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waiting in the wings about this time and was soon to step in and handle practically all of the Navy locomotive scheduling. John and I became very good personal friends, a friendship that was to last into the post-war period. And when he came on the scene in WPB, the Navy situation smoothed out considerably. However, we had our ups and downs even with John, particularly [[red pencilled underline]]failure to anticipate requirements[[/red pencilled underline]] and solving the problem by robbing someone else. There's a great deal about John Grace and his delightful wife, Frances, in subsequent diaries. Because he didn't actually figure in the first half of 1942, [[red pencilled underline]]I'll resist temptation and say no more here about him.[[/red pencilled underline]]

So much for the Army and Navy locomotive potpourri. We now turn to a group of customers which might best be classified as [[red pencilled underline]]"All Else."[[/red pencilled underline]] They were represented by a vast variety of Washington agencies, some of them branches of WPB itself and others, miscellaneous federal organizations. Some of the WPB branches were Mining, Steel, Chemical, Automotive, Aluminum, Power, Construction Materials, Rubber, Copper and Fuel. Some of the federal agencies were the Maritime Commission, Office of Defense Transportation, Office of Civilian Supply and Defense Plant Corporation. Locomotives for export had to be sponsored by the [[red pencilled underline]]State Department[[/red pencilled underline]] as well as possibly some of the agencies. We had locomotives on order by the Chilean copper industry and these would be spoken for by both State and the Copper Branch of WPB. [[underline]] The Mining Branch [[/underline]] of WPB handled all underground mining locomotives under a general limitation order of their own and I used to see them regarding our mining schedule entirely apart from the L-97 activity. But if a locomotive was for above-ground use, the sponsoring agency would be the WPB branch concerned like Copper or Steel or Aluminum. The railroads were represented by the Office of Defense Transportation (ODT) but as far as small locomotives went, the [[red pencilled underline]]railroads always seemed to get the short end of the stick[[/red pencilled underline]]. We had many 44-ton locomotives on order by the railroads but they could also be used by the military and industry and it seemed the railroads were continually getting squeezed out by the more aggressive representatives of these other people. This was also true for a while of the shipyards, who needed locomotives but were weakly represented by the Maritime Commission. The final [[red pencilled underline]]allocation of locomotives[[/red pencilled underline]] was made by the Transportation Equipment Branch at a monthly meeting attended by representatives of the "claimant agencies" (the government entities there to represent the interests of the customers). At these meetings, the shipping schedule of each builder for the following month was reviewed and if any stealing of locomotives from one customer by another was done, this was the place where it occurred. Strange things sometimes happened. As a result of decisions made at one of these meetings, a customer who had ordered one 45-ton General Electric locomotive, had it delivered as well as another 45-ton from one of the other builders, which they had not ordered. [[close bracket]]