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Fred had been the co-author with me of the AIEE paper on 3-power locomotives.  He was still quite boyish-looking, very affable and easy to get along with.  Very rarely did he get up his Dutch.  I believe the locomotive engineering management had thought originally they saw something in Fred that wasn't actually there because he finally transferred to the jet engine business in Evendale when they were trying to build up an organization.  His wife was a pleasant, big-framed girl who died relatively young but Fred never remarried.  They had one son, Freddie, who was quite a Lightning sailor at the Erie Yacht Club, where Fred and I served together for several years on the Small Boat Race Committee.  On this New Haven switcher job, Fred did a capable piece of engineering coordination as far as I can recall and it wasn't an easy one to handle.

Harold Ogden was the control engineer and a good one.  He'd handled much of the control work for the several New York Central orders.  With the diesels now coming on strong, they wanted to give him more of that work and assigned him this New Haven job.  Harold was a native Californian and a Caltech graduate as I remember.  He was in his upper-mid-30s and both an outdoors man fond of sports and a rather serious person with a very minimal sense of humor.  Jay Walker, an old friend, loved to bait Harold a bit but Harold wasn't agile on the comeback like Kelly.  Harold had, and still has, the unfortunate propensity for sharp answers in an irritated tone although this really didn't usually represent his true feelings.  Nevertheless, I think this habit may have held him back somewhat although he did move up in Control Engineering, but not to the top, where his knowledge and engineering skills by themselves, would have been adequate.  Instead, Otto Keep, as smart as Harold and more of a diplomat, proved to be John Tritle's successor.  Harold married Ethel Yokes, who died last Christmas time, and today Harold is a pitiful figure, living alone in their big house, his health shattered and looking like a wraith--this once-athletic, aggressive, successful, lantern-jawed son of the Far West.  Just to see him now, shakes me up.  Fred Brehob, on the other hand, lived for many years, apparently happily, as a widower and died two or three years ago of a quick and relatively painless heart attack.  A great way to end a career in life.

The traction motors were completely new design incorporating an integral double-reduction gear unit which cut the maximum permissible speed down to 25-mph but also moved the speed of maximum efficiency way down into the switching-speed range.  The motor itself was of conventional design but the gear unit was new entirely and required a lot of design work on the part of Ralph Osborne, the head of motor mechanical design.  Ralph was somewhat of a character--a man of maybe 50 who looked more like a Methodist minister than a motor designer.  He wore drab dark-gray suits whose pants were always several inches too long so they rested on his shoe tops and were a mass of slanting 

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