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35

Ray Patten was a charming guy as well as a new breed to me. I suppose Ray was in his 40s, a good-looking, well-proportioned, beautifully-groomed man but in no way did he give the impression of being particularly artistic. His hair was short, his face smooth, and his clothes tweedy but quite normal. And he was the soul of cooperation. In fact, I suspect that styling a locomotive was a welcome adventure after prettying up a bunch of toasters and washing machines, which was his major responsibility although he'd turn his hand to apparatus once in a while like improving the looks of a distribution transformer which sits on a pole in full view of the public. So we got along well with Ray. Of course, we encountered occasionally some area of conflict where Ray's artistic desires ran at cross purposes to some engineering requirement. As an example, Ray might want the end cabs of such a shape that it would have restricted the capacity of the water tanks or the sand boxes. Also cost had to be considered in the beautifying process. At any rate we finally came up with a very handsome locomotive and just about everybody was happy. I'm not sure who originated this particular front-end shape. I'd like to claim that we did on this job but I'm not sure that's so. However, it became very popular in the road-diesel field and was to last until the 50s when the road-passenger business began fading very rapidly and Alco originated the "road-switcher" which gradually took over as far as cab design was concerned. Ray's place of business did look like a styling center even if he didn't look like an artist. It was like a big, rangy studio full of drawing boards, clay models, collections of sketches as well as full-color drawings of all manner of appliances, radios, even apparatus. The tempo of the place was distinctly low-pressure and informal as the professional artists and designers pursued their inspiration. Ray's own office was a flamboyant room containing ultra-modern furniture, wall-to-wall carpet and drapes in multicolored swirls and swatches. The New Haven hadn't advanced far enough along the innovative road at that time to depart from their conventional green-and-gold color scheme so this was adapted to the locomotive as indicated on p.27. It really was quite impressive--and the gold was real gold leaf, no less. I believe I made numerous sketches which may have been of some help in arriving at this color scheme but Ray Patten was the king. After the design and painting had been finally nailed down for keeps, Ray's artisans produced several scale models of the locomotive, each maybe two-feet long, which were beautifully detailed and painted and mounted on a wooden base so they could be carried in individual carrying-cases. One of these was presented to the New Haven president as I recall and I believe one was presented to the Smithsonian Museum for inclusion in their railroad section. I think I carried the first of these little gems to Erie to show everybody and virtually bursting with pride over it.

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