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That outlines briefly our mining locomotive competitors and our relationship with them through NEMA. The other competitive group we faced was the small diesel locomotive builders. This group differed from the mining locomotive manufacturers in being substantial potential customers as well as competitors because none of them manufactured their own electrical equipment as the mining machinery group did and had to buy this equipment either from Westinghouse or us. While in general they were inclined to favor Westinghouse, who wasn't a competitor, they did give us some business and we tried to cultivate them accordingly. There was no trade association involved in this business although such a connection would have been helpful and I think we discussed setting up a section in NEMA for the purpose but nothing ever came of it. However, in spite of this deficiency we endeavored to carry on some standardization work and it was quite effective in simplifying and maintaining a basic standard line of sizes and horsepowers. As in the case of the mining locomotives except far simpler, we made our standard diesel-electric line of industrial switchers handbook items which could be bought right out of a catalog where everything about them was published including the price and terms. This, of course, was public information and our competitors were at liberty to match our prices, which they usually did, feeling as Bill Goodman used to say, that "they couldn't get any more and couldn't afford to sell for any less."

Through our standardization contacts, relations as customers for our equipment, and later clients of mine when I was working in WPB responsible for all the small locomotive scheduling in the country, I got to know these people very well. Looking at them as a group, I'd say they weren't as top quality as the mining locomotive group in NEMA. But they were an interesting crowd and I'm going to cover them in here somewhat as I did the mining locomotive people and their companies. It should be remembered also that while the group I shall cover built small diesel-electrics, this was a relatively new line and they had developed their businesses over the years building small steam locomotives, diesel and gas-mechanical drive units and stored-steam locomotives and not only still did build these lines but tried to sell them over diesel-electrics. Here they are:

[[underlined]] Whitcomb Locomotive Co. [[/underlined]]: Whitcomb, which was located in Rochelle, Illinois, right in the midst of the rich farming region of northern Illinois, was a subsidiary of Baldwin Locomotive Works and was probably the most impressive of our small locomotive competitors. They had built mechanical-drive diesel and gasoline engine locomotives for years and were now active in the diesel-electric business in the larger sizes. They also supplied mechanical portions to Westinghouse for their mine locomotives and like Baldwin, were very much 

Transcription Notes:
Transcription erro fix: 'qulity; to 'quality'