Viewing page 44 of 113

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

instance, and I was able to pull myself back out of the opening and finally get my feet on the step. And this, I guess, I rode all the way to Secaucus. But hopping on and off moving trains is not anything an amateur should indulge in. However, in the course of my work in the future, I had to do it occasionally and I didn't like it ever, particularly jumping on, which, for safety's sake, I'd always try to do at the tail end so, if I missed, I wouldn't fall under the train. But it isn't good business for amateurs.

On November 14, Bill Hamilton came over from New York to ride a round trip to Secaucus with us and told me about the big shakeup that was in the immediate offing. Bill said he was leaving the Company January 1st and Jay Walker was coming to New York from Erie to take Bill's job, and I was scheduled to take over Jay's job in Erie, which was primarily handling the New York Central. So, Bill said, I would have to be back in Erie early in December to get acquainted with Jay's job. This was good news indeed because it meant being home for Christmas with the family besides being a promotion of sorts. However, for some reason I didn't get home quite that soon as I recall it but I was home by Christmas and the Lackawanna stint was over with.

Bill Hamilton went to the New York Central as assistant to Mr. Currie, the electrical engineer of the railroad, with the expectation that Bill would succeed Mr. Currie, who was near retirement. However, when Mr. Currie retired, they broke up his job and all Bill got out of it was the electriacl engineering
work on the equipment, which included locomotives, but that was all. Bill's title was Equipment Electrical Engineer. I believe Bill was bitterly disappointed and maybe sorry he had burned all his GE bridges behind him, having had 20 years service with the Company. And to add insult to injury, Bill's organization would later on, prepare elaborate locomotive specs for the builders to bid on (Diesels) and Dilworth and EMD would ignore them, bid on their standard stuff, and walk off with the lion's share of the business. This was a good illustration of the tremendous clout GM freight had with the railroads. In addition, they had a good product and excellent service. And their prices were strictly competitive; in fact, they set the prices and the rest followed. I knew and liked Bill for many years. He died of a heart attack, I believe in the 1950's, while on a freighter cruise in the Mediterranean, and because the ship had no facilities for such an emergency, he was buried at sea. He was a good man, a good engineer, and a good friend of mine, and I always regretted that things turned out disappointingly for him. He was a Yale graduate, served in the Navy in World War I, had a nice home in Larchmont and a nice wife. I don't recall his having any children.

As I've said, I did write a few pages of diary in November while I was on the Lackawanna job, and I shall finish this 1930 section by copying this: