Schöma CFL-40 DR

Updated: August 2026 – A short, tall diesel loco with warning stripes moving two tank wagons around a works site: vehicles like this don’t appear in any class overview, and yet they can be identified cleanly. The Schöma CFL-40 DR is a good example of how to place small locomotives via the manufacturer’s type, works plate and vehicle number – instead of guessing.

What is the Schöma CFL-40 DR?

The Schöma CFL-40 DR is a small diesel locomotive from the range of Christoph Schöttler Maschinenfabrik in Diepholz, Lower Saxony. For decades the manufacturer has specialised in small locomotives for industrial, works, construction and narrow-gauge railways – exactly the segment in which vehicles are named not by class but by works type. Withdrawn machines from this range often end up with field railway (narrow-gauge industrial railway) societies such as the Dampf-Kleinbahn Mühlenstroth.

Within this range, the CFL-40 DR sits at the small end; larger relatives such as the Schöma CFL-200 DR or the Schöma CFL250DVR follow the same naming pattern. That also makes clear what this page can and can’t do: reliable public information on power output, numbers built or operators simply doesn’t exist in dependable form for many Schöma types. What can be described with certainty, however, is the system: how the designation is structured, how the vehicle fits into the numbering system and how you pin it down in the field. That’s the decisive part of identification anyway.

Manufacturer’s type instead of class: reading the designation correctly

Anyone who grew up with DB classes automatically looks for three digits on a small loco – and finds none. That’s not a mistake but the normal picture in the industrial railway world.

How this twelve-digit number is structured as a whole – type code, country code, serial number and check digit – is explained in the article on the UIC number and its check digit. The basic order of identification, which also works with unfamiliar vehicles, is set out in the guide to identifying rolling-stock classes.

Where small locos work – and what that means for your chances

A small loco doesn’t follow the timetable, it follows the work. That results in a completely different search pattern than with long-distance locos: what matters is not the line but the operation that keeps the machine busy. Such vehicles are freely accessible above all at narrow-gauge and heritage railways such as the Brohltal-Eisenbahn. Other small-loco manufacturers such as Gmeinder serve the same environment with types like the Gmeinder D 25 B – and are often found on the same siding tracks.

Environment	Chance of a sighting	What to bear in mind
Siding track of a works	medium to high	vehicle only moves when needed; the site is private property
Port and transhipment area	medium	operations often depend on shifts; check sightlines from public paths
Construction depot by the line	varies	locations only exist for the duration of the construction project
Heritage and society railway	predictable	operating days and opening times are announced, access is regulated
Regular DB station	very low	small locos of private keepers usually have nothing to do there

Works plate, number, markings: the three reliable sources

With main-line locos, the class number is enough. With small locos you need three sources of information, and each has its own value.

The works plate gives the manufacturer, works number and year of build. It’s the only detail on the vehicle that doesn’t change over its entire lifetime – livery, lettering and keeper certainly do. If you can only get one thing sharp in a photo, make it this plate.

The twelve-digit vehicle number places the vehicle in the European system. The type code 98 at the front stands for diesel shunting and small locos, followed by the country code, serial number and check digit. Not every works loco carries such a number – anything that works exclusively on non-public tracks doesn’t need one.

A size comparison also helps: next to a classic railway-owned shunter such as the Class V 60, a small loco looks strikingly short and low – a feature that works even from a distance.

Finally, the keeper marking, known as the vehicle keeper marking, tells you who the vehicle was assigned to at the time it was lettered. That’s the most fleeting information of all: it may read differently after the next works visit. How to record such observations so that they can still be evaluated years later is shown in the guide to keeping a sighting logbook.

Photographing when the subject won’t cooperate

Small locos rarely stand in the open, often against the light, and mostly behind fences. These four points will still get you a usable picture.

Which focal lengths make sense here and where budget telephoto lenses reach their limits is covered in the guide to the best telephoto lens for railway photography. Legal questions about location and subject are covered in the overview are you allowed to photograph trains – but it doesn’t replace advice in individual cases.

Common mix-ups and how to rule them out

Verdict

The Schöma CFL-40 DR stands for an entire world of vehicles that exists alongside the class system. If you want to identify one, you replace the missing class number with three other pieces of evidence: the works plate, the vehicle number with a leading 98 and the markings on the frame. Everything else – keeper, colour, location – is a snapshot and should be noted with a date, not claimed as a permanent state.