Monthly calendar report

November 2007 is a banner month for four of my seven calendars, having graphics of some of the greatest motorized vehicles of all time.

THE GREATEST RAILROAD LOCOMOTIVE OF ALL TIME

Photo by Ray Mueller.

Nine GG1s at the Army-Navy Game in 1955.

Perhaps most interesting to me are the nine Pennsy GG1s (pictured) at the Army-Navy Game in Philadelphia in 1955.
The Army-Navy Game was a Thanksgiving tradition in Philly for years.
1955 is even before Veterans Stadium.
And Pennsy always fielded its best.
The entire student-bodies of both West Point and Annapolis had to be transported to the Army-Navy Game, and the routes included most of what is now called the Northeast Corridor.
Pennsy even electrified its Municipal Stadium trackage so the mighty Gs could run all the way to the stadium.
And in 1955 the Gs were still in the beautiful cat-whisker scheme (pictured), the dramatic five pin-stripe scheme designed by Raymond Loewy.
Only once did I ever see a cat-whiskered G, and that was in December of 1960 at Wilmington Station.
By then, most Gs had been repainted into the single-stripe scheme, which still looked good (or perhaps it was the GG1 itself, the greatest railroad locomotive of all time).
That of course is not the first time I’ve said that, and it’s hard to think of something other than a steam-engine as the greatest railroad locomotive of all time.
But I saw quite a few GG1s, and they were always blasting by at 80 per or more; often over 100.
And I certainly saw plenty of steam to compare them with; e.g. marauding K4s and E6s; and 765 or 611 could give them a run for their money.
One time Bruce Stewart and I rode up to Philly, probably behind a GG1, and we had to ride home that afternoon.
We scheduled riding the Congressional Limited, and soon it was booming into 30th Street Station — I have a picture I still treasure.
We got on, and within minutes were booming south at 80 mph — and that’s despite 17 cars.
My paternal grandfather once rode the Congo and obviously it blew him away.
We’re driving back from Sandy Hill in 1954 and a northbound Pennsy express passenger train flashes through Elkton, GG1 on the point.
“Must be the Congressional,” he said, with awe and reverence in his voice.
We’re inside the grandparents’ apartment in Edgemoor, and a Pennsy train roars through down by Edgemoor Yard.
All we could do was hear it; we couldn’t see it.
“Must be the Congressional,” he said. Same awe, same reverence.

WHISTLING DEATH

Photo by Philip Makenna.

Four-bladed prop.

The November 2007 Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Vought F4U Corsair, certainly one of the most impressive airplanes of all time.
It’s a Dash-Five (F4U-5N — “N” meaning night-fighter), meaning it was built after World War Two, and has the fabulous Pratt & Whitney R-2800-32 Wasp engine, rated at 2,300 horsepower (the Corsair site [link] has the R-2800-32 at 2,350 horsepower).
The Corsairs were first developed per Navy request in 1938, melding the most powerful motor yet with the barest minimum of airframes (including state-of-the-art construction and riveting methods).
Over 950 engineering upgrades were made to the Corsair over time, although most significant were the engine upgrades, which stretch over 5-7 models (dash-designations — F4U-7 was French only).
The first Corsairs were at 1850 horsepower, and the last (a Goodyear variation) at 3,000 takeoff horsepower with the phenomenal 28-cylinder Pratt & Whitney Wasp-Major R-4360-4 “corncob” engine after the war.
But most Corsairs were the original Wasp engines, a two-row air-cooled radial of 18 cylinders and 2,804 cubic inches.
Supercharging and development increased Wasp horsepower over time; although supercharging mainly raised altitude-limit.
Most interesting is why the Corsair has the inverted gull-wing.
This was to allow a short stubby landing-gear with the gigantic 13-foot 4-inch propeller.
Landing-gear had to be very strong to permit slam-bang aircraft-carrier landings.
Yet decreasing propeller radius would have meant the Wasp engine was a waste.
The Corsair was rejected for carrier use at first; partly because the long snout cut off vision.
The Corsair was also a monster at stall-speed, and could drop like a stone, smashing a landing-gear.
The motor also liked to spray oil all over the windshield.
The Corsair was first assigned to land-duty, but the British made it work on aircraft-carriers. They wired closed the cowl-vents on top to stop the oil-leaks onto the windshield, and re-aimed the carrier downwind. The landing approach was thus alterated, allowing the pilot to watch the flight-deck officer until the last second.
Stall-behavior was also fixed.
The Corsair went on to become one of the greatest fighter-planes of World War Two.
They were still in use in 1952 when I visited Willow Grove Naval Air Station outside Philadelphia with the cub-scouts.
This is an epiphany I’ll never forget.
A pilot strode out and climbed into the cockpit of a Corsair. They were practicing tailhooks on the Willow-Grove airstrip.
He cranked the huge motor, and giant gouts of yellow flame gushed out of the exhaust-pipes and washed down the fuselage.
“Won’t it catch fire?” I asked.
Our tour-guide mumbled something at me and laughed.
I will never forget that as long as I live.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CAR OF ALL TIME

