Monthly calendar report

-1) The August entries of my two Pennsylvania Railroad 2007 calendars feature opposite extremes of Pennsylvania Railroad freight steam-locomotive practice.
My color All-Pennsy calendar has humble H-9 Consolidation (2-8-0) #1770. My black & white All-Pennsy calendar has mighty J #6488 (2-10-4).

Photo courtesy Bob’s Photo©.

J1 #6488.

The J is Pennsy’s war-baby; a borrowing of plans of Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad’s T-1 Texas type, because Pennsy wasn’t allowed to develop new locomotives in WWII.
As such it is the only Pennsy engine to not have the trademark Belpaire firebox. (It may have also been the onliest one with Baker valve-gear.) —It’s a C&O engine. (There were a few others, but almost all Pennsy engines had the Belpaire firebox and ended up using Walschaerts.)
The T-1 is Lima SuperPower, probably the apogee of steam locomotive development.
The idea was to make the steam-boiler keep up with high speeds, and to do so efficiently.
It may have been a missed application, since railroading is mainly a low-speed operation.
Norfolk & Western (railroad) may have had a better handle on it. Their goal was to reduce fuel-consumption, yet still lug heavy trains over mountainous terrain.
SuperPower did well on level terrain with few curves. SuperPower could roll at 50+ mph constantly, and not run out of steam.
So the mighty J got directed to lines where it could strut its stuff — like in Ohio.
A J on Horseshoe Curve might not make as much sense as a 2-10-0 Decapod, except that Decapod might run out of steam.
I don’t think I ever saw a J.

Photo by Fred Kern.

Consol #1770.

What I did see a lot of was Pennsy Consols like 1770. Any freight-train on the PRSL through Haddonfield was a Consol.
There also were coal yards west of the station, and a Consol-powered local came out to shift cars.
Pennsy built almost 5,000 Consols, if you go back to the earliest Consols in 1875.
They were the jack-of-all-trades; even used as switchers.
Pennsy never built an 0-8-0 switcher. They just used Consols.

-2) My only other railroad calendars are -a) my Howard Fogg calendar, and -b) my Norfolk Southern calendar.
-My Fogg calendar has a watercolor of a Santa Fe 4-8-4 pulling the Chief past the Gallup Cliffs.

Watercolor by Howard Fogg.

Santa Fe’s 4-8-4 #3771.

Santa Fe’s 4-8-4s were its most fabulous engines, comparable only to its 2-10-4s.
They were designed by Charles T. Ripley of Santa Fe’s motive-power department — in concert with Baldwin Locomotive Works (the builder): application of late ‘30s steam-locomotive technology, namely SuperPower principles.
As such, Ripley’s locomotives were phenomenal.
A few remain. Only one, 3751, is operable.
I have videotapes of it running, and it is awesome.
Unfortunately, it burns oil; but it is so big it is intimidating.
-My Norfolk Southern calendar is a huge coal-train strung out along the Susquehanna River on the old Pennsy.
Apparently Norfolk Southern is doing quite well, partly because it’s reprising the old Pennsy in Pennsylvania.
The calendar is winning photo-contest entries by Norfolk Southern employees.

Photo by Philip Makenna.

Polikarpov I-15 biplane.

-3) My Ghosts WWII warbird calendar is a Polikarpov I-15bis Russian biplane (pictured).
KEE-YUCK!
Two things apply here: -a) I’m partial to only American planes — I suppose because to me they were the prettiest; e.g. the Mustang, and
-b) I abhor biplanes — only monoplanes please.
Soon August will pass, but September is two German planes.
Again; KEE-YUCK!
October is a P-47.

-4) Only two other calendars remain: -a) my hot-rod calendar, and -b) my sports-car calendar.
-My Hot-rod calendar is a cobbling up of a ‘32 Ford “Speedwagon;” a wooden-sided enigma Ford never produced: the destruction of a three-window coupe so the so-called Speedwagon could be made.

Speedwagon.

Again; KEE-YUCK! What were they thinking? What an abomination. The three-window coupe was perhaps the prettiest ‘32 Ford ever, and somebody comes in and trashes it.
Nice job, but it reminds me of Brother-G trashing those two Model A coupes long ago at Houghton. A tragedy!
-My sports-car calendar is one of those huge super-glitzy middle-‘30s roadsters like the Duesenberg Model J; except this is a Mercedes. Swooping fenders, chromed flexible header-shrouds, and rakish lines.
I’m sorry, but to me it’s a Hitler-car: utter bombast; unworthy of a picture.
Next month is a 1988 Porsche 911 Carrera.

“Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that went bankrupt in about two years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world.

“Lima” is Lima Locomotive Works in Fort Wayne, Ind.

Horseshoe Curve (the “mighty Curve,”) west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, is by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to. Horseshoe Curve is a national historic site. It was a trick used by the Pennsylvania Railroad to get over the Allegheny mountains without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in existence.

“Consol” is the nickname for Consolidation steam railroad engines.

“PRSL” is Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore lines in south Jersey; an amalgamation of Pennsy and Reading (“RED-ing”) railroads in south Jersey in 1933 to get rid of excess trackage.

“Haddonfield” (New Jersey) is an old Revolutionary-War era town south of the suburb I grew up in. The Camden & Atlantic railroad, opened about 1850, Camden, N.J. to Atlantic City, went directly through Haddonfield, and was later purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad. I first watched trains on the PRSL through Haddonfield in the late ‘40s, and they were still steam-powered.

“Brother-G” is my classmate Charlie Gardiner at Houghton College. We graduated in 1966. Before we did, he purchased, with another, two Model-A Ford coupe-bodies to convert into hot-rods, but never got to it, so junked them. They were crushed by a bulldozer.