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1. MY TRAINS MAGAZINE ARTICLE [[line]] July 1971 Issue [[line]] [[clipped article]] Ohms VS. M'S Triple power or no, they were Kiddie-Kars FORMAN H. CRATON photography / THE AUTHOR I HAVE BEEN a Lackawanna fan since I was a train-crazy boy in Syracuse 60 years ago. To watch any train was deeply intriguing then--and still is, in fact. Nevertheless, in those days there was always frustration in not being aboard. Yearly, the Lackawanna provided an inexpensive antidote for this. During the New York State Fair, the railroad ran a shuttle service between downtown Syracuse and the fairgrounds, and frustration was forgotten, riding to the fair in the open-platform, wicker-seated coaches with the sulfurous, cinder-laden exhaust swirling through the open windows from the DL&W Camelback ahead. One summer in my teens I worked as a gardener near the Lackawanna tracks. I could set my watch by the Binghamton noon express barking up the hill as I reflected wistfully that at 7 p.m. the shiny observation car would be in Hoboken across the Hudson from New York. Each afternoon, a long limestone drag drifted down the grade behind its big purposeful Consolidation, headed from the Jamesville quarries to the Solvay Process plant. This drag exemplified the railroads' contribution to industry--today it would be called a unit train. These impressions helped to propel me eventually into the locomotive business and the design of two unique Lackawanna engines. In September 1930, my boss at General Electric's Erie locomotive plant summoned me. "I want you to spend the next three months helping the Lackawanna break in the new three-power engines," he said. "You designed the control system and can be helpful. There will be crews and maintenance people to train. And if these hybrids leave here without some undetected bugs, it'll be a miracle. You'll have help from our New York office as well as from Ingersoll-Rand and Exide. Make your plans." Early in October I arrived in Hoboken, the object of my boyhood longings. This was my first field-engineering assignment, and it would be quite different from testing locomotives running light on our Erie test track. First let me rough out the picture. The DL&W, as part of its 1930 suburban electrification out of Hoboken, electrified the transfer service from its Secaucus freight terminal in the Hackensack meadows, through the four-track Bergen Hill tunnel, to Jersey City yard lying along the Hudson River. This would cleanse the 44 July 1971 [[/clipped article]]
