Monthly Calendar Report for February, 2011

Trash-Train west on Track Three at Summerhill. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

―The February 2011 entry of my own calendar is one of my better snow-shots, the one my wife always says is best.
It’s the Trash-Train coming down The Hill through Summerhill, PA on Track Three of Norfolk Southern’s Pittsburgh line, the old Pennsy four-track main.
One track was removed years ago by previous owner Conrail.
We had driven to Altoona (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”), PA, last February intending to do a train-chase with Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”).
I have written up Phil so many times I’m gonna abstain this time. —If you need clarification, click this link. Read the first section of the January calendar-report.
Getting to Altoona, the location of Norfolk Southern’s Allegheny Crossing, was easy. It had snowed, but only lightly. The roads were clear and dry.
Where the snow was heavy was west of Altoona, up in the Allegheny mountains.
We found Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin”), the top of the The Hill, and the location of Tunnel Inn, the bed-&-breakfast we stay at in the area, under 3-4 feet of snow.
The owner of the Inn was trying to blow out his tiny parking-lot with a snowblower.
We were ramming around with Faudi.
About the only place from which we could photograph were highways next to the tracks; e.g. grade-crossings.
Every place else was snowed in.
I didn’t want Phil to get stuck, even though we had brought along our giant coal-shovel.
We were on Route 53 near Summerhill, and the Trash-Train was coming down The Hill.
We drove into Summerhill and up on the overpass over the railroad.
You can see a small truck on the bridge-lead to the right.
It started snowing heavily, a squall-burst.
Everything socked in, but I ain’t missin’ this!
I keep my camera inside my coat until the last second.
The train burst into view; camera-on — got it!
As you can see, the lights on the signal-bridge are on — I think they always are — the signals for eastbounds are up high to be visible over the highway bridge.
The Trash-Train is a train of purple trash-containers, each about the equivalent of a highway container, but only about 20 feet long (instead of 40 or more).
Four containers fit on a standard trailer-flat.
The Trash-Train (65J, actually construction-debris) runs daily. It’s easy to recognize; those purple containers.
I’ve seen it hundreds of times, often on the Horseshoe Curve webcam, now defunct.
This train was probably running half a day late, or worse.
It’s scheduled for 11:30 P.M.
Snow had slowed railroad operation.
All the times I’ve seen the Trash-Train were in daylight, probably way late.
The Trash-Train is not priority.
I have another photo of it with not much power.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Another Trash-Train (that’s a GP38 on the point; one of only two units on the train).

1939 Ford coupe.

―The February 2011 entry of my Oxman Hot-Rod Calendar is a hot-rodded 1939 Ford coupe, five-windows (minus the windshield).
The ’39 and ’40 Ford coupes are the most successful Fords ever styled, and that was without a styling-department like General Motors.
In fact, the ’39 and ’40 Ford coupes are one of the prettiest automotive styling jobs ever marketed.
Compare Chevrolet’s ’39 coupe, which looks douty.
The difference between a ’39 and ’40 Ford coupe is the grille. They used identical bodies, but the ’40 Deluxe had a different grille. The ’40 Standard (cheaper) used the ’39 Deluxe grille, which looks better.
But the ’39 and ’40 Ford coupes are not pretty enough for me to buy.

This is an actual Willys. Stone-Woods-Cook did a later dragster with a much lighter fiberglass reproduction body of the same car. This first Stone-Woods-Cook Willys had a hot-rodded Oldsmobile engine.

That would be the Willys coupe (pictured at left), of about the same vintage.
The Willys coupe is a tiny bit smaller, therefore lighter, and is three-window instead of five, plus it’s a one-piece windshield.
Basic as it is, the Willys is not as pretty as this Ford.
Just more attractive as a hotrod.
It’s the fenestration — the windows.
The Ford is a two-piece split windshield, and five windows instead three (actually the Ford is six; since the rear-window is two pieces — the Willys is actually four; it’s also a two-piece rear-window.)
I.e. There’s that tiny side-window behind the door-post. The Willys, a three-window, didn’t have that. (Anything with that tiny side-window is called a “five-window,” no matter the actual number of windows.)
It’s also the grille, which on the Willys is more modern.
But the grille on the ’39 and ’40 Ford coupes looks more right.
The stock ’39 and ’40 Ford coupes were attractive to hot-rodders. They were available with Ford’s famous Flat-Head V8 engine.
With a Willys, you’d have to swap in a V8 motor. They were only available as a four.
Most Willy’s hotrods I’ve seen have the Chevrolet Small-Block V8.
Willys hot-rods are rather recent.
People often wrench the Chevy Small-Block into the ’39 and ’40 Ford coupes.
The car pictured has a Chevy Small-Block, and I saw one years ago in south Jersey painted pearlescent green.
Never in a million years would Old Henry paint anything that color.
Most ’39 and ’40 Ford coupes I’ve seen were black, or dark blue or brown.
I remember, behind a house, a gorgeous black ‘40 Ford coupe where I grew up as a teenager.
It was up on blocks, devoid of wheels and the complete front clip.
Reports were the owner was saving it for an Oldsmobile V8 motor.

My calendars are rather moribund from here on; interesting, but not extraordinary.



Engine-change at South Amboy. (Photo by Jerry Landau.)

—Is there ever an All-Pennsy calendar without a GG1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”)?
The February 2011 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is this engine-change at South Amboy in north Jersey, where a non-electrified engine, in this case a Pennsy Baldwin “Shark,” is swapped for an electric locomotive, a GG1.
For years, the Pennsylvania Railroad ran commuter-service into New York City jointly with Central of New Jersey (railroad).
Pennsy got trackage-rights over the CNJ line after threatening to build a competing railroad of their own.
Bullies.
The line into north Jersey was one of CNJ’s most successful, and by connecting to and operating from it, Pennsy could provide commuter-service from north Jersey into New York City.
Pennsy was electrified from South Amboy to its New York-to-Washington main, a short distance.
From South Amboy east the railroad was not electrified, necessitating this engine-change.
CNJ provided locomotives through 1957.
Electrification has since been extended east of South Amboy, but the line is still not fully electrified.
New Jersey Transit now operates the line with its own locomotives.
For years the line was the final stomping-ground for mainline Pennsy passenger power.
First K4 Pacific (4-6-2) steam locomotives, then early diesels from Baldwin, Alco, and eventually General Motors’ Electromotive Division (EMD).
The electrified portion was the final stomping-ground for the legendary Pennsy GG1 electrics, which by then were ancient and worn out.

Photo by Charles Anderson©.

Big Red.

