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17

was the trouble--the pump was running backwards. The terminal board of the spare motor, which had replaced the failed unit, had different internal connections to the motor windings than the six production motors, resulting in reversing the rotation. Jim Bracken was surprised the transformer ran so well for a week with the pump reversed but Burnham said they'd run a Pennsy GG-1 transformer at Pittsfield at full load continuous with a reversed pump and the transformer ran at 96° whereas it would have run at 75° with the correct rotation at full load. This explained why 0363 ran okay on medium service, running really hot only on the extra-heavy jobs like #376 and #367, where it finally became crystal clear that something was wrong. So they straightened that out, got the pump pumping the way it should, and as far as I can recall, there was no more trouble.
But we were beginning to swing into the routine of the operation. On May 27th, Alf Bredenberg and I rode 0362 for five trips between New Haven and GCT and it was an interesting day. We started off the day with our old friend Engineer Crowell who had #8 and had impressed us as quite a speed wizard a week previously with the same train. He was right up to his reputation again. After we reached New Haven, the conductor got me on the platform and wanted to know what made the cars lurch on the curves and even on the straight track at times. Although I didn't tell his so, my opinion was that Engineer Crowell was pretty throttle-happy most of the time. We arrived in New Haven three minutes ahead of time. ON the run back to GCT, a small control irregularity showed up a couple of times but Alf found it was caused by a dirty controller segment, after we reached GCT. We returned to New Haven on #108, the NEPTUNE, a Cape Codder, non-stop, Engineer Mike York, and got in on time despite some obstacles. They had a late Berkshire train run around us at South Norwalk and when we were booming into New Haven, we got plugged four minutes by the Water Street switcher tying up the main. This latter was something we'd been told was absolutely VERBOTEN when we were running the switcher tests a few years before. Next we were assigned #21, sixteen cars, Engineer Henry Gay, for a GCT run again. Engineer Gay had his troubles, leaving 18-minutes late to begin with. They made a five-minute stop at Bridgeport which cost him several minutes. Then he overshot the platform at South Norwalk and had to back up, losing about three more. But he got into GCT only 14-minutes late, so he made up four minutes in spite of it all. And we finished the day by hauling #102, the NIGHT CAPS CODDER, nine cars, Engineer W. Anderson, back to New Haven. It was an easy non-stop run and we got in five-minutes early. The ambient temperature of the late-spring [handwritten]^ evening [/handwritten] was 55-60° and delightful as well as the ride up the Shore Line with the twinkling towns and the parade of brilliant color-light signals guiding us on our way. It was fun.