Photo by Scott Williamson.

1965 E-Jag 4.2 coupe.

My friend the all-powerful Tim Belknap of the mighty Mezz, like me a car-guy, says the most beautiful car of all time is the Jaguar XK-E.
This was prompted by my statement that the 1953 Studebaker Starliner Coupe, styled by Raymond Loewy, was the most beautiful car of all time.
It’s extraordinarily beautiful, but I’m beginning to agree with Belknap.
Not too long ago (about two years) I saw a 1953 Studebaker Starliner Coupe at Watkins Glen, and it reminded me of the Blue Bomb, the tired 1953 navy-blue Two-Ten Chevrolet two-door sedan I learned to drive in.
The Blue Bomb was a turkey, and so was that Starliner. Masterful styling, but still a blowsy old antique, too big and too high.
The XK-E, by comparison, is tiny. Also dramatically low.
Why I sided with the Studebaker was that it was readily accessible to the public, whereas the XK-E was like the ‘Vette — a specialty car hardly anyone could afford.
But no matter, compared to the XK-E the Stud looks like a turkey.
I think I’d rather have the XK-E, no matter how masterful the Stud was.
Bonnie Hasse’s older brother had one — it was white — and I took a picture of it once. He used to come over to visit Bruce Stewart who by that time was driving his new ‘63 Fairlane V8, 260 and four-on-the-floor. That XK-E made Stewart’s car look like a turkey — the usual Detroit wannabee.
(Stewart got a Mustang not long after they came out; 289 four-speed. Close, but still not the XK-E. [The XK-E had fully-independent rear suspension; the Mustang was still tractor-axle.])
Apparently Belknap rode in an XK-E once, and it blew him away. The thing was so low, “you could just about touch the ground.”
My TR3 was like that — lean out the cutaway-door and you could touch the pavement. (As I recall; the frame on a TR3 was slung under the rear-axle. But the XK-E didn’t even have a frame; it was monocoque.)
But a TR3 was nowhere near as good looking as an XK-E.
The XK-E was so dramatic to look at, Car & Driver magazine replaced the motor with the overhead-cam inline six built by Pontiac. And who knows how many Small-Blocks were wedged into XK-Es.

“MY LITTLE DEUCE COUPE........

Photo by Scott Williamson.

.....You don't know what I got.”

