Monthly Calendar Report for December 2008

Three of my calendars saved the best for last.

P-51D Mustang “Kimberly Kaye.” (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

The December 2008 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar has the greatest propeller fighter-plane of all time, the fabulous North-American Aviation P-51 Mustang.
Every American, by law, should be required to see a P-51 Mustang fly.
I saw one fly at the Geneseo Air Show a few years ago, and I will never forget it.
It was doing aerobatics: hammerhead stalls, and loops, and 500+ mph power-dives.
The V12 Merlin motor, which is unmuffled, puts out an incredible crackle. That alone is reason enough to experience it.
I’ll see if I can get the link to the P-51 .wav; here it is: http://www.mustangsmustangs.com/p-51/avi.audio/P-51FlyBy.wav
Although once I saw a Navy Grumman Bearcat fighter put on an aerial display equal to a Mustang.
It was arcing all over the sky, and putting out an incredible sound.
But the P-51 has grace.
It looks like a streamlined air-racer, which is what it mimics — plus it was later raced.
The radial-engine racers were probably faster — they had more powerful engines.
But the Packard built Rolls-Royce Merlin in a P-51 could be souped up.
Plus the P-51 was a fabulous airplane; enough to give the more powerful Navy fighters a good race.

The greatest railroad locomotive of all time. (Photo by Dr. Carl Smetko.)

The December entry of my All-Pennsy Color Calendar is the greatest railroad locomotive of all time, the fabulous Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 electric locomotive.
It’s in the single-stripe paint scheme I saw so much of in the ‘60s. Earlier was the five pinstripe “cat-whisker” scheme promulgated by industrial designer Raymond Loewy.
I saw only one cat-whisker GG1, in 1960.
#4913 is still around, preserved at the Railroaders’ Memorial Museum in Altoona, PA. But it’s been repainted into the Tuscan Red cat-whisker-scheme, and it’s stored outside, so is rusting to smithereens.
And its pantograph is reaching toward nothing — no overhead catenary (wire).
All the others I saw, and there were hundreds, were the single-stripe scheme pictured here.
People think the cat-whisker scheme looked better, but I think the single-stripe scheme looked just as good.
The train pictured is at North Philadelphia Station, a feeble attempt by Pennsy to get its New York-to-Chicago trains out of Philadelphia’s grand Broad St. Terminal.
Broad St. Terminal is long-gone, and reflected the fact the Pennsy was originally to Philadelphia.
A through New York-to-Chicago train had to reverse out of Broad St.
Amtrak still does this; reversing out of Philadelphia’s 30th St. Station.
North Philly is also the junction of a commuter line.
Plus it’s an interlocking with a maze of crossover switches.
It’s so rough the ride-test of a train is how well it rides through the North Philly interlocking.
We once caught a train at North Philly in the late ‘60s.
Years ago, Pennsy operated trains over the “Pennsylvania-Reading (‘RED-ing,’ not ‘READ-ing’) Seashore Lines” (PRSL) to south Jersey seashore resorts. (In fact, go back far enough and both Pennsylvania Railroad and arch-rival Reading ran trains from south Jersey seashore resorts to ferry-slips in Camden, and then across the Delaware river from Camden, NJ to Philadelphia by passenger-ferry. Although Pennsy was on Camden & Atlantic, which was chartered in 1852, which they came to control; and Reading was on competitor Atlantic City Railroad, taken over by Reading. The C&A was slightly more circuitous, but both railroads were running competing “Boardwalk Flyers” at over 100 mph through the south Jersey Pine-Barrens. A train might get across south Jersey in 50 minutes — it’s 55 miles. The two railroads were competing to be fastest.
“Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” (PRSL) was 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. Both railroads had competing lines serving just about every south Jersey seashore resort, and were losing money.
Pennsy opened a Delaware river crossing in 1896, so it could run trains direct from Philadelphia to the Jersey seashore (“da show-ah”) without ferries. It also allowed them to railroad freight direct into south Jersey without ferries.
This was the service we were using, and it was still PRSL — Amtrak didn’t begin until 1970.
And at that time, Atlantic City was the only PRSL service that ran with a locomotive and coaches, instead of the self-propelled Budd RDC car. (Even Atlantic City eventually switched to the RDC.)
But I don’t think the Atlantic City service ran all the way to 30th St. Station in Philly. You had to get off at North Philly.
So here we were at grungy old North Philly Station waiting for a southbound GG1-powered passenger train that would take us to Wilmington, DE. —My parents were living in Wilmington then, so we were staying with them.
It was all train trips; up to North Philly, over to Atlantic City, and then back home via North Philly.
Even the island rain-shelters were falling apart. They had wooden roofs that were rotting.
I had wanted to make that Atlantic City train-ride for years. My first encounter with trains was the seashore trips on the PRSL on the old Camden & Atlantic through Haddonfield, NJ in the late ‘40s.
And it was still steam-engines. I’m lucky enough to have witnessed steam-locomotives.
My last steamer was a rusty Pennsy K4 Pacific in 1956 at the Garden State Park horse-track near Erlton. It was Pennsy’s racetrack excursion service from Philly.
In 1961 or ‘62 I went to Claymont station north of Wilmington on the old PRR electrified line to Washington, D.C., now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
There were four tracks, and I was used to seeing express passenger trains on the middle tracks. Commuter trains and freight usually ran the outside tracks.
So here I am arm hooked around a light-pole about eight feet from the outside track.
I hear a southbound train coming; sounds like a GG1 express.
But it was on the outside track!
It blasted by at about 100 mph, and almost sucked me into it.
Had I not had my arm hooked around that lightpole, I wouldn’t be here.
The GG1 was the greatest railroad locomotive ever.
I remember a GG1 hitting a bulldozer on a flatbed south of Wilmington.
It tossed the ‘dozer about 200 feet; and the G was hardly damaged — didn’t even derail.

