The locomotives were built for the Valtellina Railway, a 106 km long line with many tunnels and curves. Hungarian engineerKálmán Kandó electrified the line in the early 1900s using high voltagethree-phase alternating current.[1]
The three locomotives were leased to theSwiss Federal Railways (SBB) between 1906 and 1907 for the purpose of operating in theSimplon tunnel. The testing of the Simplon line was carried out on 25 January 1906 by a train pulled by asteam locomotive. On the following 26 April, the first test with an electric locomotive was carried out. The choice of the three-phase system was made by Swiss railway technicians after the visits they made to the Italian lines of the Valtellina. The Swiss had no three-phase locomotives of their own at the time so they asked for, and obtained on hire from the newly constituted Italian State Railways, the three new locomotives E.361, 362 and 363. The locomotives gave excellent service on the Simplon line, hauling over 10 trains a day. The only problem was with thecurrent collectors. The originalGanz collectors did not collect current reliably so they were replaced byBrown-Boveri collectors.
