Monthly calendar report

Photo by Peter Vincent.

The 1932 Ford Three-Window owned by Keith Cornell of New York, raced at Bonneville Salt-Flats in 2003.

My January 2008 calendars aren’t especially extraordinary, but most extraordinary is the 1932 Ford hot-rod pictured.
It’s a real hot-rod: raw and basic, totally unlike the dream-world creations of Chuck Foose.
I tossed my Oxman hot-rod calendar because it was all Chuck Foose.
It had a gussied-up ‘54 Chevy, for crying out loud.
The ‘53 and ‘54 Chevys are probably the turkiest cars ever made, although the ‘54 looked marginally better than the ‘53.
(I learned how to drive in 1961 in a 1953 Chevy; the so-called “Blue Bomb” [it was navy-blue]. It had the original shocks and brakes when it finally failed inspection in 1963 at 100,000 miles. The brakes were worn clear through to the backing-plates — the shocks were spaghetti: ka-BOING, ka-BOING.)
This ‘32 was driven to Bonneville Salt-Flats in 2003 and raced; it has a 312 cubic-inch Ford V8 Y-block.
The Y-block was introduced in the 1954 model-year; Ford’s first V8 motor since the hoary old FlatHead, which was introduced in the 1932 model.
It was called the Y-block because the engine-castings were taken down along side the crankshaft bearings; a nice idea, but it made the motor heavy.
And compared to the mighty Chevrolet Small-Block introduced in the 1955 model-year, it was a boat-anchor.
I remember a guy drag-racing a ‘55 Ford Y-block at Cecil County Drag-o-way against ‘55 Chevys tuned by Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, and the Ford kept getting creamed. (Jenkins went on to become a drag-racing legend himself.)
The Small-Blocks would rev much better than the Y-block. They had much lighter valve-gear with ball-stud rockers; while the Y-block still had rocker-shafts.
The calendar car ain’t much to look at: flat-black primer with hand-applied racing numbers.
But it’s real — much more real than a Foose dream.
And it’s a three-window coupe, BAR NONE the prettiest ‘32 Ford ever made.
Too bad the motor ain’t a Small-Block.

Photo by Anthony Paci on slide-film.

A Norfolk Southern freight-train moves out of Washington, N.J.

The January 2008 entry in my Norfolk Southern Railroad calendar is pretty fair, but not as good as last month.
NS conductor Anthony Paci of Jersey City is out in the snow capturing a Norfolk Southern freight negotiating a woody cut near Washington, N.J.
They’re four-axle Geeps, but not the high-hood version Norfolk & Western had.
Norfolk & Western eventually merged with Southern Railway, buying into all those chop-nose Geeps Southern had. And NS has since expanded even more, ending up with all the old Pennsy portion of Conrail.
So high-nose NS Geeps are pretty rare any more; although you see them occasionally.
One wonders what line this actually is — perhaps the old Erie.
Norfolk Southern’s line across the Southern Tier of western New York to Buffalo is the old Erie.
(The light tells me the train is heading north.)

Photo by Otto Perry.

Pennsylvania Railroad 2-10-4 “J” eastbound at Horseshoe Curve, 7/15/53.

The January 2008 entry of my black & white Audio-Visual Designs All-Pennsy calendar is a J 2-10-4 steam locomotive rounding Horseshoe Curve in 1953.
The J is Pennsy’s war-baby, and Pennsy’s only SuperPower steamer. Most noticeable is that it’s not a Pennsy design. As such, it lacks the trademark Belpaire firebox, a feature on almost every Pennsy steam-engine.
A Belpaire firebox isn’t round at the top, following the curvature of the boiler courses.
Connection of the firebox to the boiler has always been a challenge. That connection was prone to cracks and leaks, and could fail over time due to vibration.
Of course, the bottom of the firebox had to be flat to accommodate the fire grate, and the roof of the firebox might also be flat, but the boiler-top over the firebox was round.
With a Belpaire firebox, the boiler-courses over the firebox-top were also flat, inviting difficulty where that area met the boiler.
But apparently Pennsy thought well enough of it to use the Belpaire design on just about every steam-engine. —Plus they engineered reinforcement into the design.
But Pennsy didn’t really do steam-locomotive development during the ‘30s — primarily because of electrification and the surplus of steam-locomotives it produced.
Had they, they might have designed a counter to SuperPower, perhaps along the lines of Norfolk & Western’s 1200-series A-class 4-6-6-4.
Pennsy never really got into articulation, but something like the A would have been well-suited to Pennsy’s mountainous terrain.
So when WWII came along, with its extraordinary traffic demands, Pennsy was stuck with tired old steamers from the ‘20, like the I1 Decapod (2-10-0).
The War Department didn’t allow development, and Pennsy didn’t have time to prototype, so Pennsy had to shop.
The J is the Chesapeake & Ohio T class, with slight adaptations to make it look like Pennsy.
In some ways the J was poorly suited to Pennsy — slogging up The Hill out of Altoona at 30 mph was sort of a waste.
The J was a SuperPower engine: designed for 50-60 mph running on flat terrain. It had the power to slog up The Hill but that was misusing the design.
Many Js found their way to a line in Ohio, where they could run 50-60 mph on flat terrain.
But a J was better than a Decapod running out of steam climbing The Hill. The steaming ability of a J was prolific.

Photo by Philip Makanna.

Supermarine Seafire.

