Monthly Calendar Report for September, 2010

Throttles to the roof! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

―The September 2010 entry of my own calendar is my first picture at a place I’ve been to many times, a highway overpass over the old Pennsy tracks north of Portage, PA.
It’s the signal at milepost 257.2, and the signals are mounted on the bridge.
It’s my most successful shot there.
Other pictures are on Tracks One or Three; this one is eastbound on Track Two, the middle track.
Track One is also eastbound, but too close.
Track Three is westbound, too far, and the wrong way.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Nada!

My shot on Track Three also suffers from strident morning light. It throws a shadow of the bridge.
Track Two can be either way.
Eastbound (going away) looks better.
In this shot the lighting is more muted and hazy.
As I understand it, this is one set of signals always on.
Look carefully, and you can see the amber lights are on. —It’s the old Pennsy target. (Although signals come on for passing trains.)
Vertical is proceed, horizontal is stop, and diagonal is approach.
Other signals wink off after a train passes.
The overpass is a fairly substantial residential street.
That overpass can support heavy trucks.
It ain’t the spindly abomination over M&K Junction on the B&O West End I drove our Astrovan over near Rowlesburg, WV.
—Which I was afraid would collapse.
This location is a favored spot, but hard to get to.
You have to climb down a weed-infested embankment through heavy brush and poison ivy.
Last June the area was marked “no trespassing,” which we discovered after taking that strident morning-light picture.
Eastbound is upgrade. The locomotives (GEs) are hammering.


The greatest airplane of all time. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—I almost made this picture number-one.
The North American Mustang is arguably the the greatest airplane of all time.
Every American, BY LAW, should be required to see a Mustang fly, and above all, hear it.
I did years ago. and I will never forget. That’s goin’ to my grave.
But this is an earlier Mustang; not the plexiglas bubble canopy.
It may also be an Allison V12, which earlier Mustangs had.
The Allison is okay, but doesn’t have the crackle of a Packard-Merlin.
Supposedly this is a Packard-Merlin.
It’s also not that good a picture; I decided my own picture was better.
I can imagine Makanna out there in the open in the back end of a Texan canopy with his camera, in radio contact with the Mustang pilot.
“Now charge me,” he’d say.
The Mustang pilot has to avoid hitting Makanna’s airplane, yet get close enough to render a dramatic picture.

April’s Mustang.

And who could imagine a WWII Warbirds calendar without a Mustang in it. —This is one of two.
That looks like the Pacific Coast Highway below.
I drove it in 1980, but only a portion; San Francisco to the highway in to San Luis Obispo.
That included Big Sur (supposedly), but we really never saw what was pictured.
I guess you hafta go down to the beach. (Or Big Sur may even not be on the Pacific coast.)
It’s a nice road, and I’m sure was a challenge to build, but it quickly became boring.

Both of my All-Pennsy calendars are Decapods.

Hippo number-one at Columbus, OH. (Photo by Ben Young©.)


Hippo number-two at Enola, PA. (Photo by Jim Schmidt.)

—The September 2010 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black and white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Pennsy Decapod (2-10-0) resting in the yard in Columbus, OH after dragging in the string of hoppers behind. It’s 1957.
—The September 2010 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is the Pennsy Decapod in hump service at Enola (“Aye-NOLE-uh;” as in “hay”) Yard across from Harrisburg, PA.
It’s amazing to think that for all its testing and research at Altoona, PA (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in “Al”) Pennsy never had a standout steam-locomotive design.
But they did have a standout electric locomotive, the GG1 (“Gee-Gee-One”), which I consider the greatest railroad locomotive of all time.
The Decapod was the quintessential Pennsy steam-locomotive. The first was in 1916, and they were all pretty much the same.
Pennsy had 598; 123 from Altoona, and 475 from Baldwin Locomotive Works near Philadelphia.
The Decapod was well suited to Pennsy operations. A gigantic boiler pushing gigantic drive-pistons.
They could be extremely powerful if operated slowly. Boom-and-zoom and they ran out of steam.
That boiler and firebox couldn’t keep up with high-speed steam demand.
Boom-and-zoom and they also vibrated heavily. The drivers were too small to mount the counterweighting needed to offset their heavy drive-rods.
But the Decapods were well suited to Pennsy’s mountain operations; slugging slowly up steep mountain grades.
Only one other railroad, Western Maryland, had comparable Decapods, and they were heavier.
They had similar operating conditions; mountain railroading.
Pennsy never really had any steam switchers. The only ones I remember were a tiny 0-4-0 and a slightly larger 0-6-0, of which they had quite a few.
Both had slope-back tenders for better vision while backing.
Pennsy experimented with 0-8-0s, but used unretired 2-8-0 Consolidations as switchers.
A Decapod was well suited for hump service; shoving a cut of cars up a hump grade.
Look carefully at each engine and you’ll see the center driver is blind — flangeless.
It had to be, so that long wheelbase didn’t start pulling rails on curves — and switches.
A Decapod was very basic; almost all of its heavy weight on its drive-wheels.
Bigger engines came later, but Decapods lasted until the end of Pennsy steam (1957).
The engine-crews called ‘em Hippos.

Pennsy’s J.

