Brands & service brands

3-Länderbahn

The 3-Länderbahn is a regional network around Siegen whose lines reach into three German states. The brand name has survived a change of operator: where Deutsche Bahn once ran the trains, the Hessische Landesbahn is now in charge – and you'd never guess it from the name.

AKN Eisenbahn

founded 1883

AKN is one of the few brands in Germany where the name and the operating company genuinely coincide. The three lines A1, A2 and A3 north of Hamburg carry a line system found nowhere else – which makes identifying them in the field unusually easy.

alex (Arriva-Länderbahn-Express)

The alex looks like a long-distance train: a locomotive, carriages, services running as far as Prague. In fact it's contracted local service. And the company name inside the brand name hasn't belonged to the owner for a long time – a fossil from an earlier group structure.

BahnTouristikExpress (BTE)

BahnTouristikExpress stands for a car-sleeper train that only runs part of the year and is usually on the move in the dark. The brand belongs to the RDC Group – but the locomotive at the front often belongs to a completely different company. That's exactly where the appeal lies, and the room for error.

Bayerische Oberlandbahn (BOB)

founded 1998

The Bayerische Oberlandbahn is a case study in reverse: the company still exists, but its name has all but disappeared from the train. Anyone travelling to Munich-Holzkirchen today mostly sees a sister brand instead – yet still logs a BOB sighting.

Biberbahn

The Biberbahn is a service with a calendar: it runs on Sundays and public holidays between spring and autumn on a line that carried no passenger trains for decades. The name is marketing – the actual operator is a company with a completely different name.

Bodensee-Oberschwaben-Bahn (BOB)

founded 1993

The Bodensee-Oberschwaben-Bahn belongs to districts, towns and a municipality – not a group. Its blue trains run between Friedrichshafen and Aulendorf, and its abbreviation BOB is shared, of all things, with a Bavarian railway operating somewhere else entirely.

Breisgau-S-Bahn (BSB)

founded 1995

The Breisgau-S-Bahn proves that brands can outlive their companies. The GmbH of the same name was merged into SWEG in 2017 – the name stayed on the trains. Today two different operators run in the same S-Bahn network with two different vehicle families.

City-Bahn Chemnitz

City-Bahn Chemnitz runs trains that turn into trams right in the middle of the city. Behind the brand name stands a municipally owned company, behind the operating concept the Chemnitz model – and on the network, three very different vehicle types run side by side.

DB ZugBus Regionalverkehr Alb-Bodensee (RAB)

founded 1996

The name contains the word ZugBus (train-bus), but today it mostly runs buses. The RAB's rail services passed to DB Regio Baden-Württemberg. Anyone reading old vehicle lists will find a company that no longer appears in train operations in this form.

Die Regionenbahn

Most pages in this section explain that another company hides behind a brand. Here it's the other way round: a company that runs trains without carrying its own brand on them. Die Regionenbahn works on the branch-line network in the south-west – on behalf of others and mostly with vehicles that aren't its own.

Eisenbahnen und Verkehrsbetriebe Elbe-Weser (evb)

founded 1981

Behind the lower-case badge evb sits not a single service, but an umbrella brand: passenger trains, freight, bus routes and its own infrastructure in the Elbe-Weser triangle. Understand it, and you understand how regional railway companies in northern Germany are really put together.

Erfurter Bahn

Erfurter Bahn is a brand name, not an operating entity. Behind it stands a municipally backed group of companies with several entities that share vehicles, workshops and staff. Anyone who wants to log a sighting properly reads the data panel, not the lettering.

eurobahn

eurobahn is a transport brand in North Rhine-Westphalia and neighbouring Lower Saxony. It's operated by a company that belongs to the French Keolis group – and so, several steps removed, to SNCF. On the vehicle you see none of that, just three letters.

FlixTrain

FlixTrain is a sales and brand presence in open-access long-distance rail. The green livery tells you who sells the ticket - not necessarily who runs the train, who owns the locomotive, or where the coaches came from. That very separation is what makes the brand interesting for spotters.

Hellertalbahn

Hellertalbahn is both the name of the line and a service brand – and for a while it was also the name of its own operating company. If you want to place the railcar you've just seen in the Hellertal, you first need to work out which of the three meanings is meant. The data panel settles it.

Hohenzollerische Landesbahn (HzL)

The Hohenzollerische Landesbahn was for decades a stand-alone public railway in Baden-Württemberg. Today HzL is mainly a brand and an abbreviation still stuck on vehicles, while the legal entity has long since merged into a larger state-owned company.

Locomore

Locomore was the best-known attempt to take on the market leader in German long-distance rail with its own brand. Financed through crowdfunding, run by partners, and continued by a foreign operator after its insolvency: hardly any other case shows so clearly that brand and operator are two different things.

