Monthly Calendar Report for May 2008

The Stooges (Moe, Curly and Larry).
This month’s calendars are okay, but since my Stooges calendar is pretty good, I’ll make it number-one.
As usual, it’s probably a clip from a movie, but it’s fine: Moe and Larry are holding their ears as Curly lights the fuse on a supposed can of explosives.
And Moe looks pretty young, not the older looking codger he looks like in other calendar entries.
Curly, of course, is what made the Stooges. I have a nerf-ball of Curly’s head on my ‘pyooter tower. It used to go nyuk-nyuk-nyuk on impact.
Moe and Larry contributed, but Curly is the essence.

Pennsy FF2 electric #3 in Columbia, Penn. in helper service. (Photo by Jim Buckley.)
My All-Pennsy color calendar features the Pennsy FF2 box-cab electric locomotive, one of the locomotives Pennsy bought from Great Northern Railway when GN gave up on its Cascade electrification in 1956.
The FF2 didn’t end up being a prime over-the-road locomotive. It was too heavy and big for most routes, so heavy they had to be disassembled for repair at Pennsy’s Wilmington electric shops. They also had to be modified in Juniata for use on Pennsy.
This one is in helper service in Columbia, Pennsylvania, to help push trains up out of the Susquehanna River valley over the hill towards Philadelphia.
It’s not that much of a hill, but enough to require helpers. Beyond the grade a train could make do with minimal power.
Their service life-expectancy wasn’t that long; they were built by Alco-General Electric in the late ‘20s.
By April of 1962 only three out of seven were left, although Pennsy got eight from Great Northern, but one was kept for parts and not put in service.
They were excellent helpers; too big and powerful for anything else.
They were also used as helpers from Philadelphia to Paoli on the Main-Line, and as freight-engines to Baltimore via Perryville (i.e. down the Susquehanna River valley — too big for the old Northern Central line through York, which also wasn’t electrified; the Perryville line was).
You will note that both pantographs are up — the FF2 was the only Pennsy electric that required that.

Gloster Meteor. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)
My May 2008 Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Gloster Meteor, the first operational turbojet-powered fighter airplane.
The Meteor isn’t much to look at; not as attractive as fighter-jets that came later, e.g. the F86, and the utterly gorgeous Lockheed F104 Starfighter; little more than a giant, powerful jet-engine powering not much of an airplane.
In fact, being a jet, I have a hard time seeing it in the warbirds calendar, since nearly all WWII warbirds are propeller airplanes.
But it was introduced late in the war, and replaced Spitfires.
It’s a British design; melding small Rolls-Royce turbojets with a supporting airframe.
It wasn’t very aerodynamic, being straight-wing. Swept-wing jets came later.
It also wasn’t very stable; air would separate as it approached the speed-of-sound, so that the control-surfaces became useless.
Airplanes were approaching the so-called sound-barrier. Air piled up as an airplane approached the speed-of-sound, so that airplanes were hitting a wall.
The first pilot to break the sound-barrier (go faster than the speed-of-sound) was Chuck Yeager, piloting the rocket-propelled Bell X-1 in 1947 over Muroc Dry Lake (later Edwards Air Force Base) in Californy.
Later aerodynamic development made the sound-barrier within easier reach, as did more powerful jet-engines.
The X-1 was straight-wing, and didn’t benefit from the aerodynamic developments that came later.
Yeager was extraordinary to extract the speed-of-sound out of that experimental turkey. Earlier test-pilots crashed and died trying.
Later designs were much better.
I remember the so-called “Coke-bottle fuselage” applied to a redesign of the massive Convair F102 Delta-Dagger interceptor.
The earliest iterations didn’t have it, but engineers noticed an airplane was more stable at the speed-of-sound if the fuselage was pinched like a Coke-bottle (or Marilyn Monroe).
So the Meteor was often not as fast as a propeller fighter, or as glamorous.
But it was fast enough to chase the unpiloted jet-powered V-1 flying bombs that Germany was firing at England.
And Meteors shot down a few.
What the Meteor did was display the awesome potential of jet-powered fighter-planes.
It had the one thing fighter-jockeys covet most: raw speed.
Speed is what it’s all about — speed to pursue and catch the enemy, and speed to flee. Wonky performance and compromised maneuverability can be offset with speed.