“Callaway SuperNatural.” (Photo by Richard Prince.)

The December entry of my All-Corvette calendar has a Callaway “SuperNatural” C6 Corvette.
My friend Tim Belknap thinks Corvettes are disgusting, and look like shampoo bottles.
Well, it’s not the C3, but I still think it looks pretty good.
The previous C5 was indeed a shampoo bottle; big and overstyled. The C6, which this car is, rectified all the styling flaws of the C5, namely that it was too big.
The other problem is the motor is still based on the ancient Small-Block which debuted in the 1955 model-year.
The Small-Block was a fabulous and ground-breaking design.
And Zora Arkus-Duntov was hired, and made the Corvette a great car.
His first move was to wrench the fabulous Small-Block into the ‘Vette.
And that was the standard motor for years. (The only other motor available was the Chevy Big-Block, and that was overkill — massively powerful but too heavy.)
But over-the-years engine technology has advanced beyond the Small-Block.
Even arch-competitor Ford is using 4-overhead-cam V8s in its Mustangs.
Even Cadillac has a 4-cam 32-valve V8; but Corvette still soldiers on with its V8 based on the hoary old Small-Block.
The Small-Block can be made very powerful, and it is in the C6.
They’ve even resorted to supercharging it, and it’s been hogged out to nearly (and occasionally) seven liters — that’s 427 cubic inches, a size the Big-Block was available in.
But it’s still only two valves per cylinder, and only one cam, nestled between the cylinder banks under the intake paraphernalia; the same layout that’s been used by Detroit for eons.
Where are the double overhead cams? Where are the four valves per cylinder?
All are available from other makers (especially motorcycles — the goal for power-mad speed crazies).
Yet Corvette soldiers on with a gigantic mega-power boat-anchor.
Still, I’d take one — although I have a dog to carry.
Shove your foot into a ‘Vette, and it’ll throw you back in the seat.
NICE, but where do I carry a dog?
And it’s still essentially the C4 chassis, which was introduced in the 1984 model-year.
The car pictured is a special model from Callaway Engineering (“kal-o-WAY”); the so-called “SuperNatural.”
It uses a 550-horsepower seven-liter motor with forged crankshaft, connecting rods, and pistons, so it hangs together at high output.
There are other Corvette specialists; e.g. Lingenfelter, (“lynn-gin-FELT-rrrrr;” as in “get,” not the liquor) although they’re more dealing with Chevy motors, not just the Corvette.
Lingenfelter puts twin turbochargers on the ‘Vette, which is asking for trouble. Lingenfelter ‘Vettes have broken when road-tested.
Both Callaway and Lingenfelter improve the handling of the ‘Vette, and use bigger brakes (less likely to fade when used hard).
But it’s still the same hoary old Small-Block layout, although much improved since 1955.
The ‘Vette is supposed to be GM’s premier sportscar offering, yet gets by with an over-strung, antique and gas-guzzling boat-anchor for a motor. It needs double overhead cams, and four-valves per cylinder. It’s no longer the ‘70s.

