Published: 24 December 2024
Updated: 17 January 2025 – added technical analysis & updated conclusion
Disclosure: Personal Purchase – This product was purchased by me personally. All opinions expressed here are my own.
Product Information
- Manufacturer: Train Line 45 (https://www.train-line45.de/)
- Product Number: 2050000
- Product Description: Electric Locomotive RhB Ge 4/6 #353 Analog
- MSRP: € 1.139,00
- Made in: Germany
- Scale: 1:22,5
- Gauge: 45 mm
- Also Available: #2050012 DCC with Sound (MSRP € 1.469,00)
Unboxing
Train Line’s Ge 4/6 comes in a wooden case, decorated with only the sticker, nothing else.
The loco is protected with foam inserts. Looking at the thickness of the foam all around, you could argue the box could be quite a bit smaller while keeping the same level of protection.
Make sure to be careful when taking the foam pieces out, they might be hooked into the small details parts on the front and rear of the locomotive.
In my case, next to the bag of supplied detail parts, four other parts were flying around in the box. Three headlight lenses, and one piece from the cab steps.
For the detail parts, there is no mention in the manual of where they should go, but it’s easy to find their destination. Only the metal rods were unclear at first, but they belong on the sub frame.
While the detail parts were easy to apply, they also fell out again too easily. From other brands, I am used to press fit parts that take a bit of force to insert, but then they stay in place after. With this loco, I feel the need to glue them in place.
First Impressions
Let’s see if Train Line did this historic loco any justice. As a first impression, I am at least very happy with the color, it simply looks good.
The front nails the characteristic look of the Ge 4/6.
The snow plow allows for the coupler to move freely while maintaining its ridiculous (but accurate) size.
Nice lanterns, but as stated above, the lenses fall out way too quickly. Glue them in place before hitting the track, otherwise you will lose them in the first running session.
Some less precise paintwork on the front top lantern, shame.
The cab doors can be opened…
… revealing an interior with very little detail.
As the Ge 4/6 is quite a long locomotive with four driving wheels, a flexible chassis is required to handle tight curves. Additionally, for locomotives with traction rods, the synchronization of the two motors is crucial. I’m curious how Train Line has implemented this technical challenge.
LGB and PIKO have already figured this out with a (cardan) drive shaft for their Harz 2-10-2 and BR 50 respectively, so that definitely seems to be the way to go.
The traction rods are made of thin, flexible plastic. Unfortunately, they are completely black without any detail, while they should be silver with some black detail.
Lovely paintwork and lettering detail.
Switching attention to the roof, the first thing that caught my eye were the roof boards. They look as if they are made out of wet cardboard, simply awful.
Moving on to more positive things. A good amount of fine detail on the roof with the necessary power lines, and of course the pantographs. The pantographs can be operated, however I guess this only works if you would upgrade the loco for digital operation.
No modeling of the engine bay, you can actually get a peek at the technical stuff hidden inside. The locomotive is advertised as being analog without mention of sound, yet there is a loudspeaker inside, so the locomotive is definitely prepared for digital operation.
Technical Overview
The pilot and trailing wheels are attached to the main driving units. Given the short axle distances, the pivot point is quite close to the actual pilot wheel itself. I don’t see any horizontal or vertical springs to force alignment. For the trailing wheel, this won’t be an issue as the pulling force from any attached rolling stock will ensure alignment, but I’m a bit worried about the pilot wheel that I predict will wobble left to right when pushed forwards.
Interestingly, the motor is mounted vertically instead of laying horizontally between the wheels, so Train Line has taken a different approach regarding motor synchronization.
Plenty of flexibility between the main driving units, so tight curves should not be an issue at all.
Track Test
Time to put the Ge 4/6 on the track. When turning the speed knob on my analog controller, nothing happened. After turning the knob past 2/3rd of the power gauge, suddenly the loco moved. This behavior led me to suspect there’s actually a DCC decoder inside, as they typically require a certain voltage to ‘wake up’, unlike a true analog circuit board which just applies voltage to the motor(s), no matter if it’s 5, 10 or 20 Volts.
