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Went down to the B&M offices and found Mr. Blake, Supt. of the Fitchburg Div. would not be in today, so contacted Mr. Reynolds, former trainmaster at "[[Michville?]]" of whom I had heard so much favorable comment. When I stepped into his office he said, "What can I do for you, [[underlined]] son [/underlined]]." Shades of J.W.Rawle at J.G.Brill in 1927! But I found Reynolds very agreeable, another big, buster of a man in the forties, red faced, well dressed, virile and pleasant in an aggressive way. He told me whom to see at the outlying spots and I caught the earliest train for Northampton where I inquired at the station for Mr. De Rose's ^(the agent)^ office and was told it was at the freight house a mile away. So took a Pierce Arrow taxi (it was still raining) and repaired to the freight house, an old, unprepossessing, wooden structure In I went and asked a rather hardbitten looking man leaning over a crude desk in the main office, if Mr. De Rose was around. It was Mr. De Rose himself. He looked something like a weatherbeaten Doug Fairbanks Sr. and took me into a small office where we could talk. He didn't impress me much except I noticed he spoke rather well with a cultivated New England accent. I soon saw that Northampton was no good for what I had in mind because of a lot of local freight work here we'd just be sticking our neck out for overspeed and overload trouble. So I didn't have to discuss it long with Mr. De Rose and when I was ready to leave he said he was going to the station and would drive me down. On the way in his neat 1938 [[end page]]