Monthly calendar report

B29 over San Francisco Bay.

-The June entry of my Ghosts World War II warbirds calendar is a relief after looking at two Japanese fighter-planes the entire month of May.
They were not actual Mitsubishi Zeros, but all Japanese fighter-planes were called Zeros, I suppose because of the red sunburst Japanese insignia — a zero-like circle.
The June entry is a Boeing B29 Superfortress (pictured), the bomber that replaced the B17.
The B29 was a major step forward from the B17 and B24, both of which to me are turkeys.
No wonder so many got shot out of the sky; they’re so slow they’re flying targets.
Probably the main technical advance on the B29 was the engines, which are turbocompounded and much more powerful.
Exhaust gases are directed through turbines that help spin the propeller.
Eventually just turbines would spin the propeller: turbo-props.
Turbocompounded engines also found their way into the Lockheed Constellation airliner. I bet the Douglas DC7 is turbocompounded too, but I’m not sure.
B29s delivered the two atomic bombs to Japan; the first one was delivered by the Enola Gay to Hiroshima.
The Enola Gay still exists; it’s at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, part of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, near Washington Dulles International Airport.
The B29 had much greater range than the B17; which made it possible to bomb mainland Japan from bases far away in the Pacific Ocean.
I guess a few B29s are still flying — this is one.
The only one I’ve seen recently was flying out of Fort Lauderdale Airport in the ‘80s. It may have been this airplane.

T1 (left) and K4 (behind).

-The June entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is a Pennsy T1 doubleheaded with a K4 (pictured).
The T1 was supposed to replace the K4, but it didn’t.
It was too hard to work on (complicated) and slippery.
Pennsy never fielded a 4-8-4 in the ‘30s like most railroads.
They were throwing too much money into electrification.
Then too Pennsy’s solution to the New York Central Hudson was to doublehead two K4s.
This is expensive, requiring a crew for each engine, but Pennsy could afford it.
So Pennsy never developed a 4-8-4 comparable to the other great 4-8-4s.
The T1 was Pennsy’s attempt at a 4-8-4 in the late ‘40s.
The eight drivers are separated into two groups of four, making a 4-4-4-4 according to the Whyte System.
But even though there are four cylinders, the front drivers aren’t articulated. All eight are on a single unhinged frame — the equivalent of a 4-8-4 except with four cylinders.
But they’re 80-inch drivers, and liked to slip on start-up; usually just one set.
The K4 was 80-inch drivers too; but it would dig in on startup.
So the T1 was a bear to drive, and got relegated to cross-country running on the Fort Wayne Division, where it excelled, to Chicago.
There it could express the immense amount of horsepower it could generate compared to a K4.
The original T1 was styled by Raymond Loewy; a sharknose more extreme than what’s pictured here. But Pennsy compromised Loewy’s original design in the interest of maintenance ease. Almost all T1s are the compromised design seen here. Only one or two were the Loewy design.
The T1 was also very smoky.

-The June entry of my Norfolk-Southern calendar is the Pennsy-summit picture at Gallitzin I posted before; and my sports-car calendar is a picture of a rather ugly early Porsche race-car.

The “Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad; once the largest railroad in the nation.

The “K4” was a Pacific: 4-6-2. They got a lot of use on the Pennsylvania Railroad.

“The New York Central Hudson” (New York Central Railroad), was a phenomenal 4-6-4 steam-locomotive. NYC was Pennsy’s main competitor.

“The Whyte System” is a system of designating railroad steam-locomotives by wheel-set.

RE: “articulated......” Most steam-locomotives with two driver-sets (with four cylinders) had the front set hinged (“articulated”), so the engine could negotiate tight curvature: e.g. switches.

“Raymond Loewy” was an industrial-designer that worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He also designed many other things, including the icons for the U.S. Postal-Service, Hoover vacuum-cleaners, Lucky-Strike cigarettes, and Shell gasoline. He also designed a dispenser for Coca-Cola, and the greatest automotive styling exercise ever brought to market: the 1953 Studebaker Starlight coupe.

Pennsy’s summit of the Allegheny Mountains is tunnels at Gallitzin, actually under nearby Tunnelhill.