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10

As we'd pass the big ventilating fans as we walked up and down the side aisles, they'd suck at us hungrily. And things were getting quite warm, the pigs particularly, which made our place of work during the run not only enormously noisy but also a bit on the hot side here and there. Leipold was aboard also and I borrowed his goggles to look at our pantograph riding along the overhead catenary at 75-mph--just a beautiful, slightly-waving, sliding contact that was collecting some of the time as much as 5,000-KW without a spark. But we didn't miss the insulators in the overhead by much at Cos Cob Draw. There was a phone rigged between the two operating cabs to facilitate transmitting instructions. At one point Jim Bracken threw up his hands and said to someone, "No use trying to talk to Leipold on that phone--he gets too excited." And people were out everywhere to stare at us as we zoomed by with our big train. The new locomotives were the object of much interest and attention. When the test was over, we hopped off at 138th Street, climbed ^ [[over ]] the third-rail in the rain, and got up on the station platform.  Thence we went downtown.  We had readings from a graphic ammeter, speedometer, voltmeters, thermometers of various sorts, and all this tied in with location, time, controller position, etc.  I believe it was the New Haven who took all these data and worked them up because this had been a sort of unofficial acceptance test as I recall.  The final note I ade on the test has to do with an exchange at Van Nest afterward between Jim Bracken and Ed Ball, the superintendent, which follows: 
  
Jim: The indicating lights are too bright.  the engineer looks orange at night.

Ed: That's a good color.  What's wrong with orange?

Although we weren't really concerned about Train #376, the "Millionaires' Special," which 0362 had handled on the 19th and found to be a demanding assignment, we evidently became quite interested in this train as sort of a yardstick of our performance capabilities.  Consequently, I rode #376 on the 20th when she was hauld by 0356, one of the ten engines we'd built in 1930.  Again, she had twelve cars and Engineer H. Fay was at the throttle. I took only arrival and departure times at station stops.  We were practically on time at every stop as far as Fairfield but after being "plugged" by traffic between there and Bridgeport, we were seven minutes late into New Haven.  Had it not been for being plugged, we probably would have been on time or even a minuted or so ahead of time, and would have had the same performance as turned in by 0362 the previous day.  So what had we fount out?  It seems possible that, like Charlie Hess on the test train, Engineer Fay had very adroitly failed to push 0363 as hard as he might for fear of making a run that would encourage cutting the timetable time and thus making it more difficult for him to stay out of trouble.  But #376 was to give us big trouble and in the not too distant future.

Transcription Notes:
"pantograph" is the jointed framework atop an electric locomotive that contacts (slides along) the catenary (overhead electric power line}.