1932 Ford roadster hot-rod by Roy Brizio. (Photo by Peter Vincent.)
My May 2008 “Deuce” calendar (1932 Ford hot-rods), featuring the 1932 Ford hi-boy hot-rod by Roy Brizio, has only one flaw: the laid-back two-piece DuVall-style windshield.
Sorry, but the ‘32 Ford looks best with the stock one-piece windshield; chopped perhaps — but a two-piece windshield looks out of place.
The ‘32 Ford is an early ‘30s car. A two-piece split windshield is late ‘30s or early ‘40s. It looks out-of-place on an early ‘30s car.
The body is also fiberglass, not the real stock steel body.
Well, I guess that’s okay. Fiberglass is better than no hot-rod at all. The only advantage to the stock steel body is rarity. (And there are companies making reproduction steel bodies for hot-rods.)
Brizio had enough class to remove the exterior body-hinges for the doors; and the car probably has bigger doors and more interior room than stock.
I remember a 5-window Model A coupe hot-rod, a remake of the yellow Milner car from American Graffiti, built by one of the guys who remodeled our kitchen on Winton Road.
It had a plywood floor, and you sat on it.
Chopped, channeled, sectioned and lowered meant it looked great, but was horrible to sit in.
You sat on the floor, scrunched under the roof.
But this Brizio car looks pretty functional.
And it looks great!
The paint, though dramatic, avoids the garishness of flames and heavy pin-striping.
It also shows excellent choice of wheels: American Racing five-spoke mags.
I suppose ya can still get ‘em, but maybe not. Mags always looked great, and now custom-wheels are spindly and garishly overdone. Mags are ‘60s.
The car looks great, except for that windshield.

Orders get hooped up to a northbound Pennsy train at Leolyn, Pa. on the Elmira branch. The engine is an M1a 4-8-2. (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy.)
My May 2008 “Audio-Visual Designs B&W All-Pennsy calendar is a classic shot taken by Jim Shaughnessy.
Shaughnessy was one of the fabled photographic chroniclers of the end of steam-locomotive usage on American railroads.
Steam-locomotion has largely been forgotten, but I am old enough to have been around in the late ‘40s when steam-locomotion was still used on the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines (“REDD-ing,” not “READ-ing”) in south Jersey.
Diesel-electric locomotives began replacing steam in the late ‘30s and ‘40s, but Pennsy hung on until 1957. Supposedly this was because they shipped so much coal, and steam-locomotives burned coal.
They also were rather conservative.
Shaughnessy lived in or around Binghamton, N.Y., so much of his photography is railroads around Binghamton, particularly Delaware & Hudson.
His coverage of Pennsy is mainly the Elmira branch, which went from Williamsport, Pa. up into New York, and eventually a large coal wharf on Lake Ontario at Sodus Point to load coal-bearing lake steamships.
This is the old Northern Central, which went from Baltimore north into New York. (Much of the line is now abandoned; and the coal wharf at Sodus Point is removed.)
Steam-locomotion is something I’ll never forget. A roaring steam-locomotive at full song is a living, breathing animal.
It also was a HUGE technological leap; a mechanical contrivance that made the pack-horse obsolete.
It also could move a lot more freight than mere pack-horses or canal-boats; and unlike canals could operate in winter.
Steam-locomotives weren’t as efficient or effective as diesel locomotion, but far more dramatic.
A few steam-locomotives are still in use, although they’re restorations. Years ago I rode behind Nickel-Plate 765 in West Virginia and it brought tears to my eyes.
That thing was doing over 70 mph!
Shaughnessy was using a 4x5 press-camera that was commonly in use at that time; probably a Graflex or Speed-Graphic.
I used 4x5 negatives for a photography course at Rochester Institute of Technology in the ‘70s, and they were a bear.
But it wasn’t a Graflex or Speed-Graphic. It was a view-camera on an adjustable pole-stand.
It was unwieldy. At least a Graflex is fairly portable; although the negative-size contradicts.