One (illustrated at left), #4877, affectionally called “Big Red,” was restored to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s tuscan-red (“tuss-kin;” not “Tucson, AZ”) paint-scheme with gold cat-whisker pin-stripes.
But it broke down on its final run.
By then, the Gs were Jersey Transit.
The GG1 was the most successful locomotive Pennsy ever had.
In fact, I always say they were the greatest railroad locomotive ever produced.

Acme Photo.

January’s picture.

It’s no wonder every All-Pennsy calendar has at least one GG1. Last month my Audio-Visual Designs black and white All-Pennsy Calendar was a GG1, as illustrated at left.
I was lucky enough to grow up in northern Delaware as a teenager, late ‘50s and early ‘60s.
The GG1s reigned supreme at that time on Pennsy’s New York-to-Washington DC line; now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
Every time I saw one it was doing 80-100 mph!
They could put 9,000 horsepower to the railhead.
One GG1 could pull what required three or four diesel locomotives.
I rode behind a G in 1959, Philadelphia to Wilmington, DE; 17 cars.
Within minutes we were doing 80 mph!
The Baldwin Sharks were gorgeous, but turkeys.
They were unreliable, and a single Shark wouldn’t pull a standard north Jersey commuter-train.
So here we are, a Shark being changed out for a GG1.
The Shark appears to be single, which means it probably struggled to bring the train in.
The GG1 takes over the train, and whisks it to New York City.
“Would that we could have an engine like that into South Amboy,” the passengers probably said.
A locomotive-engineer brought a Pennsy GG1 passenger-train into Harrisburg, PA, from Philadelphia long ago.
Harrisburg was where Pennsy’s electrification ended, where the GG1 would be swapped for four EMD E-units.
“I don’t know what they got those things for, with an engine like this,” the GG1 engineer commented.
But of course the line wasn’t electrified west of Harrisburg, although Pennsy considered it.



(Photo by Jim Haag.)

―The February 2011 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography Contest calendar is a Norfolk Southern freight on the Lurgan branch in PA.
I had to look it up; and had little success.
I found a “Lurgan Station” near Shippensburg, and Lurgan far northwest of that.
No railroad near Lurgan, but two railroads near Lurgan Station, one abandoned.
The so-called Lurgan branch may be the old Pennsy line from Harrisburg to Hagerstown, MD; once a busy connector from the south.
The abandoned railroad was an old Western Maryland line to a Reading (“REDD-ing;” not “READ-ing”) connection to Harrisburg at Shippensburg. Reading thereafter had its own lines to Philadelphia, and New York City via a connection to Central of New Jersey (CNJ).
Everything was part of the so-called Alphabet-Route, competition from Chicago and St. Louis to Pennsy and New York Central.
The route was an “alphabet” of different railroads, including Nickel Plate, Western Maryland, Reading, and others.
Reading accessed Philadelphia, and also New York City via CNJ as mentioned earlier. Other railroads were used to access Boston, namely Lehigh & Hudson River, and New Haven. New Haven had a giant viaduct over the Hudson at Poughkeepsie, that burned but still stands. (It’s inoperable.)
Quite a bit of the Alphabet-Route was abandoned. Some was lost due to merger; e.g. Western Maryland into what eventually became CSX, and Nickel Plate into Norfolk & Western, what eventually became Norfolk Southern, after N&W merged with Southern Railway.
There are two things I notice about this photograph:
—1) Is the fact the original was rather bluish, as is usually the case with photographs in the snow.
Bluish in the tree shadows.
The light-color reflects the blue sky in the snow — this is especially true if its cloudy.
Your brain corrects the light-color you see, but a camera doesn’t; although digital color-correction can be done — it used to be done with filters.
I also can color-correct with Photoshop, which I tried here.
Reducing bluishness made the photo too greenish, so I tried reducing green too.
That took it back to bluish, although not as blue as it was.
I stopped at that, so the photograph is still slightly bluish.
—2) It looks like the photographer should have let the train come a little closer; “fill the frame.”
It’s a problem I’ve often had.
I’ve resorted to multiple shots; take the closest, and trash the others.
But even then I often start my multiple shots too early, and end up not filling the frame.
After which I resort to cropping.
The Trash-Train at Summerhill is probably cropped a bit — probably the last of 3-4 multiple shots, but still not close enough. Better would have been 10-15 feet closer.
Haag was probably doing multiple shots himself, but ended up not filling the frame.



Hurricane. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The February 2011 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a dramatic photograph of an uninspiring airplane.
It’s not the fabulous Supermarine Spitfire (pictured at left), but I’m told the Hawker Hurricane won the Battle of Britain.
Hitler was sending his bombers to rain death and destruction on Britain, especially London, but the Hurricane could parry them.
Every time I see that fabric covering on the fuselage behind the cockpit, I think Piper-Cub from the ‘50s, the most rudimentary of airplanes.
But fabric covering had an advantage.
Bullets could tear the fabric, but pass right through.
A Hurricane could be shot up, yet emerge relatively undamaged.
It could still do battle.
The Hurricane had an early version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engine, only 1,280 horsepower.
The Merlin V12 was developed into a hotrod motor in the Spitfire. It was rated at 1,478 horsepower.
In the North-American Mustang it was 1,695 horsepower, as developed by American car-maker Packard.
The first P51s had the American Allison V12; okay, but not the Merlin.
The Merlin is what made the Mustang the great airplane it is.
Roll-Royce liked what they saw in Packard, and Packard got even more horsepower out of the Merlin V12.
So far I’ve encountered two WWII veterans who flew Mustangs. Both were awed.
One flew treetop strafing raids with it.
Compared to the Mustang, the Hurricane was old and slow and douty.
But it turned back Hitler’s bombing raids.


Crossover at Banks interlocking. (Photo by Don Wood©.)

—The February 2011 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black and white All-Pennsy Calendar is another Don Wood photograph.
When the Audio-Visual Designs black and white All-Pennsy Calendar was first published in the late ‘60s, it was all Don Wood photographs.
This is not one of Wood’s best photographs.
His best pictures are the Mt. Carmel Ore-Train, and K4 Pacific (4-6-2) #612, panned at speed on the New York & Long Branch.

Photo by Don Wood©.

The Mt. Carmel Ore-Train.

The Mt. Carmel Ore-Train picture is illustrated at left.
My picture of #612 at speed is probably upstairs in my attic, stored with other great Wood photographs from the ‘70s, matted and mounted.
I used to have them on my walls.
So in other words, 612 at speed is not readily available, but I do have another Wood photo of 612, the so-called “Queen of the New York & Long Branch.”
(The Mt. Carmel Ore-Train picture came out of a book.)

Photo by Don Wood©.

Not the right picture, but #612.

