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263

Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1942.

Mat was as good as his longstanding boast and was in the lobby at 7:45 AM and looking fair; but when I asked him how he felt he just looked at me kind of sidelong and said, "Terrible!" Gradually the story came out. The party in the Madison Suite went to around midnight and then adjourned to the Metronome Room. About 2AM that closed and McLeod left and drove home - "nobody could catch him" - Grace I guess had already departed - then they adjourned again to some show peoples club down town, each with a "souvenir" of the evening, a full bottle of whiskey. At the club, where only set-ups are served, they polished off the souvenirs, everybody went broke matching bills, and Mat got to bed at 4:30 AM! Vic insisted the roof under the Madison Suite was covered with broken chairs that had been hauled out the window - Mat denied this. Whatever it was, it evidently surpassed all previous efforts at parties.
Today we met with Old Man Kromer of Porter, a lovable old character, Tom MacLachlan and George Koch to go over the government steam situation. All agreed they could handle the light 2-8-2's but not the 80 ton 0-6-0's. We also got straight on the 50 ton 0-6-0's with McLeod (on the job but jittery) and released 33 at Davenport and 30 at Vulcan. We found yesterday our "full schedule" releases of last week had not gone out yet so we held them up and did this instead. So it appears we may still fill these three shops in spite of the 0-6-0 impact. In fact, they may have more steam than before!

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