DB Class 142 (E42)

Updated: August 2026 – Angular body, four axles, a freight train on the hook and a front end that looks different from the West German classics: that’s the Class 142. It has carried three different designations in its life – and in doing so tells a piece of German railway history in numbers.

What is the Class 142 (E42)?

The Class 142 is a four-axle electric locomotive for freight services, built at the Lokomotivbau Hennigsdorf works – the later factory of Bombardier Transportation – for Deutsche Reichsbahn and rated for 100 km/h. It belongs to the DR’s new-build electric locomotive family, which also produced the passenger variant Class 109 – originally designated E 11.

The design principle matches what was also standard in the west: a shared basic design, laid out differently for passenger and freight service. That’s why the 109 and 142 look confusingly alike, while top speed and tractive effort differ considerably.

From E 42 via 242 to 142: the number logic

Hardly any vehicle illustrates the German numbering system as vividly as this class.

• The type was originally called E 42. As in the west, the E stood for electric, the number for the design family.
• In 1970 the Reichsbahn switched to a three-digit class scheme. E 42 became Class 242, E 11 became the 211.
• After the reunification of Reichsbahn and Bundesbahn, these numbers collided with the West German scheme, in which 2xx was reserved for diesel locomotives. The Reichsbahn electric locomotives therefore moved into free slots of the 1xx range: 242 became 142, 211 became 109, 250 became the Class 155.
• The leading 1 has since uniformly marked the electric locomotive; the number range roughly places the intended use, with the freight locomotives sitting in the 139 to 155 range.

How this digit sequence fits into the twelve-digit European vehicle number is explained in the article on the UIC number and its check digit.

How to identify a 142 in the field

Where it fits into railway operations

The 142 is a freight locomotive without a fixed timetable. Anyone looking for it needs different strategies than for long-distance passenger traffic.

Setting	Chance of a sighting	Why
Electrified freight lines in eastern Germany	medium	Historic core territory of the class
Engineering and special freight workings	medium	Typical field of activity for older machines
Marshalling yards and train formation facilities	medium	Trains are taken over and made up there
Heritage railway operating days	medium	Surviving machines are shown deliberately
Timetabled passenger routes	low	Wrong duty profile

How to observe freight traffic in a planned rather than random way is described in the article on the freight train radar for Germany.

Spotting and photo tips

• Include the side wall. The continuous rows of vent grilles are the graphic feature of this class and get lost in a head-on shot.
• Plan for the number plate. Because the 142 and 109 are hardly distinguishable externally, a picture without a legible number is only half the documentation.
• Document markings and keeper codes. On private-operator machines they change more often than the locomotive itself.
• Watch the light. The plain side wall benefits from low morning or evening light, which brings out the grille structure.

All photographs are taken from the platform or from publicly accessible land. Tracks, operational railway land and sidings are off limits; the rules involved are covered in the article on safe distance from the track.

Reichsbahn and Bundesbahn: two design languages

Anyone identifying German electric locomotives benefits enormously from being able to tell the two construction schools apart. They differ not only in number, but also in design.

Feature	Bundesbahn standard electric locomotives	Reichsbahn new-build electric locomotives
Front	flat or folded, with a continuous trim strip	upright and plain, no trim strip
Side wall	horizontal bands of vent grilles, clearly set off	continuous rows of vent grilles over the full length
Overall impression	proportioned, with visible design elements	strictly functional
Typical classes	110, 139, 140, 141	109, 142 and the later new-build generations

This distinction works remarkably reliably, even when a locomotive is running in an unfamiliar livery – because the sheet-metal shape stays what it is. It doesn’t replace reading the number, though, only narrows down the candidate list.

A second clue lies in the vehicle’s history: classes of Reichsbahn origin are today found disproportionately often with private railway operators, because they became available in large numbers after 1990. Anyone seeing an angular, plain electric locomotive in an unfamiliar company livery is often right to suspect a Reichsbahn design – and should still read the number afterwards.

Common mix-ups

The realistically most dangerous candidates are the almost identical passenger version of the family, the younger Class 143 with its distinctive window band, and – from a distance – the West German Class 140, which had a similar duty profile but is shaped differently.

Verdict

The Class 142 is a vehicle you can almost recognise better from its number history than from its bodywork. Once you can separate the angular Reichsbahn body shape from the West German standard electric locomotives, all that’s left is deciding whether a passenger or freight variant is standing in front of you – and that’s what the digits are for.