Vy (formerly NSB)

Updated: August 2026 – Anyone who photographed trains in Norway before 2019 has shots in their archive bearing three letters that no longer exist. NSB became Vy, and because the rebrand coincided with the opening-up of passenger services, two things have been changing at once ever since: the name on the vehicle, and the question of who actually still runs on which line.

Log Norwegian sightings by litra and number

El 18, BM 73, Di 8 – note the class and number, and your sighting stays legible even after the next rebrand.

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One name fewer, three companies more

Vy isn’t a new organisation, but a renamed state railway. Operations, fleet and owner stayed the same – only the name Norges Statsbaner vanished from everyday use. The reason was practical: alongside trains, the group also runs buses on a large scale, and a name containing the word “state railway” fitted that less and less well.

More important than the rename is what happened alongside it. Norway began tendering its passenger services in traffic packages. Since then, Vy is no longer the country’s only passenger operator: Go-Ahead Nordic and SJ Norge have each won parts of the network. SJ Norge, in turn, is a subsidiary of Sweden’s SJ – so one state railway runs against the state railway next door.

Litra: Norway’s answer to the class number

Norway’s vehicle classification system is one of the clearest in Europe. A class letter, the litra, comes before the number. It tells you straight away what kind of vehicle you’re looking at – and the number that follows is the actual type designation.

That makes identification almost trivial: an El 18 is unmistakably an electric locomotive of type 18, a BM 73 a railcar of type 73. In Germany you’d need to check the data panel for the same information – here it’s written large on the vehicle.

What a German spotter finds different here

Technically, Norway is familiar territory: 15 kV at 16.7 Hz, standard gauge, overhead line just like home. The real difference lies elsewhere.

First, traffic density. On many lines, one to two hours pass between two trains. A platform where you simply wait and collect doesn’t work here – you need the timetable in advance.

Second, the light. Between November and February, usable daylight hours in the north are very short, and even in the south the sun stays low. That’s creatively appealing and technically demanding at the same time; the basics are covered in the article on winter railway photography.

Third, the direction of travel: Norway drives on the right, neighbouring Sweden on the left. Anyone combining both countries in one trip has to adjust their position planning along the way.

Fourth, the distances. Norway is longer from south to north than the map suggests, and the lines follow the valleys rather than a straight line. A journey that looks like an afternoon on the map fills a whole day in practice. That’s not a drawback, but it changes the planning: instead of several locations per day, you’re more likely to work with one location per day and treat the journey between them as its own part of the schedule.

Where to experience the Norwegian network best

Oslo Sentralstasjon is the only place in the country where almost everything passes through in a short space of time: Vy regional services, long-distance trains, the airport express and the competitors’ trains. If you want to see the routes themselves, head to the Bergensbanen at Finse – high above the treeline, reachable only by train in winter.

The Flåmsbana from Myrdal is the tourist counterpart: short, extremely steep, with its own timetable and heavy seasonal traffic.

Few trains, but every one counts

With the Traintrack app you'll capture even the one train you waited two hours for.

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Vy, group subsidiary, or an outside operator?

Verdict

Vy is a state railway that has changed its name while simultaneously losing its exclusive claim to the market. Together, both things make Norwegian sightings more time-dependent than elsewhere: the same line can belong to different operators in different years.

The way out is the same as everywhere else – it’s just unusually convenient here. The litra system gives you class and type directly on the vehicle. Note El, Di, BM or Skd along with the number, plus date and location, and your list stays valid no matter which name is currently written on the side.

An archive that survives rebrands

Litra, type number, date, location – four details that will still hold up in ten years' time.

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