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all five members. Conductor Donahue was a quiet, efficient man without the color of a Finn. Engineer Weissbarth, 75, was a small, pleasant little old man with a white moustache who resembled an amiable parrot and the diesel was a blessing to him because it took so much less physical work to handle besides being more comfortable. His fireman was an unusual man of 63 named Harrigan who, for some reason I never ascertained, would never take an engineer's job. Everyone said he was a very fine man and probably the best fireman on the New Haven, and had a perfect record. His chest was going bad and he never took for granted that he'd be there the next day. When they were using the steam locomotive, the young fireman on the trick immediately preceding theirs, would always shovel down the tender and take water for Harrigan before leaving. The rear brakeman was named Dominick and although he looked younger, was supposed to be between 55 and 60 and was a diffident man although he was a Spanish War veteran. It was said he'd smoked 150 cigarettes a day at one time. The head brakeman was around 40 and the youngest member of the crew, and was called "Grandfather" as well as "The Kid." He was a tall Italian named Bagnano who was a great kidder and always wore a blue jersey cap on his graying head. This crew worked smoothly together at all times and each one of them seemed interested in trying to make the jobs easier for the other four.

Another of the older engineers who was finishing out his career running a switcher was Charlie Button, a tall, white-haired man with a white moustache. Charlie made no bones of liking the diesels. He said, "I've run steam for fifty years and now I've got this, I'm good for fifty more." However, we wouldn't always get a cordial reception from the crews, particularly the ones who were suspicious that the diesel meant the ultimate elimination of the second man in the cab. We got aboard the diesel one night and it was a new crew. Either the engineer or the fireman immediately said to one of us, pointing to the helper's seat, "You sit there. We don't want that seat."

It was evident the engine crews had been doing some thinking about the implications of the diesel from such remarks as this as well as others. An engineer made this comment: "This engine costs $80,000. You can superheat ten T-2s fer that. This is okay fer Boston where they don't like the smoke. But here, hell!"

Some of the engineers were loud in their praises of the diesels and other just the opposite. Men like Engineers Wallace and Button and Weissbarth fell into the former class. One of the enthusiasts used to yell gleefully, "She's a ball of fire!!" And then we'd run into one who would grin at you and tell you, "My old 3400 will wallop the shit out of this." Or we'd meet the out and out comedians like the engineer who recounted a recent conversation with one of the slaughterhouse employees.

Transcription Notes:
'start' and 'end' page per instructions are not required when translating single page The page number is not preprinted, typed when author was typing notes There are three black circles in the right margin of the page in the document that indicates it was three-hole punched.