“Tunnel-motors”

The May 2007 entry of my Howard Fogg railroad-calendar is a print of a watercolor of Southern Pacific tunnel-motors on Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Californy.
In the past I would have posted a scan here of the picture; but rather than sow confusion and utter dismay amongst those here that use this site, I have posted the scan to the photo-section, thereby avoiding use of the dreaded HTML-button.
You ne’er-do-wells and blog-readers I think I can handle the HTML-button.
Putting the scan in the photos also permits me to post it at a higher rez.
To crank a picture at a higher rez into a story, turns the story into a scrolling-fest.
Putting a pik into the photo-section at a higher rez allows the bluster-boy to blow up the picture to the original size and thereby count louvers.
Actually a louver-count isn’t needed. A design-element of these locomotives is readily apparent, and it tells you what they are.
“Tunnel-motor” because of a specific design-limitation of the average General Motors diesel-locomotive on railroads having tunnels (and/or snowsheds).
The air-intakes of a GM diesel are ordinarily high atop the carbody, and would constrict in a closely confined tunnel or snowshed.
This meant the locomotive could not get enough air, would run rich, or even stall.
The solution was to lower the air-intake down near ground-level: the changes in the rear carbody that are readily apparent.
The line over Donner Pass — the line of the original transcontinental railroad — has many tunnels and snowsheds; as does Rio Grande’s ascent of the Rockies.
As such, Southern Pacific and Rio Grande (they eventually merged) had many tunnel-motors. (In fact, D&RGW bought SP.)
Donner, at 7,239 feet, is not the easiest way east from San Francisco.
Feather River Canyon was better, but prone to storm-damage (particularly flooding and washouts). Western Pacific built in Feather River around the turn-of-the-century (1800-1900), but eventually became part of Union Pacific.
Now even Southern Pacific is merged into Union Pacific, so that now UP controls the entire original transcontinental. (They built the original transcontinental from Omaha west to Promontory Point west of Salt Lake City.)

RE: “In the past I would have posted a scan here of the picture; but rather than sow confusion and utter dismay amongst those here that use this site, I have posted the scan to the photo-section, thereby avoiding use of the dreaded HTML-button.” —“This site” is our family’s web-site. I have been excoriated for using HTML to underline and produce bold-red-underlined fonts. A picture can be attached to a text-post by using an HTML image-tag. A picture can also be posted to a photo-section of the web-site, which is where I put it on the family web-site, thereby avoiding use of the HTML image-tag. (For the blog I put the pik in an HTML picture-table.)

“Ne’er-do-wells” is a group of e-mail clients I e-mail this stuff to.

RE: “To crank a picture at a higher rez into a story, turns the story into a scrolling-fest......” Text-post piks have to be at screen-rez: 72 dpi; and no more than story-width, around 10 inches. (A photo-post displays downsized so it all shows; “original-size” blows it up to whatever you set it at, including rez.)

“Rez” is resolution (dpi).

The “bluster-boy” is my macho brother-in-Boston who badmouths everything I do or say.

RE: “Count louvers......” Supposedly the mark of a true railfan is be able to distinguish between a GP7 and a GP9, which is done by counting louvers.

They’re SD40-2.