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168

Washington, D.C.
Thursday, Oct. 15, 1942.

[[checkmark, bullet point]]  Am in the center of a wrangle between Carnegie-Illinois and the Navy as to whom shall get the 44 ton G.E. locomotive now ready for shipment (so they say) - the whole thing is most confused primarily because G.E. gave us a bunch of misinformation on shipping dates of their 44 ton program, and hence our judgments being based on fake premises, were poor.  Stanton, whose card says he's Chief Expeditor for Carnegie-Illinois but who seems to have a permanent desk over in the Iron & Steel Branch (apparently his capacity is similar to mine last spring) arranged a three cornered conversation with Pittsburgh during which they told me all about how much they need the locomotive at Homestead, how the army stole two second hand from them recently, which I was familiar with.  It took them three weeks to place their order on G.E. so I figured they couldn't be too anxious.  Grace wants the locomotive for Bayonne where they are now borrowing an old Atlas 45 ton from Brooklyn and are swamped with cars to handle.  I think Grace will get it and Carnegie the second one early next month; the only hitch is how long the Navy will take to get a contract through; Supplies & Accounts are notoriously slow.

[[checkmark, bullet point]]  The Linde vs. Traylor scrap turned out to be a dud today.   Williams of Aluminum phoned this morning to say the 30 ton Linde would not do Traylor's work - they have ordered a 35 ton - and he wanted to know if any larger locos would be allocated today - I told him lots of 45 tonners, and their price is $24000 to $25000.  He phoned back shortly to say Traylor felt a 45 ton would be too heavy for their tracks.  So I guess we smoked that one out pretty well and they aren't as desperate as they were made out to be.

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