That’s 612 at left on its final run, a fan-trip.
612 had a front-end throttle, enclosed in the rectangular box atop the round smokebox casing.
A front-end throttle is at the superheater head.
Earlier practice put the throttle in the steam-dome atop the boiler.
But a front-end throttle was more efficient.
Earlier steam-locomotives weren’t superheated. They used the steam generated by the boiler, which is at 212 degrees.
With superheat, the steam is circulated back in the firebox flues through the boiler, to raise the temperature of the steam much higher than 212 degrees.
Superheat increased locomotive efficiency.
Superheat came into use about 1900; front-end throttles in the ‘30s.
Few K4s had the front-end throttle.
It was a modification of standard K4 practice.
The K4 is a fairly old design, about WWI.
Pennsy never developed a more modern ‘30s steam-locomotive.
Their investment was poured into electrification.
Competing railroads developed more modern steam-locomotive designs, which Pennsy offset by doubleheading the K4s.
That’s two locomotive crews, but Pennsy could afford that.
They were making money hand-over-fist.
Pennsy served the east-coast megalopolis, and also the midwest.
They were a giant conduit for freight.
The New York & Long Branch (NY&LB) is an old Central of New Jersey line, on which Pennsy got trackage-rights.
Pennsy got those trackage-rights by threatening to build a competing railroad.
Bullies, as noted above.
By using the NY&LB, Pennsy could supply commuter-service from the north Jersey seashore into New York City.
Commuter-trains would run non-electric to South Amboy, south of New York in north Jersey, at which point they hooked on an electric engine, often a GG1.
My All-Pennsy color calendar above illustrates this engine-change, although it’s not a steam-locomotive.
Wood ranged all over the northeast recording the drama of the final days of Pennsy steam, which ended in 1957.
Pennsy was one of the late converts to dieselization; they were still using steam-locomotives in New Jersey, in northeast Pennsylvania, and even on the mainline, Harrisburg west.
And there would be Wood with his 4-by-5 Speed-Graphic, recording the drama of Pennsy steam.
I had to look up Banks interlocking. I think it’s in Jacks Narrows, a cleft in the Appalachians Pennsy used to get its railroad west. (The Pennsylvania Canal also went through there.)
The Juniata river also flows through. The railroad is hugging the river-banks.
The locomotive is an M1b Mountain, 4-8-2, but only 72-inch drivers — the K4s were 80-inch, as were the E6 Atlantics (4-4-2).
The Mountains were mainly fast-freight, used on the mainline across Pennsylvania, clear to the end of steam.



1971 Plymouth RoadRunner. (Photo by Ron Kimball©.)

―The February 2011 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is a 1971 Plymouth RoadRunner.
Supposedly this car is sleeker and more aerodynamic than earlier RoadRunners — lessons learned from the NASCAR tracks.
But in my humble opinion the earlier RoadRunners looked better.

1969 RoadRunner.

It was a great concept; musclecar performance for a bargain price.
A 300-horsepower 383 RoadRunner could be had for about $3,200; perhaps $20-25,000 in today’s dollars.
Much less than a G-T-O Pontiac.
Such a car could send souped-up ‘50s Tri-Chevy Small-Blocks trembling.
I remember a friend telling me of street-racing his ’56 Chevy with 350 Small-Block against a RoadRunner.
He won, but couldn’t stop afterward.
Back then was the time of drum-brakes, which faded when used hard.
My neighbor next-door in Rochester had a RoadRunner but it got totaled. She used to park on the street, a main thoroughfare in front of her house.
It got hit by a staggering drunk in a large Pontiac. He stumbled onto our porch at 3 a.m. bleeding.
He pounded on our door, loudly demanding we call an ambulance. (But not the Police.)
Not the first time. At least two other cars got similarly creamed by drunks.
It sounded like hitting a barrel.
A gorgeous red Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, which had just had extensive body restoration, got similarly creamed, as did a black Dodge Omni.
My neighbor’s RoadRunner was automatic-transmission, not the four-speed floor-shift.
But it was the hotrod four-barrel 383 motor with dual exhausts.
A ’69, like the ’69 illustrated; a two-tone dark olive green color with creme vinyl top.
The crash shortened it three feet.
Her car wasn’t the ’71 in this calendar, which suffers from that chrome grill surround.
The ’71 RoadRunner was a better car, but with that new version I felt the concept was faltering.

I’m drowning

Yesterday (Friday, January 28, 2011) I had an appointment with my dentist to do three fillings.
Two were fairly simple, the third a bit more involved.
I like my dentist, a Dr. Yeager of Q-Dental, primarily because he did a difficult side-filling years ago, on which my previous dentist did a sloppy job.
Or so I felt.
I had patronized my previous dentist for eons, but my Transit Alumni group had negotiated special reduced pricing with Q-Dental.
My previous dentist was also far away, a 45-minute trip.
Q-Dental is about a half-hour.
The so-called “Alumni” are the union retirees of Regional Transit Service in Rochester, NY.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS — “Transit”), a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
The Alumni was a reaction to the fact Transit management retirees ran roughshod over union retirees — a continuation of the bad vibes at Transit, management versus union.
Transit had a club for long-time employees, and I was in it. It was called the “15/25-year Club;” I guess at first the “25-year Club.” But they lowered the employment requirement, and renamed it “15/25-year Club.” The employment requirement was lowered even more; I joined at 10 years.
My employ there ended in 1993 with my stroke; and the “Alumni” didn’t exist then.
The Alumni is a special club — you have to join. It’s an Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) functionary. (ATU is nationwide.)
It isn’t just a social club.
It has bylaws, officers, and an Executive Board.
In many ways it’s just like our union-local, except it entertains issues of interest to retirees; like Medicare, healthcare, and diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
My previous dentist also refused to modernize.
During a visit I heard the unmistakable sound of a typewriter.
His receptionist was embarrassed.
I was digital X-rayed on my first visit to Q-Dental. Within seconds that X-ray appeared on a computer monitor.
Never in a million years with my old dentist. Investment in updated technology was abhorrent.
His were X-rays on film that had to be developed.
The tiny 35-mm film-strips were then displayed on a small fluorescent light-table.
Our retiree dental insurance is a joke.
It only pays about 30-40% of a dental-claim.
I guess that’s true of most dental insurances in our area, or at least our program.
With my previous dentist I was forking over a large co-pay.
With Q-Dental I was paying less; a function of the pricing the Alumni got.
Just the same, I am probably one of the few Alumni who pursue complete dental-care.
An assistant wondered if I’d do all the fillings; $149 on my part.
They were probably expecting me to back off and only do the two simple ones, $33 each, $66 total.
“Nope,” I said. “The appointment was for three fillings — let’s do it!”
I signed the consent, and we began prep.
First the Novocain.
“I might be able to skip the Novocain on the right side,” I told the dentist. I had before.
“Depends on how much damage you’re doing.”
“Well, I hafta completely remove the old filling,” my dentist told me.
“I guess we oughta,” I said.
“I’m only numbing that one tooth,” he said; “not the whole right side of your face.”
Almost two months ago, Yeager installed crowns that involved extensive numbing and drilling.
Yeager is very professional — I’m impressed — but three fillings is daunting.
After a few minutes for the Novocain to take effect, extensive drilling began, with an assistant manning a saliva-sucker.
The drill sprays water, and my mouth was propped open.
Water was accumulating in the back of my throat.
I kept having to clear my throat.
I felt like I was drowning, or being waterboarded like an al-Qaeda terrorist.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Hughes,” the assistant said. “We’ll be done with this side in a few minutes, and you can take a break.”
Toss-and-turn!
“Are you all right?” the dentist asked, stopping.
“Ya-ya-ya-ya,” I said.
Like I’m supposed to issue discernible speech with my mouth propped wide-open, filled with metal clamps and assorted paraphernalia.
“This too shall pass,” I thought to myself.
Yeager continued, while I endured.
“Raise your hand if you need to stop,” the assistant said.
This was almost as difficult as a crown-prep, which also involved a lot of drilling.
Except there was all that added water.
I tired of holding my head in position; the same ache I had during the crown-prep.
Finally, “We’re done that side, Mr. Hughes. This was the most difficult filling. You can rinse your mouth out now.”
Slobber-drool.
It’s hard to get the tiny spittoon when your face is disabled by Novocain.
Now for the left side. —Two simple fillings.
More extensive drilling, with geysers of gushing water.
“This too shall pass,” again.
Gasp-choke; more metal paraphernalia.
Finally, after about 15 minutes, “We’re done.”
Again, slobber-drool.
“Sorry about your floor,” I said. “I feel like I’m not helping you any.”
“These are fillings,” Yeager said. “No chewing until the Novocain wears off, and then only soft food.”
Yeager left, hurrying to his next patient.
It was just me and the assistant.
“What’s this thing?” I asked, pointing to some gizmo.
“Oh that’s just a curing-light. Your fillings are all metal amalgam, so the dentist coats your tooth with this insulator-goop, and the curing-light cures it.”
She flicked on the gizmo. A tiny blue pencil-beam shown.
“New-fangled technology,” she said.

