Originally 40 units, introduced in 1934, there remained 30 of them after World War II that were renumbered into 141-170. In 1960 the introduction of the new type of DE3 units began, starting at nr. 111 and ranging up to 152. In april 1963, number 141 was reached but there were still remaining some old DE3s such that an overlap of numbering occurred. The old ones with coinciding number then were given a "leading 0" before their number in order to discriminate them from their new colleagues. Thus, complete renumbering of the old DE3s was avoided which was acceptable because there were only a few of them and these had only a short time to go. In december 1963 the last ones were withdrawn from service. Three of them were temporarily set aside at Goes, quite a surprise because their nearest point of service Dordrecht is 88 km from there. The photo shows the 0145 and 0150 (third one 169 is invisible) taken on 05-02-1964.

Photo and Scan by Ben P. Weber (beepeeweb@wanadoo.nl)