During the ‘50s the Rollei Twin Lens Reflex using 120 roll-film came into use, along with even smaller cameras using 35mm movie-film.
I think 120 film was about 70mm. It had a 2&1/4-inch-square image.
My neighbor in northern Delaware bought a Rollei Twin Lens Reflex, although it was a cheaper model — a RollieCord. He was about 15.
It was at the instigation of salesman Bob at the Custom Sport Shop, our source for HO-scale model trains. Salesman Bob was a railfan, and had shot Pennsy steam.
But twin-lens reflexes suffer from parallax-error, the fact the viewfinder was seeing slightly different from the film.
The workaround was a single-lens reflex, an idea that was just being developed.
With it, by a retractable mirror, the viewfinder saw the same thing as the film: i.e. the viewfinder was looking through the camera lens.
—Don’t know as this is that important, except at close range.
My wife’s mother is always upset her pictures of people with her old Brownie weren’t centered. “I had it centered,” she’d bellow.
Um, parallax-error.
At Houghton College I was introduced to the Pentax Spotmatic single-lens reflex 35mm camera.
Someone was using one to shoot candid shots for the college yearbook.
They loaned me the yearbook Spotmatic for the 1965 Watkins Glen Grand Prix; and it was much better than anything I had ever driven before.
So after I graduated I bought one myself, and ended up using it over 40 years. In fact, I bought a second body, and a slew of Pentax lenses — tried to make my way into freelance photography with it.
My attempt at freelance photography went nowhere, although I sold many race-photos to Road & Track Magazine.
That was long ago in the early ‘70s; and I had my own darkroom and developed my own film and made my own prints.
Mostly it was black-and-white; and usually my film was TriX, since I had the most success with that.
The goal was to barely record an image on the film, kiss the film for a few seconds with developer to render a printable image, and then manipulate the print to get an image. —That way the highlights recorded as printable; hit the film too hard, and the highlights bleached right outta sight.
(I have a slew of prints that are too contrasty; i.e. before this.)
Now I have the dreaded Nikon D100 digital camera, essentially a single-lens reflex recording a digital image onto a memory-chip instead of film. (Nikon has since upgraded the D100; first the D200 and now the D300.)
The D100 was enough to make me switch to digital from my Spotmatics, where I was no longer using the integral light-meter anyway because it could be fooled. —I’d take along the film’s exposure card, and shoot only in sunlight (or daylight).
Digital is much friendlier than film; I’m no longer limited to shooting an entire 24 or 36 exposure roll before I can remove the film.
Just remove the memory-chip and put it in my ‘pyooter.
I also have Photoshop®, which is much better than a darkroom with its messy chemicals.
I also am shooting color instead of black-and-white. Color film back then was a farm-out — no way could I have ever driven all that mess in a darkroom. Black-and-white was messy enough.
Thankfully, pretty much the same rules apply to recent photography as my old photography: namely that every picture needs a foreground — something to give the viewer a sense of scale.
It also doesn’t hurt to allow part of the photo to be out of focus; although I can get more depth-of-field with a smaller aperture. Sometimes a blurred background doesn’t distract from what’s more important — if it were in focus, it might.
I learned all this stuff from viewing photographs used at the mighty Mezz.
I didn’t have that in the ‘70s; although it appeared maintaining contacts was more important than your eye.
So here’s old Shaughnessy standing trackside in the cold on the PRR Elmira branch at Leolyn, Pa., waiting for a train.
A snow-shower starts, and the Leolyn operator comes out to hoop up the train-orders to the fireman of the passing engine.
It’s a fabulous shot; probably fabulous enough to make it number-one ahead of the Stooges.
Shaughnessy never lets us down.

