The DR Class ET 168 (until 1941: Type "

Oranienburg Oranienburg () is a town in Brandenburg, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Oberhavel. Geography Oranienburg is a town located on the banks of the Havel river, 35 km north of the centre of Berlin. Division of the town Oranienburg ...

") was the second

electric multiple unit An electric multiple unit or EMU is a multiple-unit train consisting of self-propelled carriages using electricity as the motive power. An EMU requires no separate locomotive, as electric traction motors are incorporated within one or a numbe ...

that operated on the newly electrified

Berlin S-Bahn The Berlin S-Bahn () is a rapid transit railway system in and around Berlin, the capital city of Germany. It has been in operation under this name since December 1930, having been previously called the special tariff area ''Berliner Stadt-, Ring ...

lines. 17 trainsets in total were ordered by the ''

Deutsche Reichsbahn The ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'', also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the German national railway system created after the end of World War I from the regiona ...

'' in 1925 for delivery into the northern suburbs of

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

History

Already before the electrified S-Bahn came about, there was a trial for electrified commuter trains running from Potsdamer Wannseebahnhof to Zehlendorf in 1902 and from Potsdamer Ringbahnhof to Lichterfelde Ost from 1903. Also in 1903, the

AEG Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft AG (AEG; ) was a German producer of electrical equipment founded in Berlin as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte Elektricität'' in 1883 by Emil Rathenau. During the Second World War, AEG ...

company ran an

overhead wire An overhead line or overhead wire is an electrical cable that is used to transmit electrical energy to electric locomotives, trolleybuses or trams. It is known variously as: * Overhead catenary * Overhead contact system (OCS) * Overhead equipmen ...

test track from

Niederschöneweide Niederschöneweide (, literally ''Lower Schöneweide'') is a German locality (''Ortsteil'') within the Berlin borough (''Bezirk'') of Treptow-Köpenick. It is, with Oberschöneweide (''Upper Schöneweide''), part of the geographic quarter of Sch� ...

to Spindlersfeld. Electrification also came about as part of the solution to increase capacity along the '' Hamburg-Altonaer Stadt- und Vorortbahn''. World War I interrupted the electrification plans from 1914 to 1918, which, however, were revived just afterwards. In 1920 the

Prussian state railways The term Prussian state railways (German: ''Preußische Staatseisenbahnen'') encompasses those railway organisations that were owned or managed by the State of Prussia. The words "state railways" are not capitalized because Prussia did not have a ...

ordered six test trains, which were first pulled by

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s until electrification commenced in 1923. One year later, on 8 August 1924, the first section from Stettiner Vorortbahnhof to Bernau was inaugurated; the two other northern railway lines to

and

Velten Velten is a town in the Oberhavel district of Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated 10 km southwest of Oranienburg, and 24 km northwest of Berlin. History In 1905 Velten had 38 stove factories that delivered 100,000 tiled stoves to Berl ...

(

Kremmen Railway The Kremmen Railway (german: Kremmener Bahn) is a line in northern Berlin and Brandenburg, Germany. It branches off the Prussian Northern Railway in the Berlin district of Reinickendorf, north of Schönholz station (formerly ''Schönholz-Reinicke ...

) followed until 1927. To service all electrified connections, Deutsche Reichsbahn purchased 34 power cars and 51 trailers in total. In everyday operation, however, the engines soon proved to be too weak and already in 1925 upgraded versions (the later DR Class ET 168 and ET 165) were ordered in large numbers. After the war, the East German

had planned to use modernized ET 169 trains on branch lines from

Wannsee Wannsee () is a locality in the southwestern Berlin borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Germany. It is the westernmost locality of Berlin. In the quarter there are two lakes, the larger ''Großer Wannsee'' (Greater Wannsee, "See" means lake) and the ...

Stahnsdorf Stahnsdorf is a municipality in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district, in Brandenburg, Germany. Geography It is situated on the Teltow plateau, about southwest of the Berlin city centre, and east of Potsdam. Neighbouring municipalities are the town of ...

and from Zehlendorf to Düppel, or as additional trains on the northern Ringbahn and on the Siemensbahn branch from

Jungfernheide Jungfernheide () is an area of forest and heathland located in Berlin in the present-day district of Charlottenburg-Nord, a locality of the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Formerly a large forested area, it was progressively reduced in s ...

. But when the Berlin S-Bahn was divided due to the construction of the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

in 1961, they were all again allocated to the Oranienburg, Bernau and Velten stretches of the line. The trainsets were phased out from 1962 and most trains were withdrawn in 1969. Some components were re-used for the rolling stock of the East

Berlin U-Bahn The Berlin U-Bahn (; short for , "underground railway") is a rapid transit system in Berlin, the capital and largest city of Germany, and a major part of the city's public transport system. Together with the S-Bahn, a network of suburban train li ...

line E.

History

See also