Railpool Brand Guidelines: Munich’s Locomotive Lessor in Silver and Blue Since 2008

A Munich lessor set up in 2008.

Railpool was founded in Munich in 2008. English Wikipedia dates its creation to August 2008, as a joint venture between two German lenders, HSH Nordbank and KfW IPEX-Bank, which German Wikipedia says held equal halves. The plan was to finance and lease locomotives and other rolling stock to European rail operators, with advice and services alongside, rather than to run trains itself.

Its first deals came quickly. English Wikipedia says Railpool ordered 58 Bombardier TRAXX locomotives in September 2008 and, the following month, 45 Bombardier double-deck coaches to lease to the Danish state railway DSB; German Wikipedia adds that those coaches were sold to DSB in 2013. Railpool was also the first customer for the Siemens Vectron locomotive, German Wikipedia says: the order was placed at the end of 2010 and the first locomotive arrived in November 2012. It was likewise the first buyer of the Traxx 3 in the German class 187, the same source says.

The banks did not stay. German Wikipedia says the owners announced in May 2012 that they wanted to sell, and in May 2014 the investment firm Oaktree Capital Management took over all the shares. Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC bought 49 percent in February 2016, and a fund managed by Palladio Partners bought 25 percent from Oaktree in April 2019, according to English Wikipedia. In a release dated 4 May 2023, Railpool confirmed that GIC had bought a further 27 percent from Palladio Partners and become its majority owner, with Palladio staying on as a shareholder.

Electric locomotives, full service.

Railpool rents locomotives mainly on short- to medium-term operating leases, German Wikipedia says, and sells them as full-service packages that can include maintenance, repair and replacement engines when one is out of use. In 2023 the company described its locomotive fleet as entirely electric; in an October 2025 release it gave the fleet as around 600 locomotives plus 148 passenger vehicles, active in 19 European countries. Its core types are the Bombardier TRAXX, now sold by Alstom, in German classes 185, 186 and 187, and the Siemens Vectron in class 193.

Orders have kept coming. Siemens Mobility announced on 23 September 2026 that Railpool had signed for 100 Vectron X locomotives at the InnoTrans fair in Berlin: 30 Vectron X and 50 Vectron X Dual Mode as firm orders, with 20 more as options. Siemens said the Dual Mode units, built for both electrified and non-electrified lines, are the first of that kind in Railpool’s Vectron fleet, that Railpool would be the first customer for selected Vectron X digital functions, and that its Vectron fleet would grow to 325, with first deliveries planned for 2027.

Railpool has also bought secondhand. In 2017 it and Toshiba bought a large batch of older class 151 and 155 electric locomotives from Deutsche Bahn, and DB Cargo leased many of them back, Railcolor News reported in 2018; German Wikipedia says that lease ended in June 2024 and the last of those locomotives were scrapped in 2026. The freight operator has its own guide: DB Cargo.

Maintenance and new markets came by acquisition. English Wikipedia lists the purchase of Northrail Technical Service from the Paribus Group in April 2018, the Hamburg maintenance company Ajax Loktechnik in March 2021, renamed Railpool Lokservice, and the Duisburg firm KTG Railservice in July 2021. Railvolution reported that on 9 January 2020 Railpool announced a takeover of the Italian lessor LocoItalia, then owned by FNM Group and Tenor, and German Wikipedia says a Paris office and a French subsidiary followed in October 2023.

How wagon and locomotive lessors present themselves.

Railcar and wagon lessors sell something most people only glimpse from a level crossing: the use of a freight car for a fixed term. Their identities are built for two audiences at once. One is the shipper, railroad or logistics firm signing a lease; the other is everyone who sees the car roll past, because the lessor’s name is often painted on the side of the wagon itself. The car body works as a moving sign for the company that owns it.

Their websites tend to be organised around equipment. Fleet pages are usually split by wagon type, so tank cars for chemicals and mineral oils sit apart from covered hoppers, gondolas, flat cars, boxcars and intermodal wagons, and locomotives often have their own section. Photographs show the cars as the companies publish them, side-on and in yards or on the main line, with the lessor’s name and markings clearly legible.

Service pages carry much of the rest. Lessors describe maintenance workshops and field teams, training on handling wagons, and customer portals where fleets can be managed online. Several now present telematics: sensors and wireless devices that report a car’s location, condition and cargo status in near real time. Sustainability pages make the case for rail freight more broadly, and some describe the conversion or rebuilding of older cars.

Several of these companies are listed or owned by infrastructure investors, so investor pages, quarterly results and fleet counts take up a large share of what they publish. Palettes in this category are often restrained, with blues, reds, greens, greys and black recurring as our interpretation of the sector rather than as any company’s official colours. The guides that follow use tones of our own choosing.

Silver bodies with a blue banner.

Railpool’s identity is easiest to see on the track. German Wikipedia says most of its locomotives wear a silver livery with a blue banner along the sides. When it brought the older DB machines into that look, it used a wrap: Railcolor News reported on 4 October 2018 that class 155 138 had been wrapped completely in silver, not painted, and shown at InnoTrans 2018, as Railpool offered its 151 and 155 fleets for sale. Locomotives bought in DB colours otherwise kept their traffic red with light grey stripes but lost the DB logos, German Wikipedia adds.

On paper and on screen the company writes its name in capitals, RAILPOOL, and pairs it with the line “Flexibility for rent” on its press pages. Its releases describe it as a full-service rental company for rail vehicles.

It has also moved into passenger work. Since 2020 it has financed former DB coaches refurbished by Talbot Services in Aachen for FlixTrain, German Wikipedia says, and on 21 October 2025 the company said it would offer Siemens Vectouro coaches for cross-border services, with a flyer under the name Trainpool.

For a design guide, Railpool shows how a lessor that does not run trains can still be recognised on the line, by putting one silver-and-blue livery on locomotives that work for many different operators. Compare Akiem and Beacon, two other locomotive lessors in this series. For this guide we use livery silver, banner blue and catenary grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Railpool’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.