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HGe 4/4 II

Swiss rack- and adhesion locomotive of Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn and Zentralbahn

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 13, 2025
Entity authorityQ468759 ↗
Source-derived summary

The HGe 4/4 II is a combined adhesion and cogwheel-equipped electric locomotive used on a number of metre gauge railways in Switzerland since 1985.

An initial series of five prototypes was procured by a consortium made up of the Furka Oberalp Bahn (FO) and the SBB-CFF-FFS, which wanted them for the Brünigbahn, now known as the Zentralbahn (zb). Once the type had been proven, the members of the consortium ordered a total of 11 series production units, and the Brig-Visp-Zermatt-Bahn (BVZ) ordered another five such units.

The class is so named because it was the second class of locomotives of the Swiss locomotive and railcar classification type HGe 4/4 to be acquired by each of the three railway companies that procured it. According to that classification system, HGe 4/4 denotes a narrow gauge cogwheel-equipped electric locomotive with a total of four axles, all of which are drive axles.

List of locomotives

*) The chassis of locomotives 1951 and 1952 were fitted with new bogies (Abt system) and transformers (11 kV) and delivered to the FO as nos. 104 and 105. The prototype bogies (Riggenbach system) and transformers (15 kV) salvaged from those chassis were then fitted to the last two series production locomotives delivered to the SBB-CFF-FFS Brünigbahn.

See also

History of rail transport in Switzerland

Rail transport in Switzerland

References

External links

Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn

This article is based upon a translation of the German language version as at February 2013.

Editorial summary

“HGe 4/4 II” enters the record as swiss rack- and adhesion locomotive of Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn and Zentralbahn. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Swiss, rack- and adhesion can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1985, 1951, 1952, 2013—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Swiss, rack- and adhesion.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“HGe 4/4 II” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Swiss, rack- and adhesion provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q468759. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1951, 1952 and 2013.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow HGe 4/4 II primary sources, HGe 4/4 II archive and Swiss research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “HGe 4/4 II” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.