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The following day 0362 was honored to have Mr. Palmer, the New Haven president, ride her from Grand Central to Stamford and actually to handle the throttle on part of the run. I don't think I was aboard this trip but I got the story. It was the second section of #10 and they left six-minutes late. They had twelve cars, Engineer Larry Dugan. It was fortunate that Palmer got off at Stamford because Dugan grounded the line at South Norwalk by failing to lower the pan soon enough as they passed a dead section. Maybe he was thinking about Palmer. Or if Palmer had stayed aboard, maybe he'd have been running the engine when they reached the dead section. Nothing else interesting that day except that we had two new engineers--Telford and Wallace.

It appears that I finally returned to Erie about May 31st, staying in New York through the Memorial Day rush. On the 30th, I made a nice run from GCT to New Haven on #28 with Frank Goebel, the road foreman, and Engineer Mickey Cox, who was retiring June 4th when he would reach 70. The return trip was again on 0362 hauling #109, THE NEPTUNE, to GCT, nine cars, Engineer Swartz, and we made sensational time. We left New Haven 40-minutes late and had we not been blocked by signals in the DC zone, we'd have had a running time of 1 hr. 22 min. with stops at Stamford and 125th Street against the CLIPPER'S time of 1 hr. 23 min. with no stops.

I spent the next two weeks in Erie, returning to New York about June 14th and remaining until June 23rd, which was my 36th birthday. I have no record of having celebrated this event in New York and probably did so on arriving home the following day. This break point is a good place to insert two pictures which I cut out of a recent SMITHSONIAN Magazine containing an article about the demise of the great Cincinnati Union Station which was recently torn down. I made numerous trips through this station on my business travels primarily as we used to drive to Louisville otherwise. It was built in 1933 and was in full flower about the time we were putting the 0361-0366 into service although the railroad passenger business already was doomed as far as the long pull was concerned. So I'm inserting on the next page a shot of the huge rotunda with its vast murals as well as one of those murals showing the observation platform of the "Modern Limited" which happens to be located above a train arrival and departure board which has nothing on it. Looking back on this always makes me rather sad because I loved the trains and railroading and devoted my business life to them indirectly. But it is still fun to look back on those times and doings, which were fascinating indeed. It's now just possible that due to the fuel and energy crisis we're facing, the railroads, including the passenger business, may have a rebirth and destroying such places as the Cincinnati Union Terminal may prove to have been ill advised at this time. Stranger things have happened.

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