Mittelrheinbahn

Mittelrheinbahn is the name of a service brand along the left-bank Rhine line, not the name of the company that runs it. Between Cologne, Koblenz and Mainz you'll encounter one of the densest mixes of regional, long-distance and freight traffic anywhere in Germany.

nordbahn

nordbahn is the brand of a joint venture: a Schleswig-Holstein heritage railway and an international transport group run it together. Its network sits between Hamburg and the west coast – and in Hamburg it usually doesn't end where outsiders expect.

NordWestBahn

NordWestBahn is the brand of a regional transport provider in north-west Germany, whose operating company belongs to an internationally active group. It's especially instructive because of its S-Bahn services: the term means something entirely different here than in the big conurbations.

Oberweißbacher Bergbahn

founded 1923

The Oberweißbacher Bergbahn is a tourist name for two operationally linked facilities: a standard-gauge funicular with a freight platform, and a short level line up on the plateau. Both are run by a company whose name appears nowhere on the vehicle.

Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn (ODEG)

ODEG is one of the big competitors in regional services across eastern Germany – and a special case when it comes to finding a parent group. The company behind the brand doesn't have one owner, but two, coming from completely different worlds.

Regiobahn

Regiobahn is one of the few names in the Rhineland behind which three roles hide at once: a municipal company, a track owner and an operating unit with its own licence. The railcar only carries the brand name – the company that actually runs it is called something else.

Regionalverkehr Münsterland (RVM)

Regionalverkehr Münsterland sounds like a railway company and is regularly filed as one in sighting lists. In fact, RVM is a regional transport brand with a clear focus on the road – on rails in the Münsterland, entirely different companies are running the trains.

Regionalverkehr Ruhr-Lippe (RLG)

Regionalverkehr Ruhr-Lippe is tied to an area, not to a mode of transport, and certainly not to a rail line. The name describes a region between the edge of the Ruhr area and the Sauerland – the trains there carry entirely different names and belong to companies that have nothing to do with RLG.

RegioTram Kassel

RegioTram is a dual-system concept: the same vehicle runs as a tram through the city and as a train out in the countryside. That makes classification unusually tricky, because different rules, licences and sometimes different responsibilities apply depending on the section of the route.

Rheinland-Pfalz-Takt

founded 1994

The Rheinland-Pfalz-Takt owns no locomotive, no staff and no licence. It's a statewide timetable concept that has organised connections since the 1990s. It's operated by changing companies that emerge from tendering procedures.

Ringzug Schwarzwald-Baar-Heuberg

founded 2003

The Ringzug belongs not to the company that operates it, but to a transport authority made up of three districts. That's exactly why the operator name could change without anything altering about the network, the livery or the timetable – a lesson for every sighting list.

S-Bahn Berlin

founded 1995

The Berlin S-Bahn isn't just a regional train under another name – it's a technically self-contained system with its own power supply and its own rolling stock. The brand name is the most stable part of it; the company behind it and the network's boundaries are not.

S-Bahn Hamburg

founded 1997

Hamburg's S-Bahn runs on a third rail in the city, yet still leaves its own system: one branch continues under overhead line. This hybrid role makes it technically unique – and makes the brand name worthless for identifying the operator.

S-Bahn Mitteldeutschland

founded 2013

The S-Bahn Mitteldeutschland isn't a company, but a product name spread over a network that touches three federal states and several transport authorities. It's operated by a group division – and individual lines run longer than some Regionalexpress services.

S-Bahn München

founded 1972

The S-Bahn München depends on a single twin-track tunnel through which almost every line runs. That dependency shapes operations, the timetable and how vulnerable it is to disruption – and, as everywhere, the brand name says nothing about who runs the trains. The answer is written small on the vehicle frame.

S-Bahn Rhein-Neckar

founded 2003

The S-Bahn Rhein-Neckar isn't a city S-Bahn, but a wide-ranging regional network spanning several federal states. The brand belongs to the transport association, not the operator – and that's exactly what makes it a textbook case for sighting lists.

Saarbahn

Saarbahn is a brand name for a dual-system light rail network that starts in the street space of Saarbrücken and continues on railway tracks all the way to France. Halfway along, the vehicle changes voltage, rulebook and jurisdiction – without passengers noticing a thing.

Stadtbahn Heilbronn

Stadtbahn Heilbronn is a service brand with no railway undertaking of its own. It's run by a Karlsruhe company, the city-centre tracks belong to the city of Heilbronn, and the dual-system technology comes from a model developed elsewhere.

Süd-Thüringen-Bahn (STB)

The Süd-Thüringen-Bahn is one of the few brands with an operating company of the very same name behind it. Its network lies between the Rennsteig and the Rhön, its fleet consists of practically a single railcar type – and its operational hub happens to be the town with Germany's best-known steam locomotive works.

