Seventy years

With my November 2010 issue, which arrived the other day (Friday, October 1, 2010), Trains Magazine is now 70 years old.
Its first issue was apparently November of 1940.
I don’t own the entire 70-year collection.
They’re trying to sell it as a DVD. $149. PASS!
My collection begins about 1966, the year I graduated college.
I subscribed before that, and remember transferring my subscription to the first place I lived in Rochester.
That was Fall of 1966.
I’ve kept every issue since then — never threw any out.
What started my subscription was Trains Magazine editor at that time, David P. Morgan.
There were other railfan magazines — e.g. Railfan & Railroad — but none had David.
Morgan was not only a great writer, he and I were on the same wave-length.
Attracted by the efficacy of the flanged steel wheel on the steel rail.
—The fact it was so efficient, requiring so little space — compared to highways — and also that it followed a fixed guideway; the track.
Incredible tonnages of freight could be moved at little cost, and it followed that guideway.
About the only requirement for a railroad was to keep the grades minimal.
Steel wheels weren’t very good at maintaining adhesion on a grade.
They’re better at just rolling.
Added to that was the way power was delivered by early motive-power: side-rod steam locomotives.
It was delivered in thrusts — pulses.
A locomotive could break traction — slip; spinning its drivers.
Power thrusts rotated the drive-wheels in pulses; they challenged adhesion, particularly on slippery wet railheads.
It’s steel on steel, not rubber on macadam (or concrete), although weight enhanced adhesion.
Grades can be much steeper on highways, although a lot more fuel is consumed.
And a railroad might require only a 50-foot right-of-way, often less.
A four-lane Interstate requires hundreds of feet, 200 or more.
Interstate highway grades are limited to around six percent; that’s six feet up for every 100 feet forward.
A six-percent grade requires an added slow-lane for trucks climbing at 40 mph or less, four-ways flashing.
Railroads try to never exceed one percent. Beyond that helper locomotives may be needed.
Highway trucks rarely exceed two trailers behind the tractor.
Three is asking for trouble. —The last trailer crabs and wanders.
A train can have hundreds of cars. The trailing cars are all obediently following the fixed guideway.
A single train-crew, driving perhaps two-to-four locomotives multipled, can move 200+ trailers or more.
Utterly skonking the highway trucks, where a single driver is limited to only one-or-two trailers.
(Two only on highways rated for double trailers.)
Out of 44 years of issues, one stands out, the one pictured above.
It’s very early, March of 1964. That’s before I started saving everything.
It had a giant treatment of Pennsylvania Railroad’s fabulous GG1 (“Gee-Gee-One”) electric locomotive, which I consider to be the the greatest railroad locomotive of all time.
Giant stacks of old Trains Magazines strain shelving in my cellar.
I suppose I have a gold-mine.
Trains seems to have lost its footing after Morgan retired years ago. —Not too long afterward he died.
But now it’s pretty good — the current editors have a pretty good handle on what railfanning has become.
But they ain’t Morgan, who was also a sucker for steam locomotion.
—The incredible noise and drama that steam had; its tower of smoke blasting skyward as the locomotive worked.
And pleasant as diesel locomotive horns are nowadays, they ain’t the steam whistle.
I remember listening in awe at Cass Scenic Railroad as steam whistles echoed through the hollers.
Morgan, like me, was entranced by a hard-charging steam locomotive, 70 mph, whistling for a road-crossing.
Years ago I rode behind Nickel Plate #765 up New River Gorge in WV, and it brought tears to my eyes.
We were doing 70 mph, and whistling for the road-crossings.
Little boys were at trackside, with their parents, waving, just like me at that age.
As a child I was lucky enough to witness steam, Pennsy K4s and E6 steam-locomotives on the PRSL, and Morgan conveyed what I was seeing.
As a teenager I lived in northern DE, not far from the Pennsylvania Railroad’s electrified New York City to Washington DC line, now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
I saw hundreds of GG1s, and every time I did they were boomin’-and-zoomin’ at 80-100 mph.
The other day (also Friday, October 1, 2010) my dentist asked why so much time passed between the development of railroads and automobiles.
(He guessed 100 years; I’d say 60 or so.)
“Well,” I said, through a mouthful of gagging paraphernalia.......
“Ya gotta remember that’s two vastly different technologies.
The first railroads were horse powered.
After that came steam power: boiling water over a fire to create steam, which was used to drive pistons that rotated drive-wheels via side-rods.
That’s external combustion.
Automobiles are internal combustion; igniting the fuel-charge inside the piston-cylinder, and that moves the piston, rotating a crankshaft.
That crankshaft eventually rotates the drive-wheels.
Some of the first automobiles were steam powered; how about the Stanley Steamer.
But internal combustion became the norm; although it has to be idled. A steam engine doesn’t.
Railroads are no longer steam powered; they’re internal combustion just like automobiles, although diesel.”
“So I guess steam locomotion could be developed long before internal combustion,” my dentist said.

• “Nickel Plate” is the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad, called the “Nickel Plate” long ago by a New York Central executive because it was so competitive. The railroad eventually renamed itself the “Nickel Plate.” Norfolk & Western Railroad bought the Nickel Plate years ago, and N&W has since merged with Southern Railway, to become Norfolk Southern. Nickel Plate never actually attained New York city; it stopped at Buffalo.
• “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.
• The K4 was a 4-6-2 Pacific, the E6 a 4-4-2 Atlantic. The K4 was a teens design, and fairly large. The E6 was about 1905, and big for an Atlantic. —Pennsy used K4s as its mainline steam passenger power for years, usually doubleheaded to counter more modern competing power. Doubleheading is two engine crews, which Pennsy could afford. Pennsy never really developed a replacement for the K4. —They invested more in electrification.
• “PRSL” is Pennsylvania-Reading (‘RED-ing,’ not ‘READ-ing’) Seashore Lines, an amalgamation of Pennsylvania and Reading railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much parallel track. It was promulgated in 1933. It serviced mainly the Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.