In the January 1979 issue of Trains Magazine, W.A. Gardner wrote of his experiences working for the Pennsy, helping put their first E-7's into service ("A Reputation for Reliability"). In November 1980, Trains published Gardner's marvelous article about his days with EMD, delivering and troubleshooting new locomotives. "Delivering EMD's Locomotives" was 11 pages long and represents, in my opinion, the kind of meaty article that, sadly, is rarely seen anymore. Gardner mentions a couple of anecdotes about steam generators so I am excerpting them here:

• MY NEXT ASSIGNMENT was an almost complete change of pace in all respects. The railroad was the Southern, the location Chattanooga, Tenn. The locomotives were F3's, not much different than F2's except for horsepower rating, and like the three B&M F2 sets, were equipped for passenger service. Unlike the B&M's, though, these Southern F3's had large steam generators in all units and a gear ratio allowing higher speed; they did not have dynamic brakes. Assigned to passenger runs in all directions out of Chattanooga, to Cincinnati, Bristol, Tenn., Birmingham, and New Orleans, the F3's for the most part displaced Ps-4Pacifics. Two units, usually an A-B combination, were used on most trains, with an occasional A-B-B set if the train was unusually long and heavy The cab units could not be used singly or with just another A unit, though, because only the B units carried water-the entire supply being in a large round tank in the front of the locomotive where the cab was located on an A unit. Almost all of the men who had been on the B&M with me were moved to the Southern, where we were joined by others from various previous jobs and by several newly hired men. Those of us from the B&M turned out to be the only ones with experience on F units, so we got the training and orientation jobs at the start. We looked the units over as they arrived and were put in service and were delighted to find a new type, very substantial looking, relay in place of the one that had given us transition problems on the B&M. It lived up to its appearance, never giving us any trouble. With the exception of one or two contactor coil burnouts and three governor failures, these F3's did an excellent job the entire time we were on the Southern. Our old friend the troublesome type relay was still with us in other applications, but fortunately none of these were critical and when one failed it was merely an annoyance until it could be replaced. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the steam generators. These were a new design that the manufacturer had labeled type "OK." He could not have been more wrong in his choice. A set of automatic controls, intended to make it possible to simply push the start button and stand back and watch it run, was installed. These would work for perhaps a half hour without giving trouble. The system was, complicated and difficult to understand and, therefore, to troubleshoot, so the first trouble usually led to overcompensation of something else that really was all right, with a consequent failure there too. The end result could be operating the steam generator manually, which was difficult at best, or, at worst, a complete failure, which meant a substitute locomotive had to be found quickly For the five or six weeks it took to analyze and correct the boiler trouble, the "retired" Ps-4's remained quite busy We had had the same steam generators on the B&M F2's, although in a smaller size, and they had performed flawessly. Apparently what was a reasonably good, if complicated, design had been overpowered by the increase in size plus the necessity of producing them in large quantities quickly The plant had built 50 units for Southern and 16 for the Santa Fe with no letup, and the steam generator people just were not ready to go that far that fast.

• Things got positively dull for awhile, but one incident livened things up, at least for a few minutes. One of the other instructors had an assignment out of Atlanta one afternoon, and when he arrived at Terminal Station and boarded the locomotive, which was already on the train, he was surprised to find no one else around. The engines were idling, but the steam generators had not been fired up, or so he thought. What he subsequently found out, to his dismay, was that he had arrived only seconds after the fireman and the roa4 foreman, who, after several unsuccessful attempts to fire up the steam generators, had gone off seeking assistance. The engineer was on board, but he and the instructor never did see one another as they both walked around the engine rooms-apparently on opposite sides. The instructor knew the steam generators should be running since departure time was close, so he went through all the proper procedures to start one of them. Not knowing of the previous attempts, he did not realize that the bottom of the firebox was full of sprayed-in fuel that had not ignited, apparently because the men had neglected some small but vital step in the procedure. The instructor did everything correctly, unfortunately, for the steam generator lit and almost immediately thereafter exploded as the fire he had started ignited the pool of fuel. The boiler's jacket blew off, the stack blew up high enough to hit the roof of the trainshed, and black, oily smoke rolled up the stairs into the passenger station. The instructor wound up with a black face, but he wasn't hurt and the damage was not extensive, for the train departed only a little late. But a valuable lesson had been learned-never fire up a steam generator without first looking inside with a flashlight (not a fusee) to make sure the inside is dry.
• When the snow stopped and it turned cold, a new problem cropped up--frozen controls on the steam generators. I got a good taste of this on a trip from Scranton to Buffalo. We were about halfway there when the sun went down, and the temperature with it. This was our first experience with the new steam generators in cold weather, and it was not good. The automatic controls were almost all mounted up high on the machine, close to the blast of cold air that the engine and radiator fans were sucking in through the side screens. Since they were actuated by steam pressure and water level by means of small steam and water lines, it didn't take a strong current of 10-below-zero air long to freeze them up. That was the end of automatic control. Manual operation had to be resorted to, with the fireman taking charge of the lead unit and I the rear one. This maneuver kept the steam supply up where it belonged, but since we were not nearly as responsive as the automatic controls were, we used a great deal more fuel and water- particularly the latter. It became obvious we were not going to make Buffalo on our water supply as planned, so a messsage for help was thrown off at the next open office and we made an unscheduled stop for water at a little town up the line, where a crew of men had been alerted to man the pumps. That got us to Buffalo, but the same action was required on the return trip. Scranton shops, of course, knew of our problem, and by the time we got back the men there had made up some windshield sheet-metal plates to cover the controls and were preparing to apply steam tracer lines to the control piping. These were simply copper tubing wrapped around the pipes to be protected, after which both were wrapped with insulating tape. Steam was allowed to flow through the tracer lines all the time, keeping the control lines warm enough so they would not freeze even when there was no flow through them. Things settled down to normal after that, and of course it never got cold enough again to really matter.

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