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As a matter of fact, there were a number of interesting Lackawanna men associated with this locomotive operation. Jimmie Purcell was a good example. He was the inspection-building foreman, a big, able, serious young man, as considerate and gentle as he was huge. Bob and I spent the day of November 23rd at Jim's house and it is covered in detail in my diary which I'll include later. Jimmie seldom lost his calm despite the diverse gang assisting him with the locomotives, which were really just a couple of interlopers among the huge multiple-unit car fleet. On the electrical end, besides Bob and me, there was Chris Vitengruber, the electrical maintenance man, who was extremely capable and had an added advantage over most men on this sort of work--his wooden leg allowed him to insulate himself conveniently from ground while working on hot circuits. Occasionally we'd be visited by Charlie Williams, who'd drop down from Scranton, but amazingly, I can't recall ever getting into any kind of a whizbang with him in New York. There were the two internal-power experts. The Ingersoll-Rand man was Phil McCann, a tough, lantern-jawed little Irishman who had his engines under good control. He was a natty dresser but never hesitated to wade into the grease and oil when necessary. Russ Ackerman represented Exide. Inert though they were, the batteries required considerable attention; in fact, some thought that they needed excessive babying and referred to them irreverently as "the goddam batt'ries." In justice to them, they had a rugged assignment. To return to the DL&W men, there was E. E. Root, master mechanic of the Morris & Essex Division and later superintendent of motive power. I've mentioned shrewd, gracious, fun-loving old Sam Reigel, the chief engineer from Scranton. George Wall, electrical superintendent of the car department, acted as Jim Purcell's consultant. It really was a great bunch to work with.

One of the great characters was Engineer Bill Tutlow who had lost his wife and was leading the life of an aging widower. He would take his vacation annually by going on a trip to Havana. Bill had a big stock of dirty stories I couldn't put in here if I could remember them, which I can't, but he also had a few true stories of the railroad that were side-splitting. The sad thing is that we didn't have a tape-recorder to preserve some of them for posterity. Like, for instance, the one about the fireman who'd carry several cigars with him and hand one to Bill whenever steam conditions got bad. His greatest story was the one we called "The Jewish Fireman Story." Bill had a Jew fireman who was very poor at keeping up steam and Bill would remonstrate with him and bawl him out and the fireman would defend his position--and Bill would mimic the fireman, using an exaggerated Jewish accent that was absolutely killing. "Here we'd be pullin' out of Secaucus," Bill would say, "and half way up the hill, we'd stall for steam! And this son-of-a-bitch would stand there on the gangway and cry and tell me the roof of the goddam firebox was fallin' in. And there we'd stand, STALLED FER STEAM! The guy was no goddam good!"