The El 15 is a six-axle electric locomotive built for the iron ore railway between Luleå in Sweden and Narvik in Norway that was operated jointly by the Norwegian and Swedish state railways. While the SJ was already building the two-section Dm and three-section Dm3 locomotives, the NSB still needed a more modern and powerful locomotive to replace its El 3 and El 4. The new design was based on the 060 EA developed by ASEA for the Romanian CFR. Six were built in 1967 with the mechanical part from Thunes.

They weighed 132 tonnes and had an output of 5,400 kW. So their power was greater than the combined 4,800 kW of the latest variant of the two-section SJ Dm. To haul heavy ore trains, they had multiple controls and automatic SA3 couplers which could withstand the weight. Usually two locomotives were used to haul a train of 5,000 tonnes. In case they had to haul passenger trains, they had a top speed of 120 km/h and were able to provide head-end power.

From 1996 they were not operated anymore by the NSB, but by MTAS, the Norwegian branch of the MTAB ore railway. The first IORE two-section locomotives were delivered by Adtranz/Bombardier four years later. These had the same output of 5,400 kW per section, but a much higher starting tractive effort thanks to modern three-phase traction motors, a greater weight and a lower top speed. The six El 15 were sold to Hector Rail in Sweden in 2004 and became their class 161. After one had been set aside as donor for spare parts and scrapped in 2016, the other five were sold to Grenland Rail in 2020.