DB Class ETA 150 - History

History

As a result of many years of favourable experience with this type of vehicle (the Prussian state railways had placed accumulator railcars in service as early as 1907 – these were later the Class ETA 178 in the Deutsche Reichsbahn) and evaluation of the results with the Class ETA 176 prototypes, the DB placed 232 Class ETA 150 power cars and 216 of their associated Class ESA 150 driving cars in service between 1953 and 1965.

The DB preferred to employ these two-coach sets on relatively level routes. They were rarely used on hilly lines due to the resultant high current consumption and hence limited range. In the main this only affected those vehicles stationed at Wanne-Eickel, and which were used in the Wuppertal area.

Its main areas of operation, apart from the Ruhrgebiet, were Schleswig-Holstein, eastern Lower Saxony, eastern Rhineland-Palatinate (in the Westerwald forest), south Hesse and south Baden. The last few railcars also worked in the area of the Rhine-Ruhr Transport Union (Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr) or VRR until 1995.

Between 1978 and 1988 the railcars also worked from Aachen to Maastricht in the Netherlands.

In 1968, under the DB’s renumbering scheme, the power cars became Class 515, and the driving cars Class 815.

Compared with the Prussian Wittfeld accumulator cars, the ETA 150s had an uneven weight distribution − the batteries were located in the middle of the coach body instead of over the bogies, so that in their last few years in service they tended to sag in the middle, which resulted in their nickname of Hängebauchschweine (Pot-bellied pigs).