Train Line clearly advertises this loco as ‘Analog’ next to the more expensive ‘DCC/Sound’ version, yet there would be a DCC decoder and loudspeaker onboard in this Analog version? Upon checking Train Line’s website (only available in German), I indeed saw “DCC” mentioned for the analog version, and also the note that you can pay extra to unlock the digital sound of the ‘analog’ version. Confusing, to say the least.
Back on track, more question marks appeared in my head. The Ge 4/6 stuttered, first moving slowly, then speeding up, then slowing down again. All accompanied by all sorts of undesired mechanical sounds, so I figured maybe some gears were grinding their teeth. I stopped trying as I didn’t want to risk damaging anything.
At that stage, I was thinking of packing up the loco and returning it to the shop I bought it from. However, the problem solver in myself wanted to investigate why it wouldn’t work properly.
Investigation
There are 10 screws holding the chassis and body together. One at each end near the buffer, and four along each side. After removing the screws, you also need to whip out some small tabs that lock the chassis and body together. Once removed, the body can be lifted up.
Inside I found an absolutely crazy (or genious?) design to synchronize both motors.
As shown before, the motors are mounted vertically, but there’s a worm gear at the top as well. A driving shaft is mounted between both motors with an intricate gear mechanism. But where did it go wrong for me?
The ‘left’ metal worm gear is high enough to properly hook into the blue gears…
… but on the right side, the worm gear is not high enough to properly grab onto the blue gears. Luckily, the blue gears were not damaged (yet), so it’s good I didn’t pursue any further testing.
I am no mechanical expert, but I do wonder if this design is just flawed. Why design this contraption instead of a traditional drive shaft between the motor blocks? Why not use bevel gears instead of this worm gear and the double blue gears option?
How to fix it? A few options I considered:
- Try to position the metal worm gear a bit higher to properly hook into the blue gears, although I feared I couldn’t move the worm gear that far up as the motor shaft is really short.
- Abandon the flawed synchronization design and remove the motor from one driving unit while keeping the other. The Ge 4/6 would then continue to live as a single motor loco, while having some spare parts at hand for future need.
- Abandon the flawed synchronization design and install two decoders and run it in consist mode to balance any speed differences between both driving units. A solution that would definitely work, but would also be utterly expensive.
Ultimately, I decided to just return the locomotive to the retailer.
Conclusion
When I learned that LGB would also bring an RhB Ge 4/6 in 2024, I knew Train Line would be in a tough situation. While Train Line has the edge on price (at least by offering an analog version), it’s hard for them to fight against the big dogs like LGB.
Everybody likes to see an underdog, and after personally being happy with other Train line products (e.g. Harz 99 6101, passenger cars, Rollwagen, …), I was really hoping Train Line’s Ge 4/6 would come out nicely. And it does. The overall look is absolutely fine. Detailed enough, and the paint and lettering is nicely done. However, the saggy roof boards are simply terrible, how do you green light this for production? Also, the gap between the body and chassis is noticeable, especially in the eight spots where they are mounted together, and it actually deforms the chassis.
Visual imperfections aside, I don’t see how Train Line’s technical design is a good one, let alone how it would be better than the proven drive shaft solution used by other brands. Even after being in development for many years, Train Line’s Ge 4/6 just feels like a rushed product that had to be shipped before the Ge 4/6 from LGB. I hoped my Ge 4/6 would be a one-off, but since publishing my review, I have heard from other people with similar experiences.
It hurts. Sometimes the underdog wins, but not in this case. Unless Train Line brings out an overhauled version of their Ge 4/6, it is destined to fail. We can only hope Train Line can sustain the damage to their reputation and financial bottom line.
If you want a Ge 4/6, just get the LGB version… Review coming soon.