• “Q-Dental” is a professional dental-service in the Rochester area.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993.
• “Mr. Hughes” is me, Bob Hughes, “BobbaLew.”

The image that inspired a life-long subscription to Trains Magazine

My Spring 2011 issue of Classic Trains Magazine arrived yesterday (Thursday, January 27, 2011).
“There it is,” I said to my wife, pointing to the magazine; “the image that inspired a life-long subscription to Trains Magazine.”
It was William D. Middleton’s classic picture of a Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 roaring by at speed.
I went downstairs into our cellar, and brought up my treasured March 1964 issue of Trains Magazine — from our groaning stacks of Trains Magazines I’ve never thrown out.
17 pages on the GG1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”) electric locomotive, what I consider to be the greatest railroad-locomotive of all time.
I started paging through it.
There it was (illustrated below), the image that inspired a life-long subscription to Trains Magazine.


(Photo by William D. Middleton.)

Regrettably, it’s a two-page spread; I can’t fix the center magazine-crease.
The picture is a reprise of a similar photo of a North Shore Electroliner Middleton also took.

Photo by William D. Middleton.

But his Electroliner picture lacks the incredible drama of his GG1 picture.
Or maybe I’m reading into it.
It depicts what I always saw.
Every time I saw a GG1 it was doing 80-100 mph!
I was lucky enough to grow up a teenager in northern Delaware, not far from the Pennsylvania Railroad’s electrified New York City-to-Washington DC line, where the GG1 reigned supreme.


This thing is probably doing 90! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

That line is now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
A single GG1 could put almost 9,000 horsepower to the railhead; that’s four or more diesel locomotives from that time.
In 1959 a neighbor and I rode a GG1-powered train back from Philadelphia to Wilmington, DE.


The southbound Congressional Limited, 17 cars. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

It was 17 cars.
Within minutes we were up to 80 mph!
About 1960 I pedaled my bicycle up to Claymont station on the New York City-to-Washington DC line.
Claymont was a mere commuter station; not a stop for express trains.
I had my father’s ancient Kodak Hawkeye camera. Verichrome-Pan 120 black-and-white film, 2&1/4 by 3&1/4 (or was it 3&1/2), eight exposures.
A 1930s camera, with a fastest speed of only 1/125th of a second.


STAND BACK! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I stationed myself beside a small light-standard next to the sidewalk that served as a loading platform.
(You can see another light-standard in the picture.)
The railroad was four tracks wide, and what I expected was commuter and freight operations on the outside tracks, and express-passenger on the inside tracks.
I could hear an express-train coming, really hammering, so I hooked my left arm around the light-standard, and set up to take a picture.
But the train was on the outside track.
WHAM! It slammed by doin’ at least 90.
The suction was so great, I woulda been sucked into the train had I not had my arm hooked around that light-standard.
The picture above is what I got; stopped with only 1/125th of a second.
I will never forget it. That’s goin’ to my grave.
Sadly, many GG1s were saved, but none are operable.
It’s partly the power-source, that they were electrified.
The catenary (“KAT-in-air-eee” — the overhead trolley wire; named that because it was suspended on a catenary of cables) is still 25-cycle AC, but it’s now 60,000 volts instead of the 11,000 that served the GG1.
But the main problem is the transformers on the locomotive. When functioning, they were filled with a PCB fluid, since determined toxic. The transformers were either removed, or drained and filled with sand or concrete.
Without that transformer, or some kind of transformer, a GG1 isn’t operable.
People want to restore a GG1 to operation, but it wouldn’t be a GG1.
What it would be is current technology in a GG1 body.
Well, I guess that’s desirable, but then we need the overhead current to operate it.
The GG1 was probably the greatest styling-job ever done by an industrial-designer.
The designer was Raymond Loewy (“low-eee”), although his contribution was minor.
The engine is a steeple-cab; not original to Loewy.
Pennsy was aware it had a great locomotive, so they called in Loewy to fiddle it.
What he did were two things:
—1) Minor styling fillips, e.g. the original five gold pin-stripe “cat-whisker” paint-scheme, and rounding the front door around the headlight, and
—2) Convincing the railroad to use an all-welded shell instead of a riveted shell.

Photo by Larry Morgan.

“Old Rivets.”

Only one GG1 has the riveted shell, #4800, the first one.
All the rest are welded shell.
Perhaps the best is #4935, a restored GG1 at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania near Strasburg, PA.
It was repainted and restored years ago in the original cat-whisker paint scheme.


(Photo by Tom Hughes.)

It can’t run.
It gets towed to exhibitions.