Pennsylvania Railroad T1 #5520 at 80 mph. (Photo by Otto Perry©.)

The December entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black & white All-Pennsy calendar has a Pennsy T1 4-4-4-4 at 80 mph on the wide-open Fort Wayne division across Indiana from Chicago.
The T1 was Pennsy’s attempt to replace the K4 Pacific after World War II — plus an attempt to replace with a steam-engine.
But it wasn’t very successful.
For one thing, it’s not actually an articulated; although it looks like one.
That front driver-set isn’t hinged to move independently of the rear driver-set; the definition of “articulated.”
What it really is, is a 4-8-4 with four drive pistons, the eight drivers broken into two groups of four each.
All eight drivers are on the same frame, and move with the attached boiler.
Pennsy could do this because their curvature was fairly open. The Fort Wayne division pictured is arrow straight.
But the T1 suffered from the affliction that effects all steam-locomotives with two-or-more driver-sets, namely that one driver-set (usually the front) was carrying less weight than the other(s), and was therefore more likely to slip.
And on the T1 the drivers are big: 80 inches in diameter (same size as a K4).
So a T1 might accelerate out of a station stop, it’s front driver-set spinning wildly.
This even happened at speed.
80 mph cruising, and a driver-set starts spinning.
The only way to catch a slip on a steam-engine is close the throttle; which cuts off steam to all driver-sets on a locomotive with multiple driver-sets (unless there were separate throttles to each piston-set, which I don’t think anyone did).
Train slows, or is a bear to start.
The other problem was that T1s were smoky — why, I don’t know.
What this usually means is it wasn’t burning its fuel (soft coal) efficiently.
Pennsy never got to develop steam-locomotives in the ‘30s.
They were developing electrification, including the fabulous GG1 electric locomotive.
If they had developed steam engines in the ‘30s, they might have got around to a good 4-8-4 to replace the K4 Pacific.
But such was not to be. (The T1 was too much too quickly.)
Nevertheless, the T1s were gorgeous to look at; particularly the first two styled by Raymond Loewy.
But Pennsy fiddled the Loewy design to make the locomotive easier to build and maintain.
Loewy’s shark-nose was massively shortened, the gorgeous smokebox chamfers reduced.
Still, it looked pretty good.
And a T1 could gobble up the miles.
The picture looks like it was taken with a focal-plane shutter — the train is slightly tilted forward at the top.
But it’s 1946, not 1933, like that picture of the K4 Pacific on Rockville Bridge, the October entry in my Audio-Visual Designs black & white All-Pennsy calendar.
Same photographer, better camera.

Mega-slammed ‘32 Ford fendered roadster of Stanley Wanlass. (Photo by Peter Vincent.)

