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Unlike our big railroad customers, Ford didn't bother us while we were building the locomotives. As the shipping dates approached, we had a little pressure put on us. I seem to have established myself as Mr. GE in Erie as far as Ford was concerned and had a call or so from Manual F. DeCordoba who was located in Cleveland but worked for Kellogg as an expediter. Mr. DeCordoba merely wanted to be sure that we were going to meet our promise. Fortunately, we were right on schedule so I never knew just how pleasant Mr. DeCordoba would act if he discovered we were lagging. And I judge that we shipped about on time because I find that I was in Detroit on September 7th riding one of the locomotives in the Rouge Plant, presumably the first one. We sent Tom Rinn, one of our best test personnel, to Detroit to act as service engineer during the break-in period. That day, Tom and I were riding the locomotive when a burly brakeman who was standing on the rear steps, hopped off when the locomotive was going close to 24-mph and he must have run a hundred-feet like a dash man before he could stop. When Tom asked him if he didn't make a pretty fast jump, he replied nonchalantly, "Fast? Aw hell, I can jump off of 'em backwards when they're going' like that." A little later, this same brakeman, unable to make the engineer back up, finally got down on his knees in the cinders, crossed himself and prayed. Also, I have a recollection of having Henry Ford appear beside the track and stand there and watch the locomotive for a while but I'm not sure that this wasn't something that happened when Bob Barrell was up there later and told me about. And  yet I can virtually SEE old Mr. Ford standing there.

In the February 1972 issue of TRAINS Magazine, there's an article about the Wellsville, Addison & Galeton Railroad, which is the road which acquired seven of the eight Ford 1,000-hp locomotives. Unfortunately, when this issue arrived in January 1972, I saw this article and I cut out several good photos of the locomotives working on the WAG which I'll insert in here which will at least give an idea what they looked like head on; the paint job, of course, is quite different from what it was originally. In addition, I'll include some data showing the history of each unit bought by the WAG.

Thus endeth my story of the Ford locomotives. It was a very interesting job and I'm sorry that I wasn't able to follow through and be in on the next order. As I've mentioned, the Ford account was transferred to Doc Gillilan after I moved over to the promotion of the small railroad-type diesel-electrics on the Boston & Maine, Maine Central and a host of New England short lines. This work was destined to keep me busy pretty much until we finally entered the war. But at the moment, ahead of me lay the 0361-0366 job for the New Haven.

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