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Boston, Mass.,
Tuesday, Feb. 13, 1940.

Niel and I got up at 5 AM and were down at the engine-house sans breakfast at 6:10 after being directed to it in the darkness by a hobo along the tracks, who was much relieved to find we were not railroad "dicks." The crew + [[hostler?]] were waiting for us in complete ignorance of everything. The engineer was about 70 and had never seen a diesel locomotive before - and in 20 minutes GE-1 had to go to work! We showed them how to start up and what the various controls were for - that was about all there was time for and at 6:30 we were easing up the yard, the engineer nervous as the devil. Every time he shut off the throttle, he kept his hand on the button and pushed into the engine shut down position. Sometimes we could catch the engines before they died and sometimes we couldn't. The first job was pushing 3 battleships of fine coal up a steep ramp at the end of which was a bumper and then a 20 ft. drop to the street and he had to spot the last car right at the bumper. He was so nervous, he stopped short of the bumper and let the cars start pushing us back with the result they pushed us all the way back down the ramp. However, in spite of this rather wild beginning, in a few hours the engineer was running her like a veteran and even the fireman was commenting that she was a "powerful little bastard!" Once we walked off upgrade with about 15 cars and the fireman's eyes popped - "Jesus, she's powerful - why, she never even slipped then!" The engineer presently proclaimed this was the easiest job he'd had in 50 years - "no god damn Johnson bar to break yer [[sic]] back! Nice warm cab - see everything, seat turns around." When