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have entirely or almost entirely hurdled that obstacle based on thin opposition to welded construction versus [[strikethrough]] fabrica [[/strikethrough]] cast steel. From there we proceeded to our layout and a general exposition of how our locomotive is engineered  from stem to stern for a balanced design - also something on the advantages on undivided responsibility. It was clear that we had made definite progress. That was all J.W. wanted to see and hear, and we retired to Dave Reid's office to review details with him, Ernie Bloss and Fred Buckfitt.

Dave had a sheet of points to be discussed one by one. They still want a 6 to 1 brake lever ratio where we now have 10.3 to 1 according to a wire from A.J. Woodward this morning and they don't like the fuel tank in the underframe although they admit they have had no complaint with that construction on their G.E. - IR  loco #1100. When he came to "motor" he merely said "OK" so my letter to Gus Munster last week evidently clicked on that point. Roy said he saw a copy  of the letter on Dave's desk. Everything else was either OK or so minor as to be no serious obstacle, so we were left with only two major obstacles to overcome (1) Brake lever ratio and (2) fuel tank built-in. On the lever ratio, Dave admitted they didn't know what our competitors were offering and we suspect they can't do any better than we, so that may evaporate. We got in some good arguments for our fuel tank so that we think a powerful and carefully prepared letter on that will probably put it across. When the conference was over, we felt we had hurdled most of our obstacles and were on