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MY GE WORK

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The 1,800-hp Ingersoll-Rand locomotive was shipped to the Illinois Central in February, many months ahead of the Busch-Sulzer 2,000-hp, for reasons which I shall cover presently. Although I recall that the I-R unit started its career in Chicago by running reasonably well, of the three locomotives purchased by the Illinois Central (I-R, B-S and EMC), the Busch-Sulzer was expected to be by far the best because of the engine. In fact, Busch-Sulzer engines were generally regarded in the industry with something akin to awe because they were so good. Buying a B-S engine for a ship drive or a power plant or just about anything, was like buying a Rolls-Royce. On the other hand, this was their first locomotive application although they had built and exhaustively tested in their plant, a 1,600-hp V-8 version of the I.C. 2,000-hp V-10 which was delivered to us at Erie for installation. When the engine arrived, many visited Bldg.10 to inspect and admire it. If looks meant anything, it had everything. It was big and clean and beautifully finished--just a gem in cream and chrome, by far the most powerful locomotive engine yet built, and it looked just like what we would expect from Busch. Everyone had sanguine hopes for this magnificent prime mover.

I had made several trips to their St. Louis plant to assist in the lining up of all the details involved in the application and had been much impressed by the caliber of the whole organization. The man highest in the Busch organization with whom we dealt was Edward Magnus, First VP and a member of the Busch family. He weighed a bit over 250 and was a pleasant man to meet but the man who was the do-it guy and with whom we carried on most of our work was Rudolph H. Schneider, Engineer in Charge of Design. He also was a large, pleasant man, a Swiss by birth, and a superb designer. The commercial man was Ed "Heinie" Waterman, who had been with us at Erie as a railroad sub-station commercial engineer up to the early 30s and whom we knew well. He was a smart duck but obviously didn't have the engine background--I don't recall just how he happened to get the job with Busch either, because he wasn't a motive power man with us either. But he was okay. The president was Edwin Pollister and the chief engineer was named Ritter, but we never got to meet either of them. Working for Schneider were R. Schlatter, Arnold Ott and a designer named George Wohanka. The service engineer assigned to the I.C. job was James Otradov. They had a beautiful plant, magnificent machine tools for handling the enormous stationary engines they were so famous for, and everything and everybody was convincing. Moreover, they were supremely confident of their ability to produce the finest locomotive engine in the United States, maybe in the world. And they weren't blowhards or braggarts. They talked very earnestly about their design standards, their performance, economy and maintenance objectives. I'm certain they believed every