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on a fleet of wooden cars one after another and working day and night. One of these cars burned up when an oil switch which was mounted in the baggage compartment exploded, setting fire to two tubs of butter and a side of beef. After this early equipment was weeded out, I don't think the New Haven bought any more GE stuff until the motor-generator locomotives which ^[[we]] were building when I arrived in Erie in 1926. There were five freight units and two switchers in this lot. These locomotives had two principal talking points: they used DC traction motors and they had an excellent power factor. On football days at New Haven when a lot of specials were operated up there from New York, they would use these MG locomotives as mobile synchronous condensers, placing them in New Haven with the MG sets running overexcited and thus raising the power factor up there at the end of the line. Compared to the career of the Bull Moose, these locomotives were highly successful although Phil Hatch tells me that he thinks they were used "ten to fifteen years" before being scrapped. Their major problem seems to have been motor-generator set bearings, perhaps because the locomotive frame upon which the sets were mounted wasn't rigid enough. 

Our next job for the New Haven was the order for ten 0351s which were delivered in 1931. These were the 2-C+C-2 high-speed passenger locomotives, the test of one of which resulted in Lew Webb's accident about which I wrote in the 1931 section. The general mechanical design of these locomotives was similar to that of the Cleveland Union Terminal units which we'd delivered the previous year. When the Pennsylvania was trying to decide on a design for their passenger service between New York, Washington and Harrisburg, they borrowed two 0351s from the New Haven and tested ^[[them]] thoroughly, with the result that they finally chose the 2-C+C-2 design known as the GG-1,of which a large quantity were built and are still in service as far as I know.

In spite of these GE locomotives of more recent origin, the bulk of the New Haven's electric locomotive fleet had been supplied by Baldwin-Westinghouse. I mention these several examples of what we'd supplied the New Haven to show that they had long been a progressive railroad and not afraid to try something new even though it often cost them money. In fact, their electrification history goes back to 1895 when they electrified their Nantasket Beach branch in Massachusetts. But their biggest gamble came in 1907 when they electrified at 11,000-volts AC, their main line of four tracks as far as Stamford. In 1913 this was extended to New Haven and in 1915 to Cedar Hill freight terminal just east of New Haven. In keeping with this pioneering tradition, they bought the first Alco 600-hp, high-hood, diesel-electric switcher, which was numbered 0900 and was generally known as "the oh-nine-hundred." This was acquired in 1931 and by 1934, its performance had intrigued the New Haven sufficiently to inspire a study aimed at finding out more     

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