The January 2008 entry of my Ghosts calendar is a Supermarine Seafire, an aircraft carrier version of the fabulous Supermarine Spitfire.
But apparently the Seafire didn’t do very well as a carrier plane for two reasons: -1) it could only be flown for 90 minutes, which wasn’t much time to do anything, and -2) it had a narrow landing gear, which allowed the airplane to tip over and dig a wing into the carrier deck on landing — and landing on a heaving aircraft carrier is a slam-bang proposition.
U.S. naval aircraft carrier airplanes had much greater range, and wider landing gear.
You don’t see much mention of the Seafire, yet exploits of the Corsair and the Hellcat, among others, are legendary. Then there is the Douglas Dauntless dive bomber — not that fast, but it saw a lot of use.
Of course, the Seafire is the naval version of one of the most fabulous propeller fighter-planes ever made, the Supermarine Spitfire. I has a Rolls-Royce Griffin V12 of 1850 horsepower; comparable to the Packard-Merlin V12 in the P51 Mustang. A Rolls-Royce engine was in the Spitfire. —The Packard-Merlin is a slightly modified Rolls-Royce Merlin.
—A fabulous airplane. Just not a good carrier plane.

Photo by Bill Volkmer.

Alco FAs at Enola engine terminal; 6/16/62. (They’re A-B-A.)

My All-Pennsy Color Calendar has Alco FAs at Enola, across from Harrisburg.
The Alco cab-units were the prettiest diesel-locomotives of all time; especially the PA passenger unit.
So it’s a shame they weren’t as successful as their plain-jane bulldog-nosed “covered wagon” rivals from EMD.
Alco is American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, N.Y., a long-time manufacturer of steam-locomotives. (Actually it was an amalgamation of earlier steam locomotive builders.)
Alco entered the diesel-locomotive business when the railroads began switching from steam to diesel.
Pennsy held out til the bitter end, and didn’t complete dieselization until 1957.
When they finally did, they had to buy diesels from anybody and everybody, so were saddled with unreliable diesels; particularly Baldwin and Alco and Erie-built Fairbanks-Morse.
Some locomotives had submarine diesels, which would break down due to railroad vibration.
EMD diesels would run forever; everything else might cripple.
The Alco FAs were pretty to look at, but crews abhorred them. They might cripple out on the mainline and tie up the railroad.

Two calendars remain: -1) my All-Corvette calendar, and -2) my Three Stooges calendar.

My Corvette calendar isn’t worth scanning, because it has a recent (C6) Corvette doing a nighttime pit-stop in the 2006 Daytona 24 Hours.
Ho-hum. Not much too look at, except there is also a small panned shot of the same car at speed, and the brake discs are glowing red through the wheels.
That probably should be the primary picture, and the pit-stop secondary.

My Stooges calendar is a replacement for my Howard Fogg railroad calendar.
Howard Fogg is the most famous railroad artist of all time, but I tired of looking at Colorado narrow-gauge.
Fogg was always doing artwork of Colorado narrow-gauge; you could figure on five or more per calendar.
My Stooges calendar is a reaction to Fogg boredom.
—Except standing artwork of the Stooges doesn’t come off as well as a Stooges video-clip.
I also have a DVD collection of all the Stooges shorts, which is probably what I watched as a kid, but doesn’t seem as funny.

“Bonneville Salt-Flats” is the salt-based dry lake-bed next to Great Salt Lake in Utah. It is so big (and flat) they can run ultimate speed-trails there.

The Chevrolet “Small-Block” V8 was introduced at 265 cubic-inches in the 1955 model-year. It was phenomenally successful, and is still in production, although it’s been enlarged and much improved. (The Chevrolet “Big-Block” was introduced in the 1965 model-year, and is much larger.)

“Cecil County Drag-o-way” is a long defunct quarter-mile dragstrip in northeastern Maryland. I went there often while in college during the middle ‘60s.

“Geep” is the nickname given to EMD GP road-switchers (four axles). “Covered-Wagon” is the nickname given to full cab-units: e.g. E and F-units by EMD, FAs and PAs by Alco. (Baldwin and Fairbanks-Morse also made cab-units.)

“EMD” is Electromotive Division of General Motors, GM’s manufacturer of railroad diesel-locomotives. Most railroads used EMD when they dieselized; although many now use General-Electric railroad diesel-locomotives.

RE: “High-hood” versus “chop-nose....” —All relate to the short hood in front of the cab of a road-switcher. “High-hood” goes all the way up to the roof of the cab; “chop-nose” goes about halfway up, and allows better frontal vision. The locomotives pictured are chop-nose.

“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.

“Erie” Railroad.

“SuperPower” is special design from Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio; intended to maximize the steam output and high-speed power of railroad locomotives. Lima sold many SuperPower locomotives. The engineering was promulgated in the late ‘20s and into the ‘30s.

With “articulation” a railroad steam-locomotive usually had two driver-sets, both powered by a single boiler. With “articulation” the front driver-set was hinged to the rear driver-set, so the engine could negotiate sharp turns (like switch turnouts). The rear driver-set would be solidly attached to the boiler, but the front driver-set was hinged to the rear frame. (E.g. 4-6-6-4 or 2-8-8-4, and others. The Pennsy T [4-4-4-4] wasn’t articulated.)

RE: “Pennsy held out til the bitter end...” —primarily because they carried so much coal, and steam-locomotives burned coal.

“C6” is the current iteration of Corvette. There have been five earlier iterations: C1 through C5. (Earlier Corvettes didn’t go by that nomenclature.)

“Narrow-gauge” is three feet between the rails — standard-gauge is four feet 8&1/2 inches. You hardly see any narrow-gauge any more; almost all railroads are standard-gauge. Narrow-gauge could allow tighter curvature (it has smaller equipment), so it could be built more cheaply than standard-gauge, especially in challenging areas like the Colorado Rockies. (There are other railroad gauges: like meter-gauge, and five feet. The original Erie was six feet.)