A portable fault diagnosis device for electric locomotive, which is online operational, is introduced in this paper. It realizes fault analysis and diagnosis, fault information storage and fault treatment method prompting for locomotive. Both software and hardware structure of this device is elaborated in this paper, especially the realization of fault diagnosis methods, data acquisition and communication. The device can effectively improve the speed of fault judgment and process, meanwhile reduce the performance impact of different kinds of fault, therefore, meets the actual demand of locomotive operation and the development trend of automation.