The November 2007 entry of my Oxman hot-rod calendar (this link also gets the sportscar calendar) is one of the most famous hot-rods of all time, “Little Deuce Coupe” (AKA “Silver Sapphire”) that graced the cover of a Beach Boys album.
Thankfully alterations were not made to the basic shape of the car; a 1932 Ford Three-Window coupe.
Pardon me for saying so, but I think these three-window coupes are prettier than the roadster — a comment sure to prompt noisy blustering from West Bridgewater.
But they did tamper with the front-end; successfully, amazingly.
The ‘32 Ford radiator-shell is gorgeous; about all you can do is shorten it.
It’s vertical, and the front-end of “Little Deuce Coupe” is vertical too.
About the onliest way to put four headlights on a ‘32 Ford is the way it was done: vertically.
The car also has a massive motor: a supercharged Rocket Oldsmobile.
Oldsmobile and Cadillac V8s were the first choice of hot-rodders after the war. They were the first modern V8s (1949); and both overhead-valve.
But the Small-Block Chevy became the motor of choice after it was introduced in the 1955 model-year. (I have to say that lest the almighty Bluster-King go ballistic. —It was introduced in late 1954 as a ‘55 model.)
(He noisily insists the 409 Chevy was introduced in 1960. Maybe so, but if so it was late 1960 as a ‘61 model — and as I recall the 409 was introduced in March of ‘61.)
The Small-Block used pressed-steel valve-rockers on pressed-in ball-studs; compared to rocker-shafts on the Olds and Cadillac.
The Small-Block was quite a bit lighter, and would rev higher. Available in abundance, and amenable to tinkering, it put the infamous Ford Flat-head V8, fountainhead of original hot-rodding, out to pasture.
“Little Deuce Coupe” suffers from strange styling filigrees; like the horizontal planes at the bottom of the body.
But on balance, it’s extraordinary — because the front-end works, and they didn’t change the coupe styling (all they did was chop the top).

Photo Courtesy of Bob’s Photo©.

Pennsy M1a #6732 at Denholm; 1954.

The November 2007 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black and white All-Pennsy calendar is also rather notable: a Pennsy M1a Mountain (4-8-2) at the huge watering and coaling facility on the main line at Denholm, PA in 1954.
Denholm is about half-way between Harrisburg and Altoona — actually the freight-facility in Harrisburg was by then Enola Yard across the river west of Harrisburg. (Most freight-traffic from the east went to Enola via the Columbia branch — the original Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad. The line via Lancaster was built later.)
From the Susquehanna River west was the giant four-track “broad way” to Altoona; i.e. across the state. It paralleled the Juniata River, and the route of the original Pennsylvania Canal as far as Petersburg. (The “broad way” is now 2-3 tracks.)
The Main Line was a monster; channeling immense amounts of traffic. —So successful other lines had to be built to channel all the traffic — many have since been abandoned.
A steam-powered train had to refuel between Harrisburg (Enola) and Altoona (or reverse). Water-troughs to scoop water on-the-fly could be placed between the rails along the way, but coal was something else.
Norfolk & Western built numerous concrete coaling-towers along its route to refuel steam-engines, but the main stem of the Pennsy had that immense volume — refueling a steam-engine at a coaling-tower would tie up the railroad.
So Pennsy built this immense coaling-facility at Denholm; and at one time it was 12 tracks.
Freight-trains would diverge onto a track at Denholm, where they could stop and tend to the locomotive without holding up a follower, as that train could take another track.
Denholm had a giant coaling-facility bridging those 12 tracks, fueled by hopper-cars of coal that could run atop the facility and dump into the coal-bunkers.
Only Pennsy could afford this kind of extravagance — in fact, they had to. So much volume was moving over that main stem, anything less would have tied up the railroad.
Little remains of the Denholm coaling-facility. In my cab-ride tapes, the engineer makes note of Denholm, and it’s rather obvious, as the right-of-way widens out as it did, enough to accommodate 12 tracks.
All that remains of the coaling-facility is the stone foundation footings at trackside. Denholm disappeared with the steam-engine.

Only two calendars remain, and both are ho-hum.
-My Howard Fogg railroad calendar features a watercolor of a Shay-type logging locomotive, drawing logs over the long-abandoned Camino, Placerville & Lake Tahoe Railroad in California to a Southern Pacific connection in 1922.
Fogg didn’t depict many geared locomotives so supposedly it’s a rare treasure; but ho-hum.

-My other calendar is my Norfolk Southern Employees Photography-Contest calendar, and depicts a Norfolk Southern rail-police Explorer, roof-lights flashing, fronting a Norfolk Southern freight-train in Croxton Yard, Jersey City.
Congratulations go to the photographer that he could successfully pull off a nighttime photograph, but ho-hum.

