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I believe the locomotive was finally shipped along in the summer and went to work in Chicago amid high hopes for its success among all those who'd been on the project. I recall being out there on one occasion when I rode either this unit or possibly the Ingersoll-Rand one, standing on the front platform and getting up to 65-mph and being nearly blown away. But for the most of 1936, I was very busy handling the New Haven switcher order and as a result, I didn't follow the two I.C. locomotives as I might have otherwise. Therefore, I'm a bit uncertain regarding the exact details of the troubles that gradually developed. One of them which gave the engine a black eye was excessive lubricating oil consumption, this being an item which was watched carefully since it was an appreciable cost item. Here again, it was Busch's ignorance of railroad operating conditions that was at the bottom of the trouble. Their engine designs were based on handling a high but steady load whereas railroad conditions, even in road service, involved a node with relatively high fluctuations. The Busch engine and was unable to adapt itself to this successfully and high lube oil consumption and high maintenance were the result. At any rate, in the rating of the three locomotives, as at first anticipated--B-S, I-R and EMD-- the final rating proved to be EMD, I-R and B-S and the Busch unit was humiliated by an early retirement because of excessive operating costs as I recall the story.

In concluding this tale about the Busch I.C. locomotive, I don't want to leave the impression that trouble developing a locomotive engine was unique to Busch-Sulzer, particularly an engine for road service. I only recount that the troubles were serious enough and the hurdles lying ahead appeared great enough to discourage Busch from continuing in the business. General Motors probably had far more trouble than B-S during the early years of Electro-Motive Division, and spent literally millions getting things corrected, but they had the financial resources and the promise of a big business to make it a good course of action. Alco, Cooper-Bessemer, Ingersoll-Rand, Westinghouse all had big troubles and today are all out of the locomotive engine business. Only General Electric and General Motors remain in the U.S.A.

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Before the ways of the Busch-Sulzer locomotive became generally known, there was considerable interest in it. Among other things, I had an article published in the General Electric Review covering the locomotive because at the time, it was unique as the most powerful single-engine unit yet produced, and this by a wide margin. Amongst those interested was the Lackawanna, who had an idea there might be substantial economies in dieselizing the Scranton Grade helper service. So we were elected to make an economic study of this on the