Numbering scheme of the German railways

The different railway companies in Germany have used various schemes to classify their rolling stock.

As widely known the first few locomotives had names. The first locomotive in public service in Germany from 1835 was named Adler. The first railway lines were built by privately owned companies. That changed later when many railway companies were taken over or founded by the respective German states such as Prussia, Bavaria, etc.

The fast-growing number of locomotives made a numbering scheme inevitable. Most of the various state-owned German railway companies (called Länderbahnen in German) developed their own schemes, e. g. the Prussian state railways (preußische Staatseisenbahnen sometimes erroneously referred to as the Königlich Preussische Eisenbahn-Verwaltung or KPEV) introduced P for passenger train locomotives (the P 8 was one of the most important locomotive types with a total of over 3,000 units built), S for Schnellzug (express train) locomotives (e. g. the famous S 10), G for Güterzug (freight train) locomotives and T for Tenderlokomotive (tank locomotive). Basically the numbers were used continuously. As the Prussians also standardised technical standards, some of the smaller companies also used the Prussian numbering scheme or a similar one.

Bavaria's state-owned railway chose a different way: They also used P, S, or G to indicate the train type, but combined with the numbers of driving axles and of the axles in total, separated by a slash (similar to the Swiss system). E. g., the famous S 3/6 was a 2'C1' or 4-6-2 Pacific, meaning that of a total of 6 axles, 3 were driving axles.

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