The December entry of my All-1932 Ford hot-rod calendar is a slammed 1932 Ford roadster.
That front is so low, ya wonder how it got in a driveway. It would probably scrape just pulling into the burger-joint.
With a corroded Moon fuel canister between the frame-rails in front of the radiator, it looks great.
But it’s so low, where do ya drive it other than billiard-table flat pavement; e.g. an airport runway?
Years ago a chopped, channeled, sectioned and lowered lead-sled ‘49 Mercury pulled into the Charcoal Pit burger-joint in northern Delaware.
It looked really great pulling in, but scraped the driveway entrance.
To negotiate the average driveway entrance, ya need at least three inches of clearance; maybe four-to-six or more.
At only four feet tall the lead-sled looked great, but had only 1.5 to two inches of ground clearance.
Someone did a fabulous job, but made it impractical.
Another problem with the car pictured is where do ya sit?
That roof is so low, about the only way to comfortably drive the thing is with the top off.
A couple years ago I saw a pickup truck at a Canandaigua car-show with a top-chop of five-to-six inches.
I looked at it, and wondered how ya drive it.
The owner thereupon got in and scrunched. His view forward was a gun-slit windshield atop the dashboard.
What pleasure could there ever be croozing like that?
The Charcoal Pit led-sled was so low the driver had to sit in the back — a specially constructed seat where the rear seats were.
And still he was scrunched.

The December entry of my Three Stooges calendar is only flown because the Stooges are dressed up so funny.
With Larry it’s that cowboy hat, and with Moe it’s the bandana.
They also have their pants hiked up to their chins — the perfect Stooges attire.
One wonders why Curly is exiting that cave in Napoleon garb.
I bet it’s a great movie, but like all movie-still cut-outs of Stooges movies, it doesn’t work too well as a photograph.
Moe looks put off, and Larry is putting on an act.
Minor details that don’t destroy a movie, but degrade a photograph.
Like most photos in this calendar, it stumbles because it’s not a posed photograph.
I doubt if there are any.
The Stooges are slapstick action comedy.
The comedy is the action; not the poses.
Great movies, but sayonara Stooges calendar.
I did not reorder; muscle-cars instead.

The December entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees calendar is not worth flying.
It’s a mood-shot: parallel yard tracks under about two inches of thin snow fading into a dense fog.
There’s a train coming far away, but all you can see of it are its headlight, and the ditch lights.
It’s a train calendar; make the train visible.

The “Geneseo Air Show” is an air-show for classic propeller airplanes at a grass airstrip near the small western New York town of Geneseo, south of Rochester. It’s been around for years.

“Aerobatics” are acrobatics by airplanes.

A “hammerhead stall” is to fly straight up until the propeller (or jet) thrust can no longer lift the airplane, at which points it tumbles over (“hammerhead”) into a dive.

A “V12 Merlin motor” is a water-cooled 12-cylinder airplane engine, arranged in a V, six cylinders per side. The motor was originally designed by Roll Royce in Britain (called the “Merlin”); but manufactured (and improved) by Packard Motorcar Company, for their effort during WWII.

The “Navy Grumman Bearcat” was a fighter-plane made by Grumman Aircraft for the U.S. Navy; last (and best) of a series of Grumman Navy WWII fighter-planes. —They had to have extraordinarily strong landing-gear, since they were slammed into aircraft-carrier decks.

A “radial” engine is multiple cylinders (usually air-cooled) arranged in a circle on a common crankshaft; usually seven or nine cylinders per row. Often the engines were two rows or more; 18 or as many 28 cylinders (four rows). Air-cooled “Radials” were quite common on WWII propeller aircraft, and were developed to generate a lot of horsepower. —Contrasting is the water-cooled V12 Merlin.

“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.

“Raymond Loewy” is a long-ago industrial designer hired by the Pennsylvania Railroad. He convinced Pennsy to use a welded-steel shell on its GG1 locomotive (as opposed to small individual skin-panels pieced together with rivets), thereby making it the most beautiful railroad locomotive of all time. He also did a number of other small styling improvements on the GG1; and did quite a few other designs for Pennsy. —Loewy had other accounts beyond Pennsy.

“Tuscan Red” (“TUHSS-kin”) was a standard Pennsylvania Railroad paint-color, the brownish-red on preserved #4913. Their passenger-coaches were painted Tuscan Red.

The “catenary” (“cat-in-ARY”) is the overhead trolley-wire that delivered electric power to the electric locomotives. It was suspended in a catenary-style wire assemblage between towers. The electric-locomotives slid “pantographs” (“pant-uh-GRAFF”) along (and under) the trolley-wire, instead of the usual trolley-poles and flanged wheels found on trolley-cars. The “pantograph” was what collected electric power from the overhead wire.

