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The locomotives had been in service about a month and, although they'd performed quite well all in all, still we found ourselves in a period of hot water. As for the New Haven, the crews were protesting formally about hot cabs while Bracken was worried about hot equipment. And we even had a complaint from one of our own cohorts, Burnham, who insisted he needed more air to ease his transformer a bit. However, his position was a bit inconsistent. And mixed into all these situations was the old familiar bugbear of who's going to pay for the changes. When I got into New York on June 14th, I met Jim Smith and Burnham at the office to discuss transformer heating in general as touched off by the #0363 debacle with #376. Burnham felt it would be okay to go to 90°C peak because it was a matter of insulation temperature and time combined and they were just beginning to appreciate what a low load factor this type of work had. He said they like to limit a Pyranol transformer to 60°C rise by resistance or 100°C temperature, which is the equivalent of 85°C of Pyranol, but an occasional peak of 90°C should do no harm. He said the diaphragm was designed to break at 10-15 lb. per sq. in. in the tank and they had 3 1/2 lb. on the continuous heat run; he thought the diaphragm should be okay at 90°C assuming circulation okay so there would be no hot spots. He said the transformer ran at 35°C rise at the continuous rating at Pittsfield. So we went to Van Nest, where we got Bracken to agree to paint the dials white to 90°C but instruct the crews not to exceed 90°C. However, Burnham wanted a ventilator added in the roof over the transformer to get rid of a hot pocket up there while Bracken insisted the transformer needed more cooling air through the radiator. We turned him down, claiming the transformer will run okay as is with a 90°C maximum. Bracken said this would shorten the life of the insulation. Burnham denied this but nevertheless wouuld like the ventilator in the roof. Also, he suggested louvers be added in the side doors at the transformer end to admit more air. He seemed to have one foot on one side of the fence and one on the other. Also, we gave Bracken a drawing showing suggestions for further ventilating the boiler cab to help salve the crew but Jim Smith told him we saw no reason why we should stand the expense of the change. Jim was about to argue this when Ed Kelly came in and reported that when they'd added some clearance around the boiler stack on 0362, the boiler was improved enormously so perhaps no further changes would be required there. But Ed suggested a roof ventilator in No.1 end to suck out air in conjunction with an added lower opening in the front and water tank compertment doors as we'd suggested for the boiler end. It was a great rat-race. Nothing was definitely settled but we were getting there.

0363 of the towel-plugged transformer and later the wrong-way Pyranol pump, returned to service on June 17th after still another scare. When they'd buttoned her up the day before at Van Nest and tried out the pump for a final check, they found