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15

Ed Meissner was even more versatile as a manufacturer than I gave him credit for, having forgotten to mention that when we were there on 1140, he was also building a road locomotive for Electro-Motive for ultimate delivery to the Santa Fe. I think it was an 1,800 hp unit and I can still picture the bright Santa Fe colors it was painted. It was along about this time that we also built two 1,800 hp box cab road units for EMD at Erie, one being used as a demonstrator and the other being sold to the Baltimore & Ohio as I recall. The latter was painted a rich blue and was to haul their train "The Royal Blue."

Toward the end of 1934, we had received the orders for the two big transfer locomotives for the Illinois Central mentioned on P.9. Here again, the orders had been placed by the railroad on the two engine builders who in turn ordered the locomotives less engines from us, supplying us with the engines no charge. In addition, the I.C. ordered a third locomotive from Electro-Motive who subcontracted the job to the St. Louis Car Co. I was assigned the job of following the two Erie-built units and this occupied me heavily throughout the year. However, unlike the New York Central and New Haven, the I.C. did not try to follow the design details, which spared us a lot of grief during the early stages of the job. The following is from the Ingersoll-Rand article in TRAINS:

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The 9200 was the first six-motor unit built, and it and Busch-Sulzer-powered twin 9201 remained the only C-C units until the first Baldwin center-cab transfer unit was delivered to the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern in 1946. The 9201 was motivated by a single V-10 with 14 x 16-inch cylinders that put out 2000 h.p. at 550 rpm. This stood as the biggest single engine until the 16- cylinder Alco 244 was raised to 2250 .p. for the PA-2 in 1950. Both 9200 and 9201 were built on a welded underframe that had four I-beams 24 inches deep running between the bolsters. Since the draft gear was integral with the truck frame castings, the underframe beyond the bolsters was light, only enough to hold up the radiators. Although 9200-9201 had a theoretical top speed of 69 mph, they spent most of their lives lugging at low speeds. Slowly the diesel was being adapted and expanded to match the capabilities of every last type of steam locomotive. IC's 9200-9201, plus EMC-built 9202, an 1800 h.p. B-B-B-B type, were direct replacements for the likes of 0-10-0's, 0-8-8-0's, and other muscular transfer power. This idea of closely tailored replacements for steam power went to the heads of the New Haven's motive power men when they wrote the specs for a group of 10 switchers to be purchased in 1936.
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Although the two locomotives had to be coordinated insofar as possible, they were basically different, with one engine on the Busch-Sulzer and two on the Ingersoll-Rand. Moreover, dealing with two different engine builders in itself made the two jobs quite different besides introducing two entirely different sets of problems as we were eventually to find out.