During my GE career, I received a phone call with a request to "host" someone who wanted some info. (We Marketing guys received all of the inquiries no one else knew what to do with......) The visitor introduced himself as Ed Duddy, and he wanted to access some E44's in our scrap line. (As I recall, all of the E44's in the line were black, and I am sure I would have recognized Brunswick Green. I also remember that one of them, I believe 4453, had been completely rebuilt with a new control system, traction motors, etc. in anticipation by GE that we would retrofit the entire fleet and thereby extending their lives and that of the PRR electrification. I thought about trying to save this unit since it was essentially brand new, but there was no support for that activity at that time, so I had no support.)
Ed was on a single mission. He wanted to inspect the chain that was used to connect two units together so a crew could walk from unit to unit with no safety risk. We readily located a few units and he climbed on each, and counted the chain links per foot of chain. He told me that he wanted the correctly sized chains on his E44 models.
(This was my early introduction into the nuances of O scale...)
This must have worked out pretty well. At about the same time, I hosted a work group from the Buffalo area who climbed all over a Niagara Junction electric (we had several) and removed a lot of items, and told me that they made a request to have GE donate one to their organization.
