The elusive “add-to-cart” button

A couple months ago I made a railfan calendar of my own digital photographs I have taken over the past few years near Altoona (“al-TUNE-uh,” as in “Al”), PA.
I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two. —I’m currently 66.
Altoona is where the Pennsylvania Railroad began its assault on Allegheny Ridge, which had been a barrier to west-east trade through PA.
Which was why the Erie Canal was so successful. The Alleghenies didn’t reach up into New York, so a canal could be built.
It was so successful at carrying west-east trade, other eastern seaports began clamoring for an equivalent.
E.g. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Boston.
Which is why the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was built, the first common-carrier railroad. (It opened in 1827.)
Also a state-funded combination canal/railroad across PA.
This was called The Public Works System, and it failed because it was so cumbersome and slow.
A canal was also built out of Washington DC, but it stalled at the Alleghenies.
For the Public Works System, the barrier was the Allegheny Mountains.
They were impossible to canal through, and surmounting them required an inclined-plane railroad.
Grading in the early 19th century was insufficient to allow anything other than inclined planes.
The flatcars, carrying canal packets, had to be winched up the inclined planes.
The entire system was cumbersome and slow; transferring the canal packets to flatcar, and then winching everything up the inclined planes.
It was so unwieldy the private response was the Pennsylvania Railroad.
And Chief Engineer, John Edgar Thomson, wanted to conquer the Alleghenies without steep grades.
He did so by incorporating a giant horseshoe shaped bend, the world-famous Horseshoe Curve.
The railroad gets looped back across a valley to keep the grade manageable, only 1.8 percent, 1.8 feet up for every 100 feet forward.
It’s not very steep, but steep enough to require additional locomotives, or for trains to run away downhill.
Horseshoe Curve is by far the BEST railfan pilgrimage spot I have ever been to.
It’s now a national historic site, an engineering triumph. It’s been made into a tourist destination.
You climb 194 steps, or take a tram, up to the viewing area, which is smack in the apex of the Curve.
It’s a railfan’s dream. Trains are up-close-and-personal.
And westbound they are up the hill, which means assaulting the heavens — wide-open throttle.
And train frequency is pretty good — wait 25 minutes and you’ll see a train.
The railroad used to be a main west-east avenue of commerce.
It’s still pretty busy, but not as busy as out of Long Beach, CA.
So I’ve been up-and-down the railroad’s crossing of the Alleghenies — pictures galore.
Eastbound is not as steep, but on both sides there are great photographs.
Photo calendars can be made at Kodak Gallery, a really great web-site.
About eight months ago I made a railfan calendar there, with my own photos from Pennsy’s Allegheny crossing.
Pennsy tanked a while ago. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that failed in about eight years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world.
The railroad is now Norfolk Southern, a long-ago merger of Southern Railway with phenomenally successful Norfolk & Western Railroad. —N&W served the prolific Pocahontas coal region.
Penn-Central was succeeded by Conrail, a government amalgamation of east-coast railroads that went bankrupt pretty much at the same time as Penn-Central, like Reading (“REDD-ing,” not “READ-ing”), Erie-Lackawanna (“ear-eee lack-uh-WAHN-uh,” as in “wand”) 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. CSX got mainly the old New York Central routes, and NS got the old PRR routes. —Smaller routes ended up as shortline railroads, e.g. Finger Lakes Railroad.
I mailed one of my calendars to Tunnel Inn. The proprietor is a railfan, just like me.
Tunnel Inn is the bed-and-breakfast we stay at when in the Altoona area. It’s in nearby Gallitzin, PA, where Pennsy had tunnels at the summit of the Alleghenies.
My calendar blew the proprietor away — as it did me — so much he suggested additional calendars he could sell.
But my calendar was 2010; I suggested 2011.
Plus I wanted to do snow pictures for December, January and February. —And perhaps a fall foliage picture for October.
I got my snow photographs, so I set about making a new 2011 calendar.
The proprietor suggested I bring my 2011 calendar my next visit, so I needed a calendar to present.
Calendar finished, now “add-to-cart.”
“Where’s ‘add-to-cart?’” I asked, poking all over the site.
No “ad-to-cart” button, so I e-mailed the lack thereof to Kodak Gallery.
I got a boilerplate e-mail back telling me -a) how to make a calendar in 89 bazilyun easy steps (I already had), and -b) then “add-to-cart” to order.
Yeah, like where’s that silly “add-to-cart” button?
I was advised to dump all my cookies, and clean out my Temporary Internet Files.
WHOA! Do that and my Internet goes wonky.
That’s like using blood-letting leaches to cure a cold.
My wife suspected a display issue on their end.
It’s happened before.
She set about logging in to Kodak Gallery as me on her own PC — I drive a MAC.
No “add-to-cart” there either.
“How they gonna sell any calendars?” she asked.
I fired off another e-mail; no “add-to-cart” on her machine either.
She fired up Kodak Gallery the next morning, and VIOLA!
There was “add-to-cart.”