Crocodiles

Cold Spring Shops talks Crocodiles.

This is the genuine article. It's an SBB Ce6/8, preserved on a plinth at Erstfeld, Switzerland. I took this from the station platform, from where it's only just possible to photograph it without than infernal sound barrier wall getting in the way. It has the two definine features of the genus, 'snouts' that pivot independently of the central cab section, and rod-coupled driving wheels.

Other genuine crocs include a similar Austrian class, the metre-gauge Ge6/6s of the Rhätichebahn, and the small Berninabahn locomotive. The German E94, which also ran in Austria as the 1020 class, is not a proper Crocodile, because, although it's got the pivoting snouts, it lacks the outside coupling rods, being a more conventional Co-Co.

This is most emphatially not a crocodile, and no amount of cartoon crocodile graphics will make it so. It lacks both distinguising features; not only is it not articulated, but it also isn't rod-coupled either.

It's actually the Ge4/4 of the Yverdon St.Croix railway, photographed at Yverdon. When I visited the line last July there wasn't much evidence of any freight traffic, so I wonder how much this odd-looking machine gets used.