• I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m almost 67).
• My wife of 43+ years is “Linda.”
• “Steeple-cab” means a long nose (and rear) with a raised locomotive operating cab in the middle. The GG1 is a “steeple-cab.”
• “Tom Hughes” is my brother-from-Delaware’s only son Tom. He graduated college as a computer-engineer. Like me he’s a railfan.

Alumni meeting

Yesterday (Wednesday, January 26, 2011) was a regular quarterly meeting of the dreaded 282 Alumni.
The so-called “Alumni” are the union retirees of Regional Transit Service in Rochester, NY.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS — “Transit”), a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
The Alumni was a reaction to the fact Transit management retirees ran roughshod over union retirees — a continuation of the bad vibes at Transit, management versus union.
Transit had a club for long-time employees, and I was in it. It was called the “15/25-year Club;” I guess at first the “25-year Club.” But they lowered the employment requirement, and renamed it “15/25-year Club.” The employment requirement was lowered even more; I joined at 10 years.
My employ there ended in 1993 with my stroke; and the “Alumni” didn’t exist then. The Alumni is a special club — you have to join. (It’s an ATU [Amalgamated Transit Union] functionary.)
It isn’t just a social club.
It has bylaws, officers, and an Executive Board.
In many ways it’s just like our union-local, except it entertains issues of interest to retirees; like Medicare, healthcare, and diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
I always feel a little out-of-it at these meetings, since I was somewhat out-of-it as a bus-driver.
I took a seat quietly by myself and began finishing yesterday’s blog, “To Excel.”
Others joined me after a while, mainly Vern Smith, an old railfan like me, and Ron Palermo. Palermo is a retired bus-driver, Vern a retired mechanic.
Vern had brought along various railfan books, plus a box of multiple pamphlets of railfan sites in which he is involved.
Major Anderson, a retired bus-driver, and member of the Alumni Board, loudly bellowed the meeting to order.
Unlike previous meetings, a dais had been set up.
Previous meetings were rather informal.
It was kind of sad.
There was Steward Broadhurst, president of the Alumni, standing silently while Joe Carey (“carry”), recently retired as Local 282 president, took over the meeting.
The 282 Alumni is an official arm of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU — “what’s ‘ah-two?’”), so has to be taken seriously.
But Broadhurst is president; Carey just a board-member.
It seemed just like a Local 282 monthly business meeting, except not in our union-hall (in a grungy restaurant instead), with different characters.
A guy from Rochester Optical gave a presentation; I suppose the Alumni has negotiated special reduced pricing.
But I tuned it out.
I stick with Heidi, Heidi Piper of the Eye-Care Center of Canandaigua.
Heidi, like me, is a graduate of Houghton College, and like most Houghton-grads I’ve met, has her feet squarely on the ground.
Beyond that, the Eye-Care Center of Canandaigua has never cost me much; co-pays of maybe five or 10 dollars.
My health-insurance seems to cover my visits to Eye-Care, and covered most of the cost of new polarized prescription sun-glasses.
I suppose those sun-glasses might have cost less through Rochester Optical, but I can afford an extra 20 bucks or so.
It’s mainly Heidi, and also Dawn Pisello, the lady that does my eye-exam. Neither would be at Rochester Optical.
So the Rochester Optical presentation came and went.
Most of the time I was paging through Vern’s railfan books.
I’m a railfan myself, and have been since age-two (I’m almost 67).
The meeting moved on to other business, like swearing in newly elected Alumni officers.
This was done by Carey; hmmmmnnnnnnnn.........
Carey also talked about the difficulty of getting the healthcare we were promised, particularly continuing the health-insurance we had when we retired.
It was guaranteed (public-employees in New York are guaranteed the health-insurance they retired with).
But Transit has gotten retirees to acquiesce to cheaper health-insurance programs — cheaper for Transit.
“You all have Blue Cross/Blue Shield,” Carey said, as he always has.
“Not this kid!” I shouted. I have another insurance.
It was the first time I had said it — soon others were saying the same thing.
“Guess what, Joe. We don’t all have Blue Cross/Blue Shield.”
Retirees have also bought into health-insurance alternatives on-their-own they don’t need, e.g. Wal*Mart/Humana and AARP Medicare Supplementary.
“Don’t do it,” Joe kept saying. “You don’t need it. You already got all you need.”
He detailed the difficulties of getting Medicare to pay as required, and also getting secondary health-insurance to pay as required.
“They have to have the right codes when you leave the Doctor’s office. Wrong codes and you pay.”
I feel like this never applies to me.
My Doctor-visits have always been by appointment, never by walk-in.
Walk-ins (not by Doctor request) are “you-pay.”
Plus my health-insurance always seemed to pay — and that includes two hospital-stays after my stroke.
Healthcare comes and goes.
I don’t feel like I’m facing the financial Armageddon Joe talks about.
My health-insurance pays my YMCA membership so I can work out.
I don’t know as Blue Cross/Blue Shield would.
Lois Wagner, a retired bus-driver, and board-member of the Alumni, kept trying to restore order.
It was a losing battle.
It was partly Vern and I, two old railfans discussing various enthusiasms.
Vern pulled out a large computer print-out of a picture he took.
It was a retired friend in a wheelchair fishing into the State Barge Canal from the old towpath.
The State Barge Canal is the old Erie Canal widened, deepened, and somewhat rerouted.
At that point the CSX mainline (railroad) is parallel and adjacent. The nose of a train was peeking into the picture far away.
Vern and his buddy were set up under a highway-bridge that provided shade.
The bridge goes over both the canal and the railroad.
“Where IS this place?” I asked.
I had seen this location before, perhaps the same photo.
“Right near Fairport. Take 31F east out to Lyndon Road. Turn south on Lyndon. The bridge is Lyndon Road.”
Okay, sounds findable.
The meeting finally broke up.
The Blue Horizon Restaurant, where we hold the meetings, is kind of disgusting.
It’s an old restaurant across from Rochester International Airport, probably from the ‘50s or ‘60s.
It’s a grease-pit; I gave up eating there.
The rest-rooms are also disgusting.
They’re dirty with cooties. We call it “the Blue Cockroach.”
They have a conference-room, and our meetings are in it.
There’s probably a low price. I see stickers for other unions in the conference-room.
I used the rest-room before leaving, but someone was sitting on the toilet in the booth.
It was Tom Hyder (“HIGH-der”), the Alumni’s Recording Secretary.
“Ya gotta watch that seat,” he said. “It comes off in your hand.”
“You actually sat on that toilet-seat?” I said. “You better take a shower!”
A friend has said “If I ever have to go to the bathroom at that place, I’m goin’ out in the street!”

