When first delivered, they were assigned to lines in the South-East region, to provide traction for the Rapid and Express trains. From 1967 to 1970, some locomotives were rostered to haul the prestigious
TEE Mistral before the advent of the more powerful
CC 6500. BB 9319 to 9331 were fitted with special hydrostatic compensated buffers between 1975 and 1981, necessary for hauling the
Talgo III-RD trainsets of
Renfe on the two services using this stock:
TEE Catalan-Talgo Geneva -
Barcelona, from Geneva to Narbonne where diesel traction took over, during the period when this train was routed via
Lyon-Brotteaux instead of
Grenoble; and the
Barcelona-Talgo sleeper train, linking Paris and Barcelona, from
Paris-Austerlitz to Toulouse, where it was again handed over to diesel traction. In 1977, the arrival of the new
BB 7200s at the Villeneuve depot for service on the Paris-Lyon-Marseille artery displaced the less powerful BB 9300s. They were then progressively transferred to the Toulouse depot. By 1981, the entire class was allocated to Toulouse to operate express and mainline trains between Paris and Toulouse or Bordeaux, and on the cross-country lines of the South-West, as well as a few freight or postal trains. At the end of the 2000s, the BB 9300s, like their BB 9200 cousins, experienced a sharp drop in activity due to the appearance of new regional multiple units. Some were stored out of use, the others remained in operation on the Teoz connections, then CIC and TER services, still around Toulouse and Bordeaux. They were regularly used to move empty coaching stock between Bordeaux and
Juvisy. == Depot allocations ==