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36 On the whole, however, old Bob and I worked hard gathering the data we needed for our analysis and report. I can remember poring over huge train sheets which showed the whole pusher operation with the train consists, the locomotives used, the various arrival and departure times, locomotive availability, the whole story. Here and there we'd find an error like the same locomotive being at two different places at the same time, or obvious errors in tonnages or times, but generally we got a good story. Much of this, we plotted up to depict the operation graphically. But, in due course, we packed up our findings and returned to Erie to prepare our report. This still was before the worst was known about the Busch-Sulzer locomotive and I believe that we recommended some Busch 2,400-hp units for the helper service. For Busch had planned a line of engines from the V-8 1,600-hp on up the line @ 200-hp per cylinder to, I think, a 3,200-hp V-16. I don't remember what economies we showed but any cost figures based on using the Busch-Sulzer engine were undoubtedly wrong as things turned out. Of course, with the Busch engine going down the drain, nothing ever came of the project. ****** By far the biggest job I handled in 1936 was the New Haven switcher order, which was received early in January. It was one of the last custom-built switcher contracts and it was a beaut. It covered ten locomotives, five of which had Ingersoll Rand 600-hp engines and five, Cooper-Bessemer 660-hp engines. The catch was that the engines had to be interchangeable--it had to be possible to remove say an I-R engine and substitute a C-B engine just as easily as another I-R engine. A corollary to this was that the locomotives had to be identical except for the engines. This all meant just one thing--coordination à la mode, so to speak, among GE, I-R and C-B with the New Haven looking over our shoulders while we did it. Fortunately, a good team represented each of the four principals mentioned above and we managed to work things without any serious brouhahas. Another complicating factor in the project was the fact the locomotives incorporated numerous innovations in their design which required extra work with the customer as well as in engineering and also introduced added hazards when the locomotives went into service. And even beyond this, the New Haven, being possessed of an outsize engineering organization, had prepared a set of specifications which, to meet, required super-attention to detail as well as the dotting of a million Is and the crossing of an equal number of Ts to be on the beam. And so, in January we began a long series of conferences with the New Haven and the two engine builders to hammer out the details of the design. I want to write about the personnel involved next, but before that I'll insert some clippings from the December 1970 TRAINS Magazine giving a few of the details.
