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15

We now come to May 25th. We'd been in service one week and 0363 now makes her first appearance. From my notes, I gather that her initial run was early that day hauling #172 from PT to New Haven and the transformer was noted to have reached 85°, which was quite high for the conditions, and she was cut out of service temporarily to allow the transformer to cool before undertaking another run. This run was #11, around mid-afternoon I'd judge, and to GCT with ten cars, Engineer Cox. But as a precautionary measure they also put Charlie Hess on board and he ran the engine. When we left New Haven, the transformer was 45° but, although this was a relatively easy run, by the time we reached CHO it had risen to 83°, definitely too high. Something was wrong apparently but what? It was finally decided to smoke out the trouble by putting her on #376 for the return run to New Haven--this would bring out the trouble if anything would. As usual Engineer Fay was at the throttle. I made the run and I think Charlie Hess remained aboard. It proved to be a beaut. We had thirteen cars and before us lay the non-stop run to Darien followed by a stop at every station of any significance from there to New Haven, which were ten in all. When we hit the wire at CHO, the transformer was 56° but the non-stop run to Darien was easy and it rose to only 63° there. However, from there on it rose steadily, hitting 82° at Westport and still climbing as Engineer Fay poured on the accelerations from each station stop. To make matters worse on this particular run, they threw in an extra stop at Green's Farms. When we passed 80° with still some half dozen stops to go and things getting hotter by the minute, we knew we were really in for it and were sorry we'd had the temerity to undertake this really toughest of all the runs. But on the railroad, getting the run completed, no matter what, short of risking accident, is the important thing so we had to hang in there and do what we could to ease the pain--for it was increasingly evident that the transformer was in some sort of serious trouble. When the Pyranol coolant overheated, it generated gas which caused pressure to build up in the transformer case. To prevent a possible explosion under these conditions, the case was fitted with a safety diaphragm which was designed to rupture before dangerous pressures could develop. I think we'd been informed that this should occur at around 100° so when it appeared we'd soon reach that, we opened the front door of the locomotive and and all the operating cab doors to get the maximum amount of air into the apparatus cab to help cool things. As a result, we had a 60-70 mph wind driving through the front operating cab and Engineer Fay was anything but happy about this--in fact, he complained the wind was so violent that it interfered with his vision and he was having trouble seeing the signals. We hit 100° just before reaching Bridgeport and from there to New Haven, we had Fay baby her so that we came in seven minutes late but the temperature had dropped to 93. 0363 got a break in that they charged