Norfolk Southern freight rumbles across the Mississippi River into Missouri. (Photo by Bob Koehn.)
My May 2008 Norfolk Southern Employees’ Calendar is a photograph of a Norfolk Southern freight-train crossing the Mississippi River toward Hannibal, Missouri.
The photo was taken by Bob Koehn, bridge-tender for the draw in this bridge. —Although I don’t see a draw.
But I would guess we ain’t looking at the entire bridge.
I’m sure the Mississippi is very wide at this point, so there’s a lot more to this bridge than what we see in this picture.
Like what we’re seeing is a segment toward the shore from an island in the river. —The draw is probably beyond the island, in a navigable part of the river.
And like all upper-deck trusses, it’s a tunnel. The train is enclosed by the bridge.
Koehn had to wait until the right moment, when the nose of the lead-unit poked out of the truss.

1978 Indianapolis 500 Corvette pacecar Limited Edition. (Photo by Richard Prince.)
My May 2008 Corvette calendar is a 1978 Indianapolis 500 Corvette pacecar Limited Edition.
Corvette paced the Indy 500 a few times, and 1978 is the first time.
Chevrolet made 6,502 1978 Corvette pacecar replicas, black on silver with red trim — with a complete Indianapolis 500 pacecar decal package if the buyer wanted it installed.
It’s the C3 Corvette, made from 1968 to 1982; great looking, but supposedly a terrible car.
Supposedly quality-control was spotty, and in a drift the car would do a whoopdy-doo: set and then break loose.
You had to be very careful and compensate for its handling flaws lest it spin into the trees. It had immense grip, but was tricky.
There was a discernible hiccup in the suspension. You had to allow a few seconds for the suspension to set up. If you didn’t, it spun.
It was also during the C3 that Corvette became more a profiler’s car than a sportscar — a car for divorced dentists with gorgeous trophy-wives. (Thank you, Belknap.)
Many C3 Corvettes came with air-conditioning; since when is air-conditioning a necessity on a sportscar?
I remember John Greenwood tried to make a racecar out of the ‘Vette, but had to just about reengineer the entire car from ground up. (For example, a stock Corvette would fly at speed.)
Supposedly the C4 Corvettes rectified the handling problems, and the C6 is a great sportscar.
But Corvettes are still more profiler’s cars than a sportscar — a car for divorced dentists. (They’d make a great sportscar in the hands of non-profilers.)
Nevertheless, the 1978 Indianapolis 500 Corvette pacecar Limited Edition is a great looking car.

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

“Wilmington,” Del. (I lived in a northern suburb of Wilmington as a teenager.)

“Paoli,” Pa., is a western suburb of Philadelphia, about 20 miles out. It’s on the mainline of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and is as far west as Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) goes. PRR once had shops there for maintaining self-propelled commuter cars. SEPTA still does. Originally PRR’s electrification only went to Paoli, but that was originally only for commuter-service. Electrification was later extended farther to Harrisburg, for over-the-road electric trains.

“Spitfires” were the supreme British fighter-plane. The SuperMarine Spitfire.

“Chopped” is cut down. “Chopped, channeled, sectioned and lowered” is extensively lowering the appearance of a car. “Chop” means cut out a section of the window-pillars, so the roof can be lowered; “channel” is to build channels in the car-body so it can drop lower on the frame-rails; “section” is to cut a section out of the sides of the car-body, so it isn’t as high; “lower” is to reconfigure the car’s suspension so it sits lower. —Often this meant installing “lowering-blocks” (spacers) between the axle and the springs.

“Model A” Ford, built from 1928 to 1931.

We lived in an old farmhouse in Rochester on “Winton Road;” 1976-1989. By the time we lived in it a suburb had grown up around it. That suburb was later merged into Rochester.

“Mags” are cast-magnesium custom wheels — very light.

“Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” (PRSL) is an amalgamation of Pennsylvania and Reading railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much track. It was promulgated in 1933.

“Northern Central” was bought by the Pennsylvania Railroad about 1880.

“Nickel-Plate 765” is a restored steam-locomotive of The Nickel Plate Railroad. It’s used frequently for railfan excursion service. —Nickel Plate was merged into the Norfolk & Western Railroad, now Norfolk Southern Railroad (see below) and ran from Buffalo to St. Louis and Chicago. It was called “Nickel Plate” by scions from the mighty New York Central railroad, because it offered such stiff competition.

Rochester Institute of Technology is a school founded by Kodak, the lead employer in Rochester years ago. It was first in Rochester, but by 1970 moved to a new campus in the southern Rochester suburb of Henrietta. Founded by Kodak, it specialized in photography and later printing. It’s now a college, and specializes in engineering.

“Custom Sport Shop” was a hobby-shop in Fairfax Shopping Center in northern Delaware, near where we lived.

“Houghton College,” in western New York, is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it. Houghton is a religious college.

“Watkins Glen Grand Prix” was the one-and-only United States Grand Prix at that time, at Watkins Glen Road Course near Watkins Glen in central New York.

“Dreaded Nikon D100......” —I am loudly excoriated by all my siblings for preferring a professional camera (like the Nikon D100) instead of a point-and-shoot. This is because I long ago sold photos to nationally published magazines.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over two years ago. Best job I ever had.

RE: “train-orders.....” —A segment of a railroad might be unsignaled, so a train might have to operate by train-orders: written instructions as to how to operate over a railroad; e.g. where to stop and take siding so an opposing train could pass. Train-orders would be written up by lineside dispatchers and “hooped up” to the train-crew as the train passed.

“Norfolk Southern” Railroad; a 20-year-old merger of the Norfolk & Western and Southern Railroads. It’s now a major player in east-coast railroading.

Six Corvettes have been made over the years: the first Corvettes — 1953-1962; the early Sting Rays — 1963-1967; the later Sting Rays — 1968-1982; the C4 — 1983-1996; the C5 — 1997-2004; and the C6 — 2005-present. The C6 is the current iteration. —Earlier Corvettes are the C1 through C3. The “C” designation is a fairly recent fan application.

“Belknap” is Tim Belknap, an editor at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, where I once worked. Like me, Belknap is a car-guy.