“30th St. Station” became the main Pennsy railroad-station in Philadelphia after Broad St. Terminal was closed. Unfortunately, it’s not on the New York-to-Chicago routing; it’s on the Washington D.C. line. Trains from New York to Chicago, have to pull into 30th St., and then be dragged out backwards.

“Philly” is of course “Philadelphia,” PA.

An “interlocking” is where crossover switches, or switches, connect adjacent tracks. “Interlockings” are now called “Control-Points;” and used to be switched by lineside towers. They can now be switched electronically from a central location.

“Crossover switches” are switches from one track to an adjacent track on a multiple-track railroad.

Quite a bit of southern New Jersey, toward the ocean, is sand, which engendered never-ending pine forests. This area is known as the “Pine-Barrens.”

“Amtrak” is the government sponsored railroad passenger service that took over railroad passenger service from the railroads in 1970. —It mostly runs passenger-trains over the private railroads with its own equipment, but does own the old Pennsy Washington D.C. to New York City electrified mainline, which became its “Northeast Corridor” service, and has since been extended to Boston.

“Erlton” (‘EARL-tin’) is the small suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey where I lived until I was 13. Erlton was founded in the ‘30s, named after its developer, whose name was Earl. Erlton was north of “Haddonfield,” an old Revolutionary town. “Garden State Park” was a large horse-racing track now closed. It was near Erlton where we lived.

“Claymont” is an old suburb north of Wilmington, DE; which the old Pennsy New York-to-Washington D.C. mainline skirts. The line is now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, and the station has been rebuilt. It is now a stop for railroad commuter-service, actually SouthEastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA), although in Delaware it’s Delaware Area Rapid Transit (“DART”) paying for the SEPTA service, which goes all the way south to Newark, DE, a suburb southwest of Wilmington on the Corridor.

Various Corvettes have been marketed over the years; 1953-1962; the Sting-Ray from 1963-1967; the mako-sharks (also Sting-Rays) from 1968-1982; the C4s from 1983-1996; the C5s from 1997-2004; and currently the C6 (2005-to date). Earlier Corvettes didn’t go by the “C” nomenclature, and “C” nomenclature is essentially a fan thing. Ergo, C1 is 1953-1962; C2 is 1963-1967; and C3 is 1968-1982. The car pictured is a C6.

“Tim Belknap” was an editor at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, where I once worked; one of about seven. Belknap like me is a car-guy, so we continue to keep in contact. He has retired.

The Chevrolet “Small-Block” V8 was introduced at 265 cubic-inches displacement in the 1955 model-year. It continued production for years, first at 283 cubic inches, then 327, then 350. Other displacements were also manufactured. The Chevrolet “Big-Block” V8 was introduced in the 1965 model-year at 396 cubic-inches, and was unrelated to the Small-Block. It was made in various larger displacements: 402, 427 and 454 cubic inches. It’s still made as a truck-motor, but not installed in cars any more; although you can get it as a crate-motor, for self-installation.

RE: “4-overhead-cam V8s........” —For years, the rotating camshaft, which trips open the cylinder-valves, was a single shaft in the cylinder-block, which operated the valves in an overhead-valve engine via pushrods, and rocker-arms, which turn the valve motion 180°. (A side-valve engine, ancient practice, kept the valves and manifolding in the engine-block; but overhead valves breathed better.) But the system was unstable at high speeds, so camshafts were moved up into the cylinder-head, to open the valves directly; no pushrods or rocker-arms. This is two camshafts per cylinder-bank; one for exhaust valves, and one for intake. (There also were single overhead cam applications, that opened both intake and exhaust.) A V8 has two cylinder-banks; so that’s four overhead camshafts. —At first it was two valves per cylinder, but four valves per cylinder breathes better, so four valves per cylinder became preferred. Such a V8 would have 32 valves (four valves times eight cylinders).

“Supercharging” is to force intake air into the engine cylinders with a blower powered directly by the engine — usually gears or pulleys. Forcing intake air into an engine increases breathing and performance. The new ZR1 Corvette is supercharged.

“Turbocharging” is to drive a supercharger with an exhaust driven turbine, instead of directly.

