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   Paddy Murray, the Secaucus yardmaster, who is treated in the TRAINS piece, was also a character and our first contact with him was notable. We were taking the first 3-power to arrive in Hoboken, around the territory to check clearances. When we arrived at Secaucus, Eric Ericson hailed old Paddy, a really tough individual, with: "How ya doin', Paddu? Got a hundred cars of coal ya want moved?" Paddy cast a withering glance over this insignificant usurper in the realm of mighty steam. He looked at Eric pityingly. "Hell, that thing wouldn't pull twenty cars," he said. But Eric was persistent. After a spirited interchange, Paddy pointed out a track where there were some fifty odd cars of coal--4,000 to 5,000 tons. He acted as though he thought Eric was kidding him and he was going to call his bluff. Paddy climbed up onto our platform where he could better observe the couplers between the locomotive and the train. Our engineer opened up one notch and the couplers tightened only gently. Paddy smiled and began to murmur triumphant and wholly unprintable things. Another notch and the grip became somewhat more businesslike. Still another, and another, until the coupler shanks began to pull out of their housings as the draft gear stretched. Paddy was more impressed but still quite disrespectful. Another notch and the draft rigging creaked. And with another, the train began to move, surely and steadily. Paddy turned to Eric and admitted grudgingly that "she has got a steady pull." Within a week, Paddy was assigning us every car he could lay his hands on. But it was hard for him to take the 3-power to his heart. One would find him at the phone tearing his hair and demanding to know why in hell they didn't hurry up and send him "that goddam Kiddie Kar." this name having been assigned by Joe Kron, the Hoboken roundhouse foreman.
   Of course, steam had always been very impressive to me ever since I was a kid in Syracuse, and it continued to appeal to me despite my attachment to the new power. One night I climbed aboard a big steam locomotive to ride into Jersey City. As the engineer and I talked, our conversation drifted to the two new electrics. As he sat there, a little man, he looked so small beside the tremendous boiler head covered with a maze of gauges, pipes, valves, water columns, levers and what not. The great clanking, rocking, rolling, hissing, steaming animal roared along with 4,000 tons of perishable freight behind it. The engineer was so insignificant beside the immensity and complexity of the machine he was handling. It seemed strange that the terrific power of this monster was bridled so completely and the reins right there in his hands. A few feet, even inches, away, caged by a wall of steel, was a raging, turbulent mass of water and steam with power to blow us to kingdom come in an instant. The whole thing was so utterly crude and wild and awesome. I reflected that it must take nerve to run one of these babies. And the old engineer said to me, "Yes, sir. I've been runnin' one of these for forty years. But I wouldn't get on one of them 'lectric engines! No, sir. I'm afraid of 'em!"