Class 90

Updated: August 2026 – Behind Class 90 there’s no single locomotive design, but a slot: one of many the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft used from 1925 onward to sort the vehicle fleets of the former state railways. Anyone who understands how this system works can roughly place any old steam locomotive – even without knowing its exact design.

What is Class 90?

Class 90 is a collective number for tender locomotives in freight and shunting duties. It sits in the 80 to 96 number band, which the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft reserved for exactly this type of vehicle. That secures two things: it’s a tender locomotive – it carries its own supplies and has no separate tender – and it was intended for freight and shunting tasks, not fast passenger trains.

What the number doesn’t tell you is just as important: it doesn’t describe a shared design. Under collective numbers like this, the DRG grouped machines that came from different state railways, had been built by different manufacturers, and differed markedly in boiler, frame and dimensions. Which design is actually meant only becomes clear from the renumbering plan – or from a look at the builder’s plate and wheel arrangement on the vehicle itself.

There’s been no regular service for decades. Vehicles from this area are historic objects.

The renumbering plan: why collective numbers arose at all

Before 1920 there was no German state railway, but a series of state railways each with their own class systems. Prussia designated its machines with letters and numbers, Bavaria and Saxony with entirely different schemes. When these became a single Reichsbahn, everything had to fit into one shared grid.

State-railway system	Example logic	What it became
Prussia: letter plus number	T for tender locomotive, G for freight locomotive, P for passenger locomotive, S for express locomotive	placed within the DRG number band by type and wheel arrangement
Bavaria: abbreviation with suffix	Pt and Gt marked tender locomotives for passenger and freight trains respectively	their own sub-classes within the same DRG number
Saxony and Württemberg	each with its own class system	assigned to the same number bands, but separate running-number blocks
DRG from 1925	two-digit class plus running number	a uniform designation for the whole fleet

The DRG’s system organised locomotives by two criteria: intended use and design. Separate-tender locomotives occupied the bands 01 to 59, tender locomotives the bands 60 to 96. Within the bands, the number roughly rose with size and the number of coupled axles – which is why the pure three-coupled Class 89 sits below the four-coupled Class 92. Exactly where an individual design was placed, though, can only be read from the renumbering plan itself. Just how much neighbouring numbers can differ from one another is shown by a direct comparison with Class 91.

What you can actually read off an unknown tender locomotive

In the field, the renumbering plan is of little use to you. What you need is a sequence that also works when no markings are legible.

This sequence isn’t a steam-locomotive speciality, it works for any vehicle type. It’s described in full in the guide to identifying classes.

Where this number range still turns up today

Not on the platform – but in archives, depots and occasionally on a museum site. The research routes are the same for all early-withdrawn classes:

• Archive sections of the railway forums. For state-railway designs, often the only source with photographic material. The overview of the Historic Railway section shows how to search these collections effectively.
• Museum and society collections. If a vehicle has survived, its operator – such as the DGEG Eisenbahnmuseum Bochum-Dahlhausen – knows best, and also publishes whether it can be seen at all.
• Monument locomotives in public spaces. Some early tender locomotives now stand on a plinth in front of a station or works site.
• Printed vehicle registers. For renumbering questions they’re more reliable than freely available compilations.

Photography: evidence rather than incidental shots

With historic vehicles, the documentary value of an image is often higher than its artistic one. Three shots cover almost everything: a complete side view for the wheel arrangement, a close-up of the markings for identity, and a three-quarter view from a low viewpoint as a showcase shot. With those, every later question can be answered.

If a machine is under steam, the usual rules of steam photography apply: backlighting gives shape to steam and smoke, front lighting makes both disappear. How you build a systematic collection from this is described in the guide to keeping a sighting logbook.

On society and museum premises the owner’s house rules apply throughout. Barriers are binding, tracks and operational installations are off-limits – even for vehicles that obviously aren’t going to be moved.

Common mix-ups

Conclusion

Class 90 is a textbook example of the logic behind the German steam locomotive numbering system: the number reliably tells you what type of vehicle you’re dealing with, but not which design lies behind it. That’s not a shortcoming, but the price of having a single system map the fleets of many railway administrations. In practice this means: work out design and wheel arrangement yourself, use the number as confirmation – and accept that this area is now a research subject and no longer a spotting target.