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So Chandonnet and I were supposed to come up with a report that would lay out the alternatives and give top management something upon which to base a decision. Armand T. Chandonnet was smart young financial man in the Schenectady Works accounting operation. He was sharp and aggressive but knew little of the technical or even practical aspects of railroading--that was where my experience came in. "Chandy" and I got along well except that I  felt occasionally that he was inclined to be a bit arrogant about the accounting and statistical end of the study, which he was primarily responsible for. He was to climb the Company ladder and wound up as general manager of the Medium Steam Turbine & Gear Department at Lynn in the 1950s where I once did some dickering with him and his gang on turbines for locomotive application for Baldwin Locomotive after Westinghouse deserted them. But Baldwin expired as a locomotive bui1der soon after that and no business ever developed with them as far as turbines were concerned although we did sell them a bit of electrical equipment.

In making the study, Chandy and I made our primary contacts in Schenectady with the GE traffic people who were headed by Ed Mochrie, the traffic manager. Ed was a man maybe fifty and probably about my size, dressed beautifully in tweeds, had considerable savoir—faire, but was a semi—cripple from a serious back affliction which caused him to walk severely bent forward and using a cane. But he never seemed to allow this to affect his life. He obviously enjoyed the good things and belonged to both the Mohawk Club and the Mohawk Golf Club, at both of which he dined Chandy and me during the course of the study. His right hand man was Art Farmer, the do—it guy in the place, who was neither handsome nor stylish, usually going around in his shirtsleeves, but he knew the traffic racket from A to Izzard. The position of Mochrie in this whole affair was that of a purchasing man trying to drive the hardest bargain he could with the vendor, in this case the Central and the D&H. On the other hand, he couldn't be too tough, particularly with the Central, because there was a lot of reciprocity involved from their side of the table. Chandy and I also had a few contacts with the Works railroad people but they were primarily old time, rough-and—ready operating men concerned with moving cars around the plant and that was all. Furthermore, they had no connection with Mochrie organizationwise.

Perhaps the most obvious tactic for GE to adopt was that of asking the railroads to do the work themselves if they were unwilling to pay the Company a reasonable price for doing it. This must have come into the picture fairly early because I remember our visiting both New York headquarters of the Central and Albany headquarters of the D&H to examine the feasibility of this. As might have been expected both railroads claimed inability to do the work because of curvature of track in the plant which their steam switchers could not negotiate.