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In spite of this diversion from our more serious duties, we came up with a proposal for Du Pont in a day so that proved highly advantageous to them as well as to us. We agreed to provide them free of charge, complete new trucks for the locomotive or locomotives and these trucks would be equipped with our new motor, the GE733, which would have the integral gearbox and should eliminate their trouble. In return, they would give us back the old trucks. Although I don't recall that we bared our soul to them on what we were going to do with old trucks, the facts were that we had one or two 43-ton locomotives on order from allied GE plants and after completely overhauling the trucks, planned to install them on these units. I believe this was done and the locomotives gave good service because the work was considerably lighter than at Charlestown, which we realized when we hatched the plan. But the real payoff was the fact that we got all of Du Pont's industrial locomotive business for the duration and it was considerable because they were among the largest defense contractors. My memory says it was around 70-80 locomotives.

The GE733 had its growing pains. It was a small motor running at a very high speed through its double reduction gearbox and it was susceptible to overspeed problems including flashovers and broken brushes but we learned how to make it better and customers how to treat it a bit more carefully and it did a commendable job. For the most part, the industrial switchers used Cummins truck engines which occasionally got tossed in up to their necks and demanded excessive maintenance but for the most part they did a remarkable fine job. The side rods on the 43-tonner were notoriously unreliable at first until we got Alco to tell us how to make them and then they were pretty good although we finally replaced them with a chain drive. My experience on the Boston & Maine with "Tarzan, Jr." who burned out all his side rods running from Mechanicville to North Adams and earned the additional nickname of "The Night Crawler" because of the slow speeds required to protect the side rods, is covered in my diary of January and February 1940 as well in my TRAINS Magazine article "Joy & Pain on the Boston & Maine," December 1970 issue. But these small locomotives were to do a great job in war industry as well as later.

As I've indicated, the small diesel line presented a big challenge both within the Company and outside versus competition. Along about this time I got one of the best breaks of my business career by having C.A.Church transfer from the Apparatus Publicity Department in Schenectady to our operation and to get him working on Industrial Haulage. Chuck Church was in his early 30s I'd judge, a native of Colorado and graduate of the University of Colorado, and possessing of a great feel for the publicity business. Besides this he had one of the most priceless sense of humor I've ever encountered. Chuck and I teamed up to develop an educational and publicity program for the small diesels. On the personal side, Chuck and his delight-