ACME Rivarossi or ROCO? FS Class 656

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As the title says this will be a side by side comparison of the E656 as produced by these 3 manufacturers, which has arisen from some chance purchases here and abroad.

Details of this locomotive can be found here on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FS_Class_E.656

 

A very interesting and unusual locomotive, the protoype has a mean and powerul presence balanced by a a grinning cartoon Caiman emblem on the cab side

My first purchase is the Rivarossi, which was all I could find in the UK second hand. Brand new items seem to sell out immediately on pre-orders on the Hornby website.

This was followed by the ACME. The ROCO is the odd one out because it is actually the Class 636 Camila, which was damaged in a fatal accident and had E656 cab ends installed for testing purposes - so this won't quite be an exact comparison but hopefully other readers will find this useful when they are thinking about the price, detail and quality of these 3 brands.