Thüringerwaldbahn und Straßenbahn Gotha

The Thüringerwaldbahn is one of the last German interurban tramways: it starts in the streets of Gotha and, after more than twenty kilometres, ends at the foot of the Thuringian Forest. Legally it's a tramway throughout – visually, over long stretches, anything but.

vlexx

vlexx is an invented name with no meaning – and that was entirely intentional. Behind the brand stands a company in the Netinera group that runs a large diesel network between the Rhine, Nahe and Saar. The same vehicles also carry the client's brand alongside it.

Mariazellerbahn

founded 1898

The Mariazellerbahn is a 760 mm narrow-gauge railway with an overhead line voltage found nowhere else in scheduled operation. The name stands for a route and a service brand – since 2010 it has no longer been run by ÖBB, but by the state of Lower Austria.

Nightjet

founded 2016

Nightjet is ÖBB's night train brand – and therefore a product name, not a company. The set of coaches usually belongs to ÖBB, but the locomotive in front changes owner at every system boundary. Anyone logging a Nightjet sighting is therefore logging two different things.

Pinzgauer Lokalbahn

founded 1898

The Pinzgauer Lokalbahn links Zell am See with Krimml – at 760 mm gauge and with diesel traction. The name describes a line; it has been run by the Salzburg AG since 2008. A flood almost cost the railway its existence along the way.

Railjet

founded 2008

Railjet is the name of a train concept, not a company. The brand belongs to ÖBB, yet the Czech state railway also runs its own Railjet trainsets. Anyone going by colour and shape alone will reliably mix the two up.

Salzburger Lokalbahn

founded 1886

The Salzburger Lokalbahn is an electric metre-gauge railway that begins underground at Salzburg Hauptbahnhof and runs out into the Flachgau. The name stands for the line and the service brand – it's operated by the region's energy and transport company.

WESTbahn

founded 2011

WESTbahn is Austria's best-known private long-distance brand – and a textbook example of a brand covering more than one company. Its double-deck multiple units run on the Weststrecke in direct competition with ÖBB's Railjet, without needing a public service contract.

Zillertalbahn

founded 1900

The Zillertalbahn runs on 760 mm gauge from Jenbach to Mayrhofen. It's one of the rare cases where the line's brand and its operating company share the same name – and it ends at a station where three different gauges meet.

Eurostar

founded 1994

Since merging with Thalys, Eurostar has been a brand spanning two operating companies. No transport authority commissions these trains – they run because the route pays for itself. That explains almost everything: the choice of routes, the service frequency, and why the fleet is so small and so expensive.

Italo

founded 2012

Italo is the brand name of a private high-speed operator that has run in direct competition with the Italian state railway since 2012. The company behind it is called NTV and appears almost nowhere on the train. Anyone looking for the difference from Trenitalia will spot it faster in the colour than in the timetable.

ScotRail

founded 1983

"ScotRail" has been written on Scottish trains since the 1980s – the company behind it has changed four times in that period. Since 2022 the operation has again been in public hands. The brand name stayed the same every time, which is exactly what makes it useless as an identifying feature.

Metro Warszawa

founded 1995

Metro Warszawa is the name of an urban transport system with two lines, not of a railway company. The operator is a company owned by the City of Warsaw, the vehicles don't carry European vehicle numbers, and the track doesn't belong to the national infrastructure manager. That's exactly where most entries go wrong.

Leo Express

Leo Express is one of the private long-distance brands on the Czech main axis between Prague and Ostrava. The dark-liveried units stand out immediately – the company behind the name is a different one from the lettering, and the offer now reaches well beyond rail.

Regiojet

RegioJet runs bold yellow, loco-hauled trains through several Central European countries. Behind the one brand stand several national companies, and the coaches come from fleets across half of Europe – a train where almost every vehicle has a different story.

Metro Kopenhagen

Metro Kopenhagen runs without a driver, around the clock. It's not a railway operation, doesn't belong to the state railway, and shares neither track nor electrification system with the city's other rail traffic. That's exactly why it so often ends up in the wrong category in sighting lists.

Inlandsbanan

founded 1937

The Inlandsbanan runs the length of Sweden for around 1,288 kilometres from Värmland to Lapland – without overhead line, with seasonal passenger services and an operating company owned by the municipalities along the route. It is neither a state railway nor a heritage railway, and that in-between position is exactly what makes it interesting.

Flåmsbana

founded 1940

The Flåmsbana links the high-mountain station of Myrdal with the fjord village of Flåm - 20 kilometres, 866m of climb, gradients of up to 55 per mille. It looks like a heritage railway, but it's a regular line in the Norwegian state network. The name on the green coaches is a brand, not an operator.