The E 42 was developed on the basis of the E 11, which had a lower top speed of 100 km/h and a higher tractive effort. It was intended for traffic with freight trains and slow passenger trains and was built in significantly larger numbers than its prototype. Just as the last E 11 were built directly as class 211, the last E 42 were built as class 242. Right at the beginning of the 1990s, 18 units came to Switzerland, where they were used by several operators in front of freight trains. Some of the locomotives equipped there with multiple controls later came back to Germany and are still used there today to pull freight trains weighing up to 2,700 tons. 