Kodak Gallery Calendar

Cover-pik: At the Mighty Curve.

Constant readers of this here blog, if there are any at all, know that I get seven calendars per year.
They’re not really calendars — what they are is variable wall-art.
That’s six beyond my Audio-Visual Designs Black&White All-Pennsy Calendar, which I started getting in the late ‘60s.
Some are constant, but some aren’t.
The constants are -1) my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar; -2) and -3) my Paul Oxman Hot-Rod and Classic Sportscars calendars; and, of course, -4) my Audio-Visual Designs Black&White All-Pennsy Calendar.
Semi-constant is an All-Pennsy Color Calendar.
For years, that was CEDco, but they went bankrupt.
Now the All-Pennsy Color Calendar is by Tide-mark Press.
One year I got it el-cheapo from eBay. I guess it was left over stock from the CEDco bankruptcy up for auction.
Another semi-constant is my Norfolk Southern Employees Photography Contest calendar, although I’m thinking of skipping it this year (see below).
That leaves one calendar, so for the past two years I’ve gotten a calendar of classic black&white railroad photos by O. Winston Link.
Link’s efforts are famous, and recently I attended a Link show in Rochester.
Oxman gave up on the Classic Sportscars calendar, so next year’s Link calendar hangs there.
Last year there was no All-Pennsy Color Calendar (I ordered too late), so Link hung there.
Two years ago I had a Three Stooges calendar, but it was a waste.
Before that was -a) train water-colors by Howard Fogg; and -b) railroad paintings by Ted Rose.
Fogg was famous in the railfan community, but most of his art was of Colorado narrow-gauge. And Rose was of all railroads, but I’m partial to Pennsy.
A calendar I got to replace Fogg and Rose (and the Stooges) was a Motorbooks Musclecars calendar.
Okay, but I’ve been tempted to drop it.
The only reason I haven’t yet was to have seven calendars.
I was thinking of giving up on the Norfolk Southern Employees Photography Contest calendar.
It’s impressive, but similar to some of the train photography I take myself.
So I was thinking of getting the Trains Magazine train calendar instead.
But that depicts all railroading — the Ted Rose problem.
Kodak’s online Photo-Gallery can make calendars with your own photos. It’s fairly simple. I tried it with some of my mother’s insane photographs.
My mother, before she died, used to shower all her children with strange photographs of anything and everything, usually taken with her fuzzy-focus InstaMatic.
Giant bull statues, cornfields being gleaned, a model airplane, out-of-focus earrings on my niece.
We used to call her “motor-drive.”
When she died, Kodak stock dropped, and many of the Eckerds nationwide went out of business. (The ones in Florida were purchased by CVS.)
She used to do her photo-processing at Eckerd’s. (They’d cheer when she walked in!)
So I uploaded 12 of her crazy photographs to Kodak Gallery, and set about doing a calendar.
Idea! Forget Trains Magazine calendar, forget Norfolk Southern Employees Photography Contest calendar.
Make my own calendar of my own photographs near Horseshoe Curve.
Following are the 12 photographs I will use — on top is the cover photograph; that makes 13.
Most were taken with Phil Faudi (“FAW-dee”), although a few are mine alone.


January: Eastbound up The Hill on Track One in Summerhill. Two helpers are on the point.


February: Eastbound on Track One at AR tower toward New Portage Tunnel in Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin”).


March: Eastbound double-stack hammers upgrade on Track One at Cassandra Railfan Overlook.


April: Eastbound uphill through South Fork on Track One. Two helpers are on the point.


May: Eastbound on Track Two about to enter Allegheny Tunnel. The tunnel visible is “Gallitzin,” abandoned.


June: Eastbound train 14G is about to restart after changing crews at Rose, east of Altoona.


July: The classic Tuxedo F-units head the Executive Business Train west on Track Three through Lilly.


August: Westbound double-stack uphill on Track Three toward Horseshoe Curve; Brickyard Crossing in Altoona.


September: Under the highway overpass near Portage; eastbound uphill on Track Two.


October: Hold back the double-stacks; downhill from the Curve at Slope into Altoona. A track-crew is working on Track Two.


November: Under the six-target signal bridge eastbound at McFarland’s Curve, north of Altoona. The left-most signals are for the left-most track, a siding.


December: The best picture; two trains eastbound through Lilly, Tracks One and Two.

• “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. —My first contact with railroading was the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1946 when I was age two. I am a railfan, and have been since then. As a teenager in northern Delaware, where our family moved from south Jersey in 1957, I experienced the phenomenal Pennsy electrified line from New York City to Washington D.C.
• “Norfolk Southern” is Norfolk Southern Railroad, a merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway about 20 years ago. NS has since acquired other railroads, namely all the old Pennsy lines of Conrail. —NS is now a major player in east-coast railroading. (“Conrail” is a government amalgamation of east-coast railroads that went bankrupt pretty much at the same time as Penn-Central. Conrail included other bankrupt east-coast railroads, like Erie-Lackawanna and Lehigh Valley; but eventually went private as it became more successful. Conrail has since been broken up, sold to CSX Transportation Industries (railroad) and Norfolk Southern railroad. CSX got mainly the old New York Central routes, and NS got the old PRR routes, although NS also has the old Erie Railroad route across southern NY.)
• “Narrow-gauge” is three feet between the rails. Most railroads are “Standard-gauge,” 4 feet 8&1/2 inches between the rails. Narrow-gauge could have tighter curvature, allowing less grading, so was often used in confined mountainous territory; e.g. Colorado.
• “Musclecars” are the mega-power cars popular in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s; usually with HUGE incredibly powerful engines; e.g. the Pontiac G-T-O.
• My parents’ final home was south Florida.
• 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 use.
• “Double-stack” is two trailer containers stacked two high without wheels in so-called “wellcars.” —It’s much more efficient than single containers (or trailers) on flatcars, since it’s two containers per car. It’s often the same shipping containers shipped overseas; where they may be stacked three or four high, or even higher if a support deck is under a stack. But “double-stacks” require very high clearance; over 20 feet. Bridges had to be raised, and tunnels made larger.
• “Phil Faudi” is a railfan local to the Altoona area, who gives rail tours — train chases. So far I have done two Faudi train-chases; and they are railfan overload — worth every penny. —Faudi monitors only the Norfolk Southern operating frequency, on his radio scanner, and -A) knows every train as the engineers call out the signals, and -B) knows how long it will take to drive to a photo location. The end result is usually more than 20 trains over nine hours. My most recent train-chase, we saw 30!
• Everything but the cover-shot, Cassandra Railfan Overlook, and the tunnels, is at a Faudi picture location; pictures taken by me — although I’d been to Brickyard Crossing myself earlier, and Faudi hits Cassandra.