Vossloh G 800 BB

Updated: August 2026 – A compact diesel locomotive with a cab in the middle, two hoods of unequal length and four axles: that’s the basic form by which you recognise the Vossloh G 800 BB and its relatives. It’s rarely in the limelight, but it works in ports, on works railways and at sidings wherever wagons need to be moved. This page shows how to classify it and what its type designation reveals.

What is the Vossloh G 800 BB?

The Vossloh G 800 BB is a four-axle diesel-hydraulic locomotive from the Kiel locomotive works, which goes back to the long-established Maschinenbau Kiel – MaK for short – and from the late 1990s was run under the name Vossloh. It’s the smallest member of the classic BB family and is designed for shunting, works and trip-working duties.

The type designation isn’t a random product but a system. G stands for “Getriebelok” (transmission locomotive), i.e. hydraulic transmission. The number is a power indication that lets you rank the models within the family against each other. BB describes the B’B’ wheel arrangement: two two-axle bogies, all axles powered. Once you’ve understood this pattern, you can roughly classify a whole range of Kiel types at first sight.

Identifying it in three steps

Confirmation always comes from the number, never from the colour. How to fully decode the twelve-digit vehicle number is explained digit by digit in the guide to the UIC number and its check digit.

The Kiel type family at a glance

It helps enormously to know the family as a whole, because the individual types look similar in the field. The following overview is ordered by body style and task, not by exact power figures.

Type	Wheel arrangement	Basic character
G 6	three axles, rigid frame	compact shunter for tight layouts
G 800 BB	B’B’	light shunting and trip-working locomotive
G 1000 BB	B’B’	medium general-purpose locomotive, widespread
G 1206	B’B’	powerful trip-working and main-line locomotive
G 2000 BB	B’B’	heavy main-line locomotive for freight trains

You’ll find the next-larger sister on the page for the Vossloh G 1000 BB, and the family’s best-known member on the page for the MaK G 1206. If you want to see the three-axle counterpart, look at the Vossloh G 6.

Where you’ll find locomotives like this

A locomotive of this size works where wagons are moved individually or in small groups. That means industrial sidings, port railways, transhipment terminals and the trip workings that shuttle wagons between a siding and the next hub station.

For spotters, that means two things. First: these movements aren’t in any timetable you could look up online. Second: they often still follow a fixed daily rhythm, because the operations of the works being served dictate it. If you take a few mornings to watch, you’ll recognise patterns. How to explore such areas systematically and legally is described in the guide to spotting at a marshalling yard.

Showing what matters in your photos

Shunting and trip-working locomotives offer something photographically that main-line locomotives rarely provide: time. They stand, they move slowly, they come back. That allows more careful planning of your shots.

• Side view as the base shot. It shows both hoods, the centre cab and the full vehicle number in one picture.
• Three-quarter view for impact. An angle of around 30 degrees makes the compact body style look more three-dimensional than a flat side shot.
• Detail of the data panel. A second shot with the number and vehicle keeper marking makes the sighting verifiable.
• Include the working situation. A locomotive with a group of wagons attached tells you more about its job than an isolated portrait.

So that your pictures can still be found later, it’s worth looking at how to use EXIF data for spotting – date, time and location are already stored in the file and save a lot of follow-up research.

MaK, Vossloh and the history of the Kiel works

Why closely related locomotives are sometimes called MaK and sometimes Vossloh regularly confuses newcomers. The explanation is company history, not technology.

Maschinenbau Kiel, MaK for short, built diesel locomotives for works, port and private railways for decades and in the process developed the body style that still sets the standard today: centre cab, two hoods of unequal length, four axles in bogies. At the end of the 1990s, the locomotive division passed to Vossloh. The designs carried on, the name on the builder’s plate changed – which is why technically closely related machines carry different manufacturer names.

Later came a second shift: with Vossloh España in Valencia, Vossloh built up a Spanish arm that developed main-line locomotives with full-width bodies, while Kiel stayed with shunting and trip-working locomotives. Both sites changed owners again in the years that followed.

For spotters, this gives rise to two practical rules. First: the manufacturer’s name says little about the body style. A Vossloh locomotive can be a compact shunting machine from Kiel or a main-line locomotive from Valencia. Second: type designations outlast changes of company. If you know the Kiel system of G or DE, power figure and wheel-arrangement code, you’ll classify the vehicles correctly, regardless of which name happens to be on the plate.

That’s exactly why the full vehicle number is so valuable for sightings: it outlasts company names, changes of keeper and repaints, and always denotes the same machine.

Common mix-ups

Conclusion

The Vossloh G 800 BB is no star, but it’s a good lesson. It teaches you the logic of the Kiel type designations, the meaning of the wheel arrangement and the difference between keeper and operator. Once you’ve mastered these three things, you can properly classify almost any diesel locomotive of a private operator.