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fatal flaw in this line of reasoning.

The first difficulty with the engine occurred in Erie and while it was by far the most dramatic difficulty experienced, it was perfectly fixable and did not necessarily have any permanent influence on the engine's future. It did, however, delay the locomotive's shipment by months. The assembly of the locomotive was completed and it was transferred to Bldg. 60 for testing. After the preliminary routine testing had been completed, the day arrived for the engine to be started for the first time, [[underlined]] mounted in the locomotive. [[/underlined]] Of course, it had been run extensively on stand tests at the Busch-Sulzer plant. The locomotive was standing in Bldg. 60 and among others, I was standing in it. We were elated that the great moment had finally come. We anticipated that the engine would run like a sewing machine, as smooth as silk. The engine-starting switch was closed and the cranking began. The engine rolled over slowly for a few seconds and then suddenly fired, accelerating toward its idling speed. As this happened, we were immediately aware that the locomotive was undergoing a low-frequency vibration and as the engine was speeded up, the vibration increased in both frequency and intensity until at engine speeds near the full 550-rpm, you got such a massage through your feet simply by standing on the floor that it was nearly unbearable. I think Mr. Schneider was there and he was appalled. The engine had been balanced to their usual design standards but they'd never witnessed anything like this before or anything even remotely approaching it. It didn't take Mr. Schneider long to diagnose the difficulty. Their stationary power plant engines are mounted on massive concrete foundations and if the engine vibrates a little, it can't shake the building and doesn't harm the engine, so let it be. In a marine engine installation, the engine is mounted on the massive steel girders that are part of the hull and keel structure and again, vibration isn't bothersome and no refinements are included to eliminate them. But on the locomotive, it was an entirely different situation. To be sure, the engine was mounted on the cab underframe and that was a heavy structure, but the whole cab including its underframe, was mounted on the truck bolsters which in turn were mounted on springs. So the whole cab danced on the springs when excited by the engine vibration, something like a big, boxlike tuning fork. It was intolerable and meant that the engine had to be rebuilt to incorporate additional crankshaft balance weights and, I believe, a vibration dampener. It was a big job and it took months, resulting in the locomotive being the last of the three to be delivered. However, after the engine rebuilding, everything was smooth as silk and we felt that now, at last, we've got the locomotive we thought we had in the first place. Unfortunately, this wasn't so, but the subsequent troubles were longer in coming but more devastating when they arrived.

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