DB Class 189

Updated: August 2026 – A long freight train, in front of it a compact four-axle locomotive with a striking amount of technology on the roof: that’s typically a Class 189. It belongs to the vehicles that simply can’t be explained without cross-border traffic – and that’s exactly what this page is about.

What is the Class 189?

The Class 189 is a four-axle multi-system electric locomotive for freight services, built by Siemens under the manufacturer designation ES 64 F4. 100 machines carry the numbers 189 001 to 189 100. The design is built for four electrification systems – 15 kV/16.7 Hz, 25 kV/50 Hz, and 3 kV and 1.5 kV DC – with around 6,400 kW continuous power output and a maximum speed of 140 km/h.

The purpose behind it is purely operational: a freight train that has to change locomotives at every system boundary loses time and staff. The 189 was meant to run straight through. It’s therefore the logical continuation of what older cross-border locomotives such as the Class 181 achieved with considerably more effort and less range.

Country packages: why no two 189s are alike

A multi-system locomotive can technically handle several overhead line voltages – but that alone isn’t enough to run into a country. Train protection, radio, braking rules and national approvals also come into play. Manufacturers solve this with country packages: the same locomotive body, different equipment. You’ll see which package a machine carries most clearly where it actually crosses a border – in the Elbe valley, for instance, at Děčín hlavní nádraží.

How the twelve-digit vehicle number is structured, and which digits identify country and keeper, is explained in detail by the guide to the UIC number.

Where it fits in rail operations

Freight locomotives follow a different logic to passenger locomotives: they don’t run to a clock-face timetable but to train paths and demand – increasingly for non-federal railways, as represented by the Network of Private Railways. For spotters that means location and time of day matter more than the timetable – at a system-change station like Bad Bentheim you’ll see more multi-system locomotives in one morning than at an inland route all day.

Setting	Chance of a sighting	Why
International freight corridors	high	This is exactly what the multi-system equipment was procured for
Marshalling and freight yards	high	Train formation, locomotive changes and waiting times make observation possible
Border stations to the DC network	medium to high	System changes are the classic use case
Long-distance routes without freight services	low	The trains this locomotive was built for don’t run there
Regional hubs without through freight traffic	very low	No scheduled occurrence

One practical consequence is often underestimated: freight services run at different times of day than passenger services. Many train paths lie in the evening and night hours or early morning, because clock-face services take priority during the day. Anyone who only stands at the spot between ten and four sees regularly less than what’s actually running on the line – and draws the wrong conclusions about the fleet.

Spotting and photo tips

Freight locomotives rarely stand still and often run at inconvenient times. Anyone wanting a clean shot of the 189 needs to plan differently than for long-distance passenger trains.

How to go about things sensibly and within the rules at a freight and marshalling yard is described in the guide to spotting at marshalling yards. And because with freight locomotives the number is the actual information, keeping a clean sighting log is worth it.

Decoding the Eurosprinter family

The manufacturer designation ES 64 F4 looks cryptic, but it’s built systematically – and once you know the pattern, you understand half the Siemens family at a glance.

ES stands for Eurosprinter, the name of the platform. 64 refers to the power class of around 6,400 kW. The letter that follows describes the design: F for Fracht (freight) for freight train variants, U for Universal for types that also work fast passenger trains, P for the original prototype. The digit after that names the number of electrification systems: F4 means a freight locomotive for four systems, U2 means a universal locomotive for two systems.

This lets you sort the family without learning every national class number individually. The same base design appears in Germany as the 152 and 189, in Austria as the 1016, 1116 and 1216, and in other countries under their own designations – in Italy, for instance, as the E.190 at Mercitalia. If you want to see the relationship side by side, head to the Brenner railway near Gries am Brenner, where German and Austrian members of the family run in front of the same freight trains. The body stays recognisable, the electronics behind it differ.

For spotters this is both a great relief and a small trap. A relief, because the design language recurs across national borders. A trap, because two machines with identical silhouettes can be completely different classes. Using the front as your defining feature gets you to the family – for the class itself you need the number.

At Siemens, the Eurosprinter was succeeded by the Vectron platform. It follows the same idea but goes further: even more variants, even more country packages, plus diesel and dual-power versions. The 189 therefore marks an intermediate step in a development that leads from the national one-off design to the European modular system. Once you’ve sorted out the family, you’ll also quickly recognise new variants.

Common mix-ups

You’ll find the German single-system sister under Siemens ES64F (Class 152), and the passenger variant of the same family under Class 182. The successor platform is covered on the Siemens Vectron page.

Verdict

The Class 189 is the locomotive that best explains European freight services: four electrification systems, different country packages, one body for everything. You can identify it by the Eurosprinter front, the freight train behind it and the technology on the roof – but you can only confirm it via the vehicle number.