Actually the GG1 picture isn’t that good either.
It suffers from low November light.
But it’s nine GG1s — the greatest railroad locomotive ever made.
And they’re in the cat-whisker scheme, and it’s the Army-Navy Game.
Pennsy at its finest.

“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.

As a teenager, I lived in “Wilmington,” Del.

“K4s and E6s” were Pennsy’s standard steam-engine passenger power; the K4 a 4-6-2 Pacific, and the E6 a 4-4-2 Atlantic, the standard steam-engine used in the teens, before the K4.

Nickel Plate “765” (2-8-4) and Norfolk & Western 611 (4-8-4) are restored railroad steam-locomotives. 611 has been retired, but 765 was just overhauled and is still operable. I have ridden behind both.

“Bruce Stewart” was my next-door-neighbor in Wilmington. He was a year older than me. He like me was also a railfan. We frequently made trips together to watch trains, and built a giant HO model-railroad layout in his basement.

“The Congressional Limited” (the “Congo”) was Pennsy’s premier New York City to Washington D.C. (and reverse) train. It started out as all-Pullman cars, but became partially coach by the time we rode it.

“Sandy Hill” is the religious boys camp in northeastern Maryland I worked at 1959-‘61. I was a camper there from 1954 through-and-including 1958. Our route to-and-from there passed through “Elkton,” MD, the elope capital of the universe.

“Edgemoor,” Del.

Vought (or Chance-Vought) was the original designer and maker of Corsair fighter-planes, but “Goodyear” was converted from tire to Corsair production.

A “tailhook”-landing was just like an aircraft-carrier. The airplane was snagged by an arrestor-cable after it landed. But the arrestor-cable was across a land-runway.

RE: “The all-powerful Tim Belknap.......” Tim Belknap is an editor at Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, where I once worked; one of about seven. I once posted something by Belknap, and my brother-in-Boston loudly claimed Belknap was the whole and onliest reason the Messenger was so reprehensible; unaware the paper has at least seven editors, and Belknap is toward the bottom. Belknap like me is a car-guy, so we continue to keep in contact.

“Bonnie Hasse” was class of 1964 at Brandywine High School, where I was class of 1962. Bonnie Hasse was a friend of my sister Betty, the one from Fort Lauderdale. (My sister is also BHS class of ‘64.) Hasse’s family was quite rich. Her brother was older than me.

“260” is 260 cubic-inches displacement, the first size of Ford’s Small-Block V8 engine.

The “TR3” was my first car, a 1958 Triumph TR3.

“The almighty Bluster-King” is my macho, loudmouthed brother Jack from Boston. He lives in “West Bridgewater,” south of Boston.

The “Ford Flat-head V8” was built from 1932 through the 1953 model-year. It was valve-in-block (side-valve), like a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine; as opposed to valve-in-head (overhead valve). If was easily modified to generate larger amounts of horsepower than originally delivered, but not as much as the Chevy Small-Block.

RE: “Chop the top......” about 3-4 inches are cut out of window-posts, so that the roof of a car can be lowered.

“Altoona,” PA; foot of Pennsy’s ascent of the Allegheny Mountains.

“Petersburg,” PA; about 3/4ths of the way to Altoona.

“Water-troughs” aren’t as reliable a water-source to get water as a water-tower. But to use a water-tower, ya had to stop. Steam-locomotives need water to generate steam.

A “Shay-type logging locomotive” dispensed with the usual side-rod operation activated by pistons. “Shays” were a special design by a guy named Shay to operate successfully over a logging-railroad, that often had poor trackage and steep grades. Under such conditions the typical side-rod steam-engine would spin the drivers during piston-thrust. Thrust was more evened-out and continuous with a Shay. The Shay was a “geared locomotive,” as the pistons worked a driveshaft geared to each drive-wheel. The engine depicted had three cylinders — some had four.

“Southern Pacific” was the main railroad in California. It is now merged with Union Pacific, and as such no longer exists.

Ford “Explorer,” Ford’s popular SUV.