A few weeks after, being in London, I went to Rochester to see how the new valve-gear was progressing. The first thing I saw was my valve and valve-gear hanging up in the storeroom. Mr. Aveling explained to me that he had been advised by engineers, whose advice by his contract with his financial partner he was obliged to follow, that the narrow faces on my valve would wear away faster than the wider faces, and the valve would come to leak, and if he put it on his engine it would ruin his business. He did not believe it; it seemed to him absurd, but he was powerless. This was the nearest approach I ever made myself towards the introduction of this valve. In 1875 I seemed to have a promising opening. I received a note from Mr. M. N. Forney, then editor of the _Railway Gazette_, calling my attention to this valve and its description in his “Catechism of the Locomotive,” just published, and stating that this was the only patented invention in the book. He added that he had had conferences with Mr. Buchanan, foreman of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad repair shops in New York City, about trying this valve on their locomotives, and Mr. Buchanan would like to see me. On my calling, Mr. Buchanan asked me what arrangement I was willing to make. I replied that they might put the valve on six locomotives free of royalty. If these valves worked well I would give them a license on liberal terms. He said he had an express locomotive then in the shop for which he was making new cylinders; these were already bored and the valve seats planed, but not yet trimmed, and in this state there was room to put in these valves, which he would do; they would be ready in about a fortnight, when he would send me word, and would be glad to have me go up to Albany and back on the locomotive and indicate the engines. I have been waiting for that “word” ever since. A few days after I met in the street an acquaintance, who asked me if Mr. Buchanan had agreed to put the Allen valve on an engine. I replied that he had. Why, said he, Buchanan will no more dare put that valve on unless Commodore Vanderbilt orders him to, than he would to cut his head off. He will never persuade the old man to give that order, and you will never hear of it again; and I never did. The recollection of another experience with Mr. Aveling has often amused me. He had an order from the Chatham Dock Yard for a stationary engine of perhaps 100 horse-power. It was to be inspected in operation before its acceptance by the government. He wrote me to come down and bring my indicator and assist him in exhibiting it running under a friction brake in his shop.