Our current dog is “Scarlett;” a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s three-plus, and is our sixth Irish-Setter.

A “forging” means the semi-molten metal has been hammered into essentially its final shape. By so doing, porosity is hammered out, and the grains of metal align to its final shape. A “forging” is significantly stronger (and less likely to break) than cast metal. I.e. “Forged” metal parts in an engine are less likely to fly apart at high output/speed. —The side-rods on a steam-locomotive were forgings.

A “K4 Pacific” was Pennsy’s standard passenger steam-locomotive; Pacific being a 4-6-2, and “K4” being the class. (Earlier was K2; smaller.) —The engine was developed in the ‘teens, and never replaced. Pennsy never developed a more modern passenger steam locomotive; they were developing electrification. (Pennsy developed its own locomotives; outside purchases were to their own designs.) They had many K4s; and ended up doubleheading steam-engines on heavy passenger trains; when a single more modern engine might have cost less to operate. Doubleheading is two crews, since steam-locomotives can’t be MU-ed like diesel locomotives. But Pennsy could afford the added expense. (“MU” means multiple-unit.)

A “focal-plane shutter” is a slit that passes over the film (“focal-plane”), instead of a shutter right behind (or in front of) the lens. A focal-plane shutter allowed much higher speeds than a regular shutter (e.g a regular iris shutter might achieve 1/125th or so; but a focal-plane shutter could effect much faster speeds; like 1/500th or faster). But early on, the slit moved so slowly the train would advance as the shutter exposed. Plus it was a large negative, usually four-by-five inches. A moving train tilted forward at the top — this was especially noticeable early in train photography, but as cameras got better, their focal-plane shutters got fast enough to decrease the tilting. The 35 mm Single-Lens-Reflex camera prevalent after the ‘60s. used focal-plane shutters; but the negative was so small, tilt was unnoticeable.

“Slammed” refers to a low look; the car lowered so much it appears “slammed” down onto the pavement.

A “roadster,” in earlier parlance, referred to an open two-seater with a non-convertible canvas top, which could be removed. The top wasn’t fold-down (“convertible”); but recent parlance has a convertible two-seater as a “roadster.” (The car pictured is not convertible.)

A “Moon fuel canister” is a small beer-keg like canister made by Moon Equipment in southern California. It held only enough fuel for a run or two.

“Chopped” refers to a section removed from the side-window pillars of the car’s roof; usually about three inches or more. By removing this, the car’s roof is lowered. “Channeled” is to weld channels into the body-floor, so the car-body can sit lower on the frame-rails. “Sectioned” is to remove a horizontal section out of the car-body side, so the car-body is not as high as stock. “Lowered” is to insert lowering-blocks between the rear leaf-springs and rear axle so the car rides lower on its rear axle. Lowering may also be engineered into how low the body sits over its front wheels. —How this is done depends on the front suspension. A front beam-axle could be bent to lower itself relative to the wheels. (Beam-axle front suspension is rarely seen any more; only on large trucks.)

A so-called “lead-sled” referred to the practice of using lead filler to smooth body alterations (like chopping or sectioning). It used to be that body-smoothing (and repair of car-wrecks) was done with lead filler; now it’s Bondo (or whatever the most recent plastic replacement is). —A so-modified ‘49 Mercury sedan was called a “lead-sled.”

“Yard tracks” are parallel tracks in a railroad freight yard. A freight train would be brought in, and then broken up according to destination. Segments of the arriving train would get shunted (“yarded”) on the “yard tracks” according to destination, so that a train could be assembled on that track, and later be forwarded. “Yard tracks” are essentially storage-tracks for classification.

“Ditch lights” are additional headlights on the pilot of the front of a locomotive. There’s one at each end; right and left aimed forward; and being down low, can be said to illuminate “the ditches.” But they’re more for warning traffic at grade-crossings, since the single headlight on a locomotive won’t tell how close the train is. Add ditch-lights, and the closeness of a train becomes apparent. The “ditch lights” can also be flashed side-to-side to be more noticeable. “Ditch lights” were a government requirement.