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Enroute New York to Erie, Pa.
Tuesday, Dec.12,'39
Jay and I arrived at the office almost simultaneously - a rare affair as he is usually late. But he hadn't had breakfast, so we went down to Childs, in through the kitchen and the electric eye doors as usual, and I explained the scheme to him while he ate so no time was lost. At 10:15 we were up at the Cummins place in the Bronx explaining the set-up to Rogers, the rather smooth, somewhat braggart, and to me, none too genuine, president of the Cummins Diesel Engine Co of New York. McDonald evinced no interest whatever - didn't even sit in - a funny outfit. Rogers agreed to do anything we said with Bill and arranged to meet us at Bill's office in the afternoon. He was confident he knew how to get the critical out of the operating range entirely but would offer this scheme for the time being. I can't quite figure him and his outfit out. He showed us the famed "pancake" engine, an HB-6 on its side for undercar mounting and gave us a very glowing sales talk on its future. This job has been engineered entirely in N.Y., the Columbus outfit knowing almost nothing about it. I give them credit for their initiative but still, it is a funny loose set-up.

Had lunch with Jay, Walt Hedly, Bert [[Pero?]] and Jim Smith in the G.E. restaurant upstairs. Bert spent a lot of time roundly defending McDonald and his right to a 2% commission on our part of locomotives, something rather hard to see as far as I'm concerned. Mac does almost nothing on this N.Y.C. job and collects an aggregate of about $1200 on it.