Nothing on Pennsy ever exceeded 10 drive-wheels, although the railroad did have a 2-10-4, the J. But the J wasn’t a Pennsy design.
Pennsy experimented with articulateds, but never really had any in quantity.
An articulated was labor-intensive, and the railroad could afford double crewing; e.g. two Decapods instead of one articulated.
The railroad that developed really good articulateds was Norfolk & Western. Their “A” (2-6-6-4) was a standout steam-locomotive.


Back-country railroading. (Photo by O. Winston Link.)

―The September 2010 entry of my O. Winston Link "Steam and Steel" calendar is rural railroading at its best.
A teakettle steam-engine is heading a small train up a creekbed, toward the summit over Bridge 52 over Laurel Creek.
We’re on the extremely rural branch through Green Cove far out in rural VA.
Headed for White Top.
It’s not the mainline.
The grade is 3 percent — difficult but not impossible.
The mail truck heads up a parallel dirt track.
Norfolk & Western hung onto steam locomotion well after most railroads dieselized.
On other railroads, this train would be pulled by an Alco RS3 or Geep.
Link has captured the essence of it, and appeared to be on the train.
A peddler freight out in the middle of nowhere.

#475.

The engine is #429, I think the same series* as the only N&W steam-engine still operating, #475, also a 4-8-0, on Strasburg Railroad in southeastern PA, a tourist line.
*Well, not exactly. 475 is one of an order of 50 M-class 4-8-0s from Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1906.
It was slightly different than 429.
We’re probably in the caboose.
The locomotive is a unique design. (Or at least 475 was.....)
It didn’t have a cab-deck behind the firebox.
The fireman shoveled coal straight from the tender-deck.
The engineer sat next to the firebox with his controls and water-glass beside the firebox.
It’s a teakettle, within the range of hand-firing.
I notice the mail truck is a Dodge.
I also notice the locomotive is popping off; that large feather of steam over the boiler.
The fireman has got the fire hot enough to boil up sufficient steam to lift the pop-valves, which protect to boiler from excessive steam pressure.

My two car calendars are both kinda plain.


Charger. (Photo by David Newhardt.)

―The September 2010 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T.

Daytona Charger.

It’s not the Daytona Charger (at left), with its special body for Daytona Speedway.
Since when do ya find a wing like that on a street car? And its aerodynamic front-end that doesn’t present a frontal slab.
The Charger R/T is the street car, and probably not the 426 Hemi Elephant motor.
It’s probably a 440-cubic-inch Wedge.
Still pretty substantial, but mainly because of its size, and the fact it was hot-rodded.
It only has one rocker-shaft, if at all, in its cylinder-heads, whereas the Hemi had two.
The Hemi had its valves splayed 90 degrees from the crankshaft, so the valves could be in hemispherical combustion-chambers.
A Wedge had its valves parallel to the crankshaft in a row.
Its combustion-chambers were wedge shaped.
Usually the intake-valves were aimed at the intake manifold, which aimed the exhaust-valves the wrong way; since they were all in a row and parallel.
A Wedge motor couldn’t breathe as well as a Hemi at high revolutions.
But the Hemi was notoriously heavy, being all cast-iron, with its huge cylinder-head castings.
Nevertheless the Hemi massively generated horsepower at high speeds.
It would finish explosively at the drag-strip, and was a dominator of circle-track stockcar racing, e.g. NASCAR’s Daytona Speedway.
Most Charger R/Ts were the 440 Wedge.
The Charger R/T is one of the prettiest of musclecars.
Especially good-looking, although not as much a musclecar as the GM offerings.
But an engine of 440 cubic-inches is essentially a musclecar, although GM was offering musclecars of 454 and 455 cubic-inches.


Black Widow (the real thing).

―The September 2010 entry of my Oxman Hot-Rod Calendar is a 1926 Model T pickup, a full-scale rendering of a Monogram model from 1960.
Building it was not easy.
All they had to work with was the model, which was not off an actual car.
They had to conceptualize some, although the basic hot-rod principles could apply.
The motor is a Small-Block Chevy, a 265 cubic-inch 1956 motor. The Small-Block replaced the Flat-head Ford.
Everyone was using Small-Block Chevys.
I saw one once in a ’32 Ford pickup hotrod in nearby Canandaigua, and it had Ford markings.
But it was clearly the Chevy Small-Block.
It had siamesed center exhaust-ports; the Fords don’t.
I was asked by a newspaper reporter if it was a Ford motor.
“Small-Block Chevy,” I said.
It ran in the newspaper as a Ford motor.
Hot-rodding concepts are pretty much the same; all they had to do is match the fenders, stance, appearance and paint.
Including that spider-web pinstriping.
Stance and appearance would be the most difficult.
How a car sits is a function of many factors. Often the car sits different than intended.
Not that good, really.
I’m sure it sold well as a model — that little boys could dream of owning such a car.

T-Bucket. (Called that because the body, an early Model T roadster, resembles a bucket.)

But the later Model Ts were not that appealing to me; just the T-buckets.
And the Model As and the 1932 Fords.
I notice the hubcaps are not exactly what was used on the model.
The model has chromed moons.
The real car has slightly dished hubcaps.