Viewing page 58 of 102

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

44

The GE people involved in the study in addition to me were Frank Faron, manager of our apparatus sales office in New Haven, Johnnie Walker from New York, and Harry Craig who was assistant head of Locomotive Test at Erie. Frank merely looked after the arrangements, would wire me when to be there, take us to the Union League Club for a meal occasionally, such things. Johnnie did some of the locomotive riding while Harry was the guy who looked out for the locomotive and did any necessary maintenance or chores pertaining to it. The locomotive we used for the tests was a stock GE-Ingersoll-Rand 600-hp, two-engine, boxcab unit. I presume I-R had an engine man there too, somebody like Phil McCann who'd worked with us on the Lackawanna 3-power job , but I can't remember who this one was. (He was Walter Smart.)
Frank Faron was maybe forty, a bachelor, a character and a topnotch salesman. He was stocky and dark-complected with dark curly hair, wore glasses and was not handsome but he was very likable. He had a good sense of humor and could be quite profane if the occasion seemed to call for it. The office he ran was small one with maybe a dozen people in it in all including a half-dozen salesmen. Frank did a good enough job at New Haven to be made assistant manager of the New York District industrial sales operation, which included all of New York State, Connecticut, northern New Jersey and sections of Pennsylvania, a big, important area, and Frank ultimately became manager of the operation. But in 1934, he lived in an apartment in New Haven with an aging Scot named MacDonald who was in charge of the New Haven office accounting. Johnnie and I would go there after work occasionally and toss off a few with Frank and Mac and talk over the job. It seems to me that both Frank and Mac had girlfriends who would come in sometimes for a drink and a home-cooked dinner at the apartment. I know that I appreciated these little outings at the apartment after so much hotel life, even at the Taft. Maybe once a week, Frank would take a group including Bill Libby and Johnnie and me to lunch at the Union League Club which was [[underline]]the[[/underline]] downtown club of the town. It was up the street a couple of blocks from the Taft and across from the University and it was a very nice spot filled with good furniture, good oil paintings, good rugs and good food and drink. The railroaders were always very careful about observing Rule G (no drinking during working hours) but sometimes the timing was such that they'd break down and have one or two. Sometimes we'd play a little pool at the club, Johnnie being quite a pool shark. Even though I probably hadn't gotten up to $60 a week yet, I felt like a millionaire when I got in the Union League Club--and I enjoyed very much feeling that way. 
I now approach the tests themselves. There was nothing fancy about them. We simply put our 600 hp demonstrator unit on various jobs in the New Haven area and recorded the work done on each assignment with respect to the number of cars handled on each move, distances, speeds, trailing tons, any restrictions,