[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 99 (Monday, July 6, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Page S7134]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         COMMENDING VINCE NESCI

 Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, today I recognize Vince Nesci who, 
in a few months, will retire from Amtrak after 33 years as its chief 
mechanical officer. Vince has dedicated his adult life to improving 
passenger rail transportation in America, and I wish him the very best 
in retirement.
  Railroaders are not employed; they serve, and Vince's retirement will 
culminate a lifetime of service to the railroad and country. He began 
his service in the Air Force as a flight engineer, flying on the 
remarkably durable C-130 Hercules transports. He performed aerial 
delivery missions of every kind--paratroop drops, low altitude 
equipment and cargo drops, and heavy equipment drops.
  After leaving the Air Force, Vince went to work on the Penn Central 
Railroad in 1974. Since that day, he has never drawn a paycheck that 
wasn't issued by a railroad. He began in the traditional way, as a 
laborer in the mechanical department, working on the famous GG-1 class 
electric engines that Penn Central had inherited from its 1930s-era 
predecessor, the Pennsylvania Railroad. He qualified as an electrician 
and a machinist, putting his natural engineering aptitude to the task 
of learning the tics and tricks of 40-year-old locomotives with 
millions of miles on them.
  His skill was rewarded, and he rose through the ranks. Promotion 
followed promotion, and he soon became a foreman and then a general 
foreman with Penn Central. When Amtrak took over its labor force from 
the freight railroads, Vince continued the unforgiving job of making 
sure that engines and cars would be ready to roll when the minute hand 
touched the top of the hour in Washington, Boston, or New York each 
day. He was there to work on each generation of new engines and to 
supervise the men and women who were working on them. He witnessed the 
end of the GG-1s and saw three new generations of locomotives emerge 
for Northeast Corridor service.
  When the time came to rebuild the 20-year-old AEM-7 locomotives in 
2001, Vince took on the job as the company's chief mechanical officer. 
This was a demanding job, and the shops accomplished it in large part 
because Vince was there to keep the process moving, to wade into a 
problem on the shop floor, and to figure out the answers to tough 
technical questions that manuals and instructions couldn't answer. He 
was no mere manager--he was that very traditional combination of expert 
practical mechanic, engineer, and operating man that railroad chief 
mechanical officers have always had to be. And through some of the 
toughest times Amtrak has ever faced, when money to keep the trains on 
the road was scarce, he kept things moving. He was famous on the 
railroad for his good humor, his skill, and his understanding of how 
locomotives worked. He was liked, but more importantly, he was 
respected, and his opinion carried weight in both the board room and on 
the shop floor.
  Vince begins almost every day of his work with a smile. There is 
hardly ever a time that, when you talk to Vince, he does not greet your 
questions or begin his answers without a smile. When he talks about the 
cars and locomotives in his care, he speaks quickly because he is 
enthusiastic and wants you to feel the enthusiasm he has for the work 
he does. Whether the temperature is 100 degrees or 10 below zero, Vince 
always wears a short-sleeved white cotton shirt. If one asks him why he 
only wears a short-sleeved shirt, he will tell you without a moment's 
hesitation that when you wear short sleeves, you don't have to roll up 
your sleeves when you get to work.
  People like Vince Nesci don't come along very often, and when they 
do, we should be thankful that we get to spend time with them and learn 
from them. The railroad is a better and safer place because of Vince, 
and the good news is that he has helped train a cadre of people who 
will be there after he leaves to carry on the work that needs to be 
done.
  Now he has come to the end of his long career, and will soon depart 
into a well-earned retirement. His working life has encompassed the 
transformation of the Northeast Corridor, from a tentative experiment 
to a modern, high-speed intercity passenger rail system. Nobody has 
worked harder than Vince to build the railroad that may one day become 
a model for transportation in our country, and no one can take more 
justified pride in the safe, reliable, and frequent passenger rail 
service that travelers enjoy today than Vince Nesci.
  I thank Vince for the warm friendship that we share, and I 
congratulate him on a truly remarkable and distinguished career. I wish 
him, his wife Donna, and their family the very best in all that lies 
ahead for each of them. As we say in the Navy on occasions like this, 
``fair winds and a following sea.''

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