation DR.

Main type symbols for closed goods wagons

Main type symbols for open goods wagons

Supplementary symbols

Type regions

The following type regions were originally used by the Reichsbahn in 1922. The names of RBD Altona, Elberfeld and Trier were changed to RBD Hamburg, Wuppertal and Saarbrücken in the years that the type region names were also changed. RBD Oldenburg was abolished at the end of 1934 and all goods wagons with type name Oldenburg were renamed as Saarbrücken. But, the regions Würzburg, Magdeburg and Ludwigshafen were retained even after RBD Würzburg, Magdeburg and Ludwigshafen were abolished in 1930, 1931 and 1937! The Reichsbahn also planned to use the name Kattowitz as a type region, but cancelled it after that district had to be ceded to Poland. The name Kattowitz would come up again as a type region name after Germany occupied Poland during the Second World War.

Type symbols	Type regions
G, Gh, Geh	Hannover (Länderbahn)
G, Gh, Gr	Kassel (Verbandbauart)
G	München (Verbandsbauart)
G, Gh, Geh, Gvwhs	Stettin (Länderbahn)
Gfh, Gfkhs, Rfh	Trier (changed to Saarbrücken in 1935)
Gk, Gkh, Gkn, Gkw, Gkhs, Gkewh, Gkwhs	Berlin (refrigerator vans)
Gleh, Glhs, Gll, Glr, Glrhs, Glt, Glw, GGhs, GGvwehs,Glmhs, Gl	Dresden
Gw, Grwh	Magdeburg (Länderbahn)
K, Kw	Elberfeld (changed to Wuppertal in 1930)
V, Vh, Vr, Vw	Altona (changed to Hamburg in 1937)
H, Hw, Hos	Regensburg
O	Frankfurt (Länderbahn)
O	Halle (Verbandsbauart)
O, Ok	Nürnberg (Verbandsbauart, iron side walls)
O, Op	Schwerin (Länderbahn, iron side walls)
O, Oc, Op, Ov, Ovl	Würzburg (Länderbahn)
Oc, Ocw, Ok, Omp, Op	Münster (Länderbahn)
Om	Breslau (Verbandsbauart)
Om	Essen (Verbandsbauart)
Om, Omp,	Ludwigshafen (Länderbahn), after 1938 also Austrian and Czechoslovak wagons
Om	Königsberg
Ot, Otm, Otmn, Otw	Mainz
Ow	Karlsruhe (Länderbahn)
KKt, OO, OOt, OOtn	Oldenburg (changed to Saarbrücken in 1935)
R, Rm, Rr, Rs, Rw	Stuttgart
S, Sk, Sm, St, Sw	Augsburg
SS, SSk, SSkra, SSl, SSla, SSt, SStl, SStk, SSw	Köln
X, Xo, Xt, Xw, Xow	Erfurt

Additional type regions after 1922

[ last updated 31st Dec 2003 ]