A Touch of Something or Other....

[mxdata]

I was over at West 55th Street in La Grange the other day, and one noticable change was the sign on the front lawn. Where it previously said "Electro-Motive Division, General Motors Corporation", all the lettering has been knocked down except "Electro-Motive", which is offset to the left with the fastenings for all the eliminated lettering still evident on the board.

The street address number has been installed where the "General Motors Corporation" lettering used to be.

It all seemed very consistent with the relettering and renumbering commonly done on locomotives following a merger. It had me looking for the roller splotches of black paint and the Penn Central decals.

[byte]

Something similar happened on their website in the days after the buyout was officially declared. On the top left, it used to have the GM logo, and then to the right of that, "Electro Motive." Well, rather than going into the html of the page, they instead just deleted the image of the GM logo from the file it was stored in (since it was no longer part of GM), so every time you looked at the page, there would be a little red X where it used to be. It looks like they've corrected that little issue, but strangely enough, the page's actual address is still www.gmemd.com...

[mxdata]

Having been through a number of corporate transitions in many years in the industry I can appreciate that "doing it right" sometimes costs a little extra, but developing a favorable public image for the emerging company does have some importance.

A boss I used to work for once commented about the Training Center: "This is the only part of the corporation that many of our customers people will ever get to see up close, it is very important that it leaves a lasting positive impression". Unfortunately that gentleman passed away some years ago, I wish there were more managers like him around these days.

[Nelson Bay]

MXDATA wrote

A boss I used to work for once commented about the Training Center: "This is the only part of the corporation that many of our customers people will ever get to see up close, it is very important that it leaves a lasting positive impression".

How true- reminds me of my first visit to the EMD Training Center. You walked through the main locker room when the 3rd shift was stripping down to head for the showers.

[mxdata]

And many others who went to EMD in those days remember that too!