Word: dieselization
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While Gilbert was shoveling coal in the mid-1920s, U.S. railroads began introducing the first diesel locomotives. Powered by an internal combustion engine, the diesels needed no firebox, no pile of coal-and no fireman. The diesels came onto U.S. railway tracks very gradually, and as late as 1937 fewer than 1% of the nation's locomotives were diesels. In that year the Brotherhood of Firemen foresightedly negotiated a contract with major railroads calling for two-man train crews. Fire or no fire, there was to be a fireman aboard...
...Gilbert himself never featherbedded aboard a diesel. Before the Alton line switched from steam locomotives, Gilbert laid down his shovel and moved into a new career as a fulltime union official. Elected president of Lodge 707 in 1931, he moved on to the Brotherhood's headquarters in Cleveland in 1942 as a clerk, promptly started a climb up the ladder of union bureaucracy by wrestling with a 90-day crash course in shorthand so that he could be come a stenographer (he still uses shorthand to take voluminous verbatim notes at meetings). Blessed with an adhesive memory for names...
...waited six hours on his contour couch-for a launch that did not come that day. The countdown was stalled for more than two hours, while some of the world's most brilliant electronics and computer experts cursed at the refusal of a simple, 275-h.p. diesel engine to start so that the servicing gantry could be rolled away from the poised missile. Although the diesel finally was repaired, the launch was scrubbed at T-minus-13 because of trouble with a vital tracking radar at Bermuda. Cooper could only have been disappointed by the delay...
Only a few years out of technical school, Verolme began selling diesel engines for Holland's Stork Engine Works Moving up to chief engineer, he was asked, after World War II, to plan a reorganization of the company. He ended is report with: "The best reorganization would be to appoint me as your new president-director." When the directors did not agree, Verolme left to found his own engineering works. He heard of a demand for Dutch "Haagsche hopjes" candy in the U.S., raised the money to market a huge shipload, and used the profits to import diesel engines...
...industrialist who, in partnership with Gulf Oil, is busy building a network of 500 auto service stations across Spain. As a struggling mechanic in the provinces, Barreiros lost four fingers in mishaps. But in 15 years, he parlayed his family auto repair shop into a $670 million industrial empire (diesel engines, machinery, electrical equipment) that ranks among Spain's six largest private enterprises. Barreiros has just signed a contract to produce diesel engines, trucks and tractors in Colombia. He still lives in a modest apartment and sticks to his simple success formula: "Produce more to make more money...