S-Bahn Berlin Class 485

Updated: August 2026 – A Berlin S-Bahn car with a strikingly curved side wall, paired with a trailer car whose number starts with an 8: that’s Class 485, known among spotters and passengers as the Coke Can. This page places the class in context, explains its origins in Reichsbahn Class 270, and shows how to tell it apart from the other Berlin classes.

What is Class 485?

Class 485 is an electric multiple unit of S-Bahn Berlin, formed as a quarter-train from a powered car of Class 485 and a trailer car of Class 885. It runs on 800 V DC from a side-mounted third rail and, like all Berlin S-Bahn vehicles, therefore carries no roof pantograph.

Its distinguishing feature is its origin: it originally ran as Class 270 in the vehicle programme of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and was later transferred into the joint numbering system. Anyone who comes across the 270 in older sources is reading about the same vehicle. On today’s network it has been replaced by newer classes such as the Class 483 / 484.

Why the number pairs decide everything in Berlin

The Berlin S-Bahn classes differ less in silhouette than you might expect – they share the same loading gauge, livery and train formation. The reliable difference lies in the car numbers.

Class	Cars in the quarter-train	Shape feature	Status
485 / 885	485 + 885	strongly curved side wall	withdrawn from regular service
481 / 482	481 + 482	the network’s standard shape	defining class
480	480 + 480	angular, with no partner number	fleet declining
483	2 cars	extensively glazed front end	newest generation
484	4 cars	walk-through unit	newest generation

A rule of thumb for the network: First look for the partner car, then assess the shape. The guide to identifying classes describes how to build up this checking order in general.

Recognition in four steps

Sensibly tracking down a vehicle with no scheduled diagram

Once a class disappears from regular service, your spotting strategy changes fundamentally. Instead of optimising locations, you research dates.

• Occasions instead of lines. Anniversaries, society trips and exhibitions are the realistic opportunities.
• Short-notice information beats lists. What held true two years ago is usually out of date today.
• Give reports back. Anyone who sees something themselves helps others directly – what a useful report looks like is covered in the guide to reporting a sighting.

For your own records, a structured sighting logbook is especially worthwhile here: with rare vehicles, the sighting itself is the event, and without a date it loses its value later.

Understanding renumbering: from 270 to 485

Anyone who looks into vehicles from eastern Germany constantly runs into two designations for the same vehicle. That’s not an error in the sources but the consequence of two numbering systems that grew apart for decades before later being merged.

For research this means concretely:

• Older sources use the old number. Reports, books and photos from before the renumbering refer to Class 270. They mean the same vehicle now listed as 485.
• Both numbers belong in your archive. Anyone who only searches for one of the two misses half the material. When in doubt, note both designations.
• Renumbering isn’t a one-off case. You find the same pattern with many Reichsbahn locomotives and railcars. Once you’ve understood it, you can resolve such apparent contradictions in seconds from then on.

Precisely for this reason, documenting the livery state is so worthwhile for this class. Between in-service condition, renumbering and museum restoration, as carried out for instance by the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, lie several stages, and each of them is its own moment in time. A photo with legible markings and a date is therefore far more than a vehicle portrait: it documents the condition a particular vehicle was in at a particular point in time – information that can never be reconstructed later by any other means.

Common mix-ups

How much the design language has changed across generations becomes clear in a direct comparison with the Class 481 / 482 and the more angular Class 480.

And one more note on expectations: when a surviving unit runs, it’s usually not travelling alone. Special trips – whether on the S-Bahn network or at smaller heritage operations such as the Buckower Kleinbahn – are accompanied, announced, and attended accordingly. Expect other photographers at the location, plan your spot early, and if necessary fall back on a less crowded spot. A quiet location with a clean background ultimately delivers a better picture than the most popular spot with a dozen tripods in front of it.

Conclusion

Class 485 is the Berlin S-Bahn class with the strongest character of its own: curved side wall, Reichsbahn origins, a fixed trailer car 885. Identifying it takes seconds; encountering it in scheduled service, on the other hand, is now almost impossible. Anyone who wants to see it works with dates rather than locations – and documents the sighting with corresponding care.