• “Dreaded” because all my siblings are flagrantly anti-union.
• “282” is Local 282, the Rochester local of the Amalgamated Transit Union.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993.
• “What’s ‘ah-two?’” is something my mother asked seeing my ATU button.
• “Fairport” is an old village on the Erie Canal, east of Rochester. It’s now a suburb. The railroad also goes through it.
• “CSX” is CSX railroad, a large railroad in the eastern half of the U.S. —It now owns and operates the old New York Central mainline across New York state. (That line was purchased from Conrail when it was broken up and sold. [“Conrail” is a government amalgamation of east-coast railroads that went bankrupt pretty much at the same time as Penn-Central, a merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central that failed. 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 and Norfolk Southern railroad. CSX got mainly the old New York Central routes, and NS got the old Pennsylvania Railroad routes, although NS also has the old Erie Railroad route across southern NY.])

To Excel

Almost a year ago, yrs trly purchased a new laptop to upgrade from his old tower.
It was an Apple MacBook Pro, refurbished from the Apple-Store.
I bought it at the suggestion of an old friend, who said my old tower would never swallow a video for processing.
I was planning to upgrade anyway, and wanted portability more than anything. I couldn’t take my tower with me on trips, plus it needed 120-volt AC current.
A laptop could be battery-operated, and be portable.
‘Pyooter-technology had advanced far beyond my old tower; which was state-of-the-art when I bought it. My tower was approaching 10 years old.
Most significant was the amount of hard-drive capacity current technology was capable of. —My old tower was 60-gig; now 500-gig was considered average. One terabyte was also available; that’s 1,000 gigs.
I figured there was no way I’d ever fill a terabyte, but my 60 gigs was 60% full.
So I got 500 gigs. —It’s now almost 7% full, only 34.86 gigs.
My old machine had 2 gigs of RAM, overkill when I bought it.
Recent technology was 4 gigs of RAM.
It was suggested I’d need all that to process video.
In my humble opinion, the amount of RAM was what mattered most.
When I worked at the Mighty Mezz, I had an old Apple IMAC, purloined from a departed reporter.
The first IMACs had only 4 megs of RAM; it started shoveling into “virtual-memory” (on the hard-drive) if RAM was maxxed.
I had two applications that required lots of RAM. And I’d have to run both at the same time.
The ‘pyooter-guru upgraded my old IMAC to 60 megs of RAM. (We added 56 megs.)
With it, I could do the newspaper’s web-site, even with the ancient IMAC processor.
So now I’d upgrade to an Apple MacBook Pro, 500-gig hard-drive, with 4 gigs of RAM.
Overkill for most of what I’m doing, but able to swallow and process a video.
Shortly after my new laptop came, my friend’s husband came over to set it up; i.e. be the friendly old ‘pyooter my tower had been.
My friend’s husband is also the young techno-maven at Mac Shack, near Rochester. He’s the guy who sold me my tower.
I upgraded a while ago to OS-X, Apple’s glitzy operating-system.
I had been a holdout — using Apple’s old 9.2 operating-system, since it was much like that at the Mighty Mezz when I was there.
My tower, a G4 double-processor Motorola, had both; I could use either.
So I had been booting up in 9.2.
Until I discovered OS-X was much like 9.2.
So I started booting up in OS-X.
OS-X was not only glitzier, it was much more stable than 9.2, which occasionally crashed on me.
With OS-X I could “force-quit” a hung app, and still have a running machine. With 9.2 that hung app might require pulling the plug.
I went through various upgrades of OS-X, starting with the original preloaded on my tower.
The original OS-X seemed rather bare-bones; later versions weren’t so rudimentary.
The last version I had was 10.4, “Tiger.” I upgraded to “Leopard” (10.5), but it didn’t have “Classic-Mode.” I had to go back to “Tiger,” which did.
I still had old computer-applications I used; e.g. AppleWorks-5.0, Quark 4.1, and Word- and Excel-98.
All those applications wouldn’t work under OS-X; for that I needed “Classic-Mode,” a 9.2 resident in OS-X.
The most recent versions of OS-X, “Leopard” and on, no longer have “Classic-Mode.”
My new laptop wouldn’t either — it was preloaded with “Snow-Leopard,” 10.6.
So the idea was for my friend’s husband to make my new laptop pretty much what my old tower was.
He’s an Apple-guy, so the idea was to avoid Microsoft.
Which was okay with me, e.g. AppleWorks instead of Microsoft Word.
“Word” has too many magic keys, that punish the sloppy keyboarding of a stroke-survivor (I had a stroke October 26, 1993).
Mistypes in “Word” send you off into the netherworld, and often delete all you just typed.
AppleWorks didn’t do that. It’s just a basic word-processor.
It isn’t overloaded with useless bells and whistles that send you into the ozone.
But AppleWorks was defunct. I had upgraded some time ago to AppleWorks-6.0, which was OS-X compliant.
But 6.0 was the last version.
Apple had replaced it with new software, “Pages” as a word-processor, and “Numbers” as spreadsheet software.
My friend’s husband loaded a free “open” word-processor, “Neo-Office,” the MAC version of PC “Open-Office.”
“Pages” and “Numbers” were 30-day trial.
I used “Neo-Office” for a while, but gave up.
Its spellcheck was flaky, and with sloppy keyboarding I depend on it.
I paid the fee to make “Pages” and “Numbers” permanent, and I switched to “Pages;” this document is in “Pages.”
“Pages” is my default word-processor.
There are minor things I don’t like about it, but they can be easily dealt with.
It also flags mistypes as I go along; even AppleWorks didn’t do that.
I still have AppleWorks 6.0; there are too many files in it.
Now I had the spreadsheet problem.
I had a couple basic spreadsheets in my old Excel-98, which “Numbers” translated.
No manual, of course. The old waazoo. Try this and see what happens.......
Meanwhile I purchased Word and Excel for MAC, along with PowerPoint (all parts of a Microsoft package).
Okay, that solves the problem of people always e-mailing me PowerPoint attachments.
I never got around to a PowerPoint reader.
But “Numbers” seemed drivable, so I stuck with it.
I didn’t switch back to Excel.
“Word” is not default, but it would do tricks other word-processors won’t, like change letter-case, and sort.
The other day I decided to print my “Numbers” spreadsheets for my income-taxes — that’s what they are.
With Excel you can reduce the size of the entire spreadsheet so it can fit on a couple pages; i.e. reduce the spreadsheet-width to be less than 11 inches “landscape.”
I can’t do that with “Numbers” that I can see.
Maybe I can reduce the print-size at my printer, but not in the “Numbers” software.
I end up with massive spreadsheets that hafta be taped together; four pages deep by three pages wide for my tax-deductions, and three by two for income.
What a pain!
So back to Excel; which I more-or-less know already.
But Excel wouldn’t translate my already-established “Numbers” spreadsheets for 2011.
“You might hafta ‘export,’” my wife said.
Numbers would export for Excel, so that’s what I did.
A 2011 income-tax deductions spreadsheet was thereby set up in Excel, and now it’s back to playing-by-ear with Excel — no manual there either. (Excel-for-MAC 2008 is is different than Excel-98.)

• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired five years ago. Best job I ever had. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.)
• The “‘pyooter-guru” was the technical administrator at the Messenger newspaper. I called him “‘pyooter-guru.”
• “App” is computer software application.
• I guess “open” means free.
• A “PC” is a personal-computer, using the Microsoft Windows operating-system. “MAC” is the Apple Macintosh computer, the competition. (MAC users are always saying a PC is inferior. —Well, maybe.)
• RE: “Change letter-case and sort........” —Word can change the letters of text to all lower-case, or all capitals, etc. “Sorting” might be alphabetically. So far, Word is the only word-processor I’ve came across that can do these.
• “Landscape” is just that; greatest length side-to-side, not top-to-bottom. A document printed “landscape” is oriented so the text goes across the 11-inch measurement of a standard 8&1/2 by 11-inch piece of typing paper.
• My wife of 43 years is “Linda.” She retired as a computer-programer.

School closings

When we woke up this morning (Monday, January 24, 2011), they were listing school-closings on the radio.
“For what?” my wife cried.
“Cold weather, I suppose,“ I said.
I played a flashlight on the thermometer outside our window at our house in West Bloomfield.
Almost 10 below zero.
“They never closed school for cold weather when I was a kid,” my wife said. “What kinda pansies are they raising?
They only closed school if it snowed so much the school-buses couldn’t get through, but they tried.
The idea was to get kids to school so they could take attendance to get the state money. Then they’d send ya home.”
“School-buses,” I shouted. “I never had no school-buses!
I always walked to school, 50 miles each way, and uphill both comin’ and goin’.
And the wind was always in my face. Turn around, and the wind reversed too.
And it was always snowing; winter and summer.”
“And I had to wait for the school-bus out at the end of our driveway,” my wife added.
“No mom in her minivan, and no closet-sized booth built by dad.”
“I drive through Bloomfield village in the morning,” I said; “and I get stopped by school-buses pickin’ up kids three blocks from school.
Is it any wonder we hear weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about childhood obesity?”

• “We” is me and my wife of 43+ years, “Linda.”
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester. Adjacent is the town of East Bloomfield, and the village of Bloomfield is in it. —It’s about four miles away.

Not the real world

Last night (Thursday, January 20, 2011) I got an e-mail from an old friend, who like me retired from Regional Transit Service.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.
Like me, he retired because of strokes; in his case two, in my case only one.
Both of us recovered fairly well, although his left side is somewhat inoperative, particularly his left arm.
I, on the other hand, have all my faculties, although speech is slightly compromised, and my balance is wonky.
My friend retired as a Road-Supervisor, me as a bus-driver; although he drove bus at first.
Road-Supervisors drove around in supervisor-cars, supervising bus-drivers and intervening in disputes with passengers.
In other words, he was management.
I probably could have migrated to management myself, but didn’t.
Like most bus-drivers, I was of-the-opinion that the best job at Transit (RTS) was driving bus.
You were pretty much on-your-own all day, free of office-politics.
My friend is married to a current bus-driver who will soon retire.
So he’s privy to what’s going on there.
I’m not. Transit faded from my life after my stroke.
Apparently new red-light cameras in Rochester were triggered by RTS buses running red-lights.
Traffic-lights were always a hairball, approached with great fear and trepidation.
If the light changes, do you keep on going, or slam on your brakes throwing passengers on the floor.
So I always approached traffic-lights slowly, so I could stop if I had to without throwing passengers on the floor.
Driving the same bus-route every day, you got so you could predict a traffic-light.
Beyond that, most city traffic-lights had pedestrian walk-lights.
If a walk-light was on for pedestrians, you could proceed.
If the pedestrian-light was at “don’t walk,” the traffic-light might change on you.
Often the pedestrian-lights had timers counting the seconds until “don’t walk.”
So it’s hard for me to imagine myself triggering a red-light camera.
Except if your schedule is so tight you have to break the law to keep schedule.
This e-mail prompted a dream, actually two of my lucid bus-driving dreams this morning.
I was driving Main St., the dreaded 800-line.
The 800-line was always a killer; the main drag east-to-west through the city.
The eastern end was the worst; stop at every stop, and not enough time to do so.
I always ran late.
Flat-out through the end-of-line layover, and change the sign on-the-fly.
So here I was driving the east end, the first time I had driven bus in years.
East Main was a war-zone; construction everywhere.
With a bus you had to be fully aware of the gigantic size of your vehicle, lest your back-end clip something.
The bridge over the old New York Central railroad-tracks was being rebuilt, and down to only two lanes on one half.
A bus was too wide for opposing traffic; you had to have the bridge to yourself.
Plus you were making sharp curves approaching and leaving.
You had to drive just so; lest your back-end clip the bridge-trusses.
Bus-stops were crowded as they always were on the 800, plus most stops were somewhat unsafe.
In my first dream I found myself “off-route” downtown, trying to get back to Main St.
“Off-route” is grounds for firing, so I didn’t report it.
But I drove into a cul-de-sac — no exit — as I do in most bus-driving dreams.
Cul-de-sacs were the thing you feared most.
I only had it happen once during my career, on a detour through a snowy parking-lot I wasn’t familiar with.
You don’t back a bus out of a cul-de-sac, for fear of blindly backing into something.
You have to call in a Road-Supervisor, who drives out and then loudly excoriates you as stupid.
My parking-lot cul-de-sac looked safely escapable, but no reverse.
A Road-Supervisor had to drive all the way out from downtown to engage my reverse manually.
I was at Lake Ontario, perhaps 10 miles from downtown.
My second dream was not “off-route.”
I managed to get downtown, but the dedicated bus-lane was filled with parked delivery-trucks.
“I’ll have to let you off in the street,” I said to my passengers.
“The bus-stop is blocked. Look both ways before stepping out the door.”
I thereafter looked out for my debarking passengers, so they didn’t step into the path of an oncoming car.
(I had it happen once. A girl got off my bus, walked in front of it, and got brushed by a passing car.
It didn’t injure her; just flipped her into the pavement. She got clipped by the right-side mirror.
But Daddy and an ambulance-chaser went after Transit.
Deep pockets.
Like it was my fault.
Which it wasn’t, of course.
I hadn’t signaled her.
From then on, I looked out for debarking passengers.
Saved a couple kids once.
They were mad as Hell like I had honked at them.
They never even saw the car that woulda run them over, if I had not stopped them.)
Passengers off, I headed west over the stone viaduct over the Genesee River.
It was dark, and the pavement was all torn up — like driving on dirt.
My next bus-stop was also dirt.
Let your passengers off in rock rubble.
“Unsafe,” I said. “Be very careful. This is the best I can do.”
Sure, keep a tight schedule under such conditions.
What is that Scheduling Department doing? A single car on Sunday morning with no passengers?
NOT THE REAL WORLD. Do they have any idea what it’s like out here?

• The “Genesee River” (“jen-uh-SEE”) is a fairly large river that runs south-to-north across Western New York, runs through Rochester, including over falls, and empties into Lake Ontario.

Cars I shoulda bought

240Z.

As I get older, I find myself thinking about the cars I should have bought.
There are two.
One is the Datsun 240Z (“DAT-sin;” as in “that”).
Datsun is now Nissan.
The 240Z was a really great car, the one that put the Japanese on the map.

Triumph TR250. (Mine was the same color.)

What I had instead was a 1968 Triumph TR250; called the TR5 in England.
It was one of the worst cars I’ve ever owned.
I bought it because I had a Triumph TR3 in college, a really great car, and I wasn’t about to buy Japanese — I could still see that column of oily black smoke towering above the Battleship Arizona.
Except now both our cars are Japanese, and I even have German cars in my past, much to the dismay of a friend who survived the firebombing of London.
Triumphs were ill-suited to day-to-day use.
Ours began rusting almost as soon as I got it.
It would also dislocate its rear-mounted muffler if backed into a snowbank.
The muffler input was on the left side, and the twin exhaust outlets were on the right side. If backed into a snowbank, the muffler rotated and pulled the input, which was just clamped.
The bologna-cut exhausts looked great, but I had to wire the muffler into place with bent coat-hangers. —Fixing everything at a shop cost a fortune.
My Triumph had no salt-protection, so it rusted to smithereens.
About the only advantage it had over a 240Z was you could fold the top down.
That was a manual job (not power), and the snaps that held it in place were cheap plastic and broke.
I had to replace a few, and we hardly ever put the top down. It was too much trouble — and too risky.
The 240Z was everything the Triumph should have been, plus it was dependable.
My Triumph only crippled once; I had to clean out the gas-tank. The drain was plugged by leaves and rust. Beforehand it would stutter if I gave it full-throttle.
The 240Z had an overhead-cam six-inline engine, what my Triumph should have had.
It also had independent-rear-suspension (IRS), all the rage at that time.
The TR250 was also IRS, but it was slap-dash.
The frame slung under the rear-axle, so there was little room for movement.
It was also fragile.
A friend was off-road rallying a TR6 (what the TR250 later became), and kept telling me what he wanted to do was graft his TR6 onto a TR4 frame. —The TR4 wasn’t IRS; it was a solid rear tractor-axle, just like the Model-T.
His IRS was always crippling — plus it was hard to handle.
My TR250 was also heatless. It had a heater, but ran cold.
I had to stitch up canvas coverings for the grill, but even they made little difference.
It didn’t run hotter until I blanked off the radiator, and that had to be removed in Summer.
The 240Z was essentially a GT coupe. The TR250 was a roadster sportscar.
The 240Z would have been a much better daily driver; my TR250 was ill-suited — it was noisy and drafty and rain got in.

Triumph GT6+.

Triumph also made a GT coupe, the GT6+.
It was essentially the Triumph Spitfire with a GT body, and a six-cylinder engine.
I almost bought one instead — they looked that pretty!
But the TR250 looked more butch.
Plus with a GT coupe you couldn’t put the top down.
The GT6+ was also smaller and more cramped than a 240Z; only two liters of engine displacement.
A 240Z is 2.4 liters; a TR250 was 2.5 liters, but a sewing-machine motor.
The 240Z was extremely well recommended. I should have listened, and forgot about the Battleship Arizona.


Fiat 124 Sport Coupe.

The other car is the Fiat (“FEE-at;” as in “that”) 124 Sport Coupe, sort of an ersatz Ferrari.
Fiat is Italian, and I think they owned Ferrari back then — maybe they still do.
The 124 Sport Coupe is only a tiny four-cylinder engine, 1,500 to 1,800 cubic centimeters of engine displacement.
But I think it was double overhead cam.
I began noticing them at car-races; they were attractive, especially if red, which most were.
Classic Italian styling with Italian mechanicals.

Chevrolet Vega GT. (Mine was red with a black stripe.)

But what I ended up with was a red 1972 Chevrolet Vega GT, also an ersatz Ferrari, but only in appearance.
Vegas were the worst engineering General Motors ever brought to market.
Their engine-block was cast aluminum without cast-iron cylinder-sleeve inserts.
Lawnmower and motorcycle engines are often cast aluminum, but usually have cast-iron cylinder-sleeve inserts.
Linerless aluminum engine-blocks (like the Vega) were acid-etched in the cylinder-bores to render a bore-surface similar to cast-iron.
But they didn’t wear well, and the block would warp if overheated.
Despite that, the Vega GT was the best-handling of the economy minicars; e.g. the Ford Pinto, etc.
The only car that handled better was the German Opel GT, so good it was outlawed in stock minicar racing.
New Vega GTs were incredibly stiff.
I remember the first time I drove one; roadtesting the one I bought — used at two years old.
“Wow!” I thought. By comparison my TR250 was an aluminum ladder; flexing every which way.
I had hurled the Vega into a corner, and it immediately took a set. It was much more stable than my TR250.
But that stability was not long-lived.
Part of what made a Vega GT so stiff was body-structure that soon rusted away.
This was especially true up front. That chassis-stiffness was a function of the fender-wells, which rusted away.
Within years, everything rusted away, and all that was left were the front-end engine and suspension-mounts, which then collapsed.
You could see that — nearly every Vega ended up dragging its front-end lower to the ground. (Mine did the same thing.)
They ended up almost as unstable as my TR250.
My 1972 Vega GT was a gorgeous car that eventually dumped on me.
Who knows if a Fiat 124 Sport Coupe would have been more satisfying, but I’ll never know.
I should have got one.

GTI. (Mine was white like this one.)

I did purchase one well recommended car, a 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI.
We had already bought a used Volkswagen Rabbit, 1978 four-doors with automatic transmission.
We both liked it, especially my wife, since it had automatic transmission. She couldn’t drive stick-shift. (The TR250 and Vega were both four-speed floor-shift.)
But the GTI was very highly recommended, like by Car & Driver, a car-enthusiast magazine I get.
So I roadtested one at a nearby Volkswagen dealer.
Sold! It was way more powerful than our 1978 Rabbit, but it was standard transmission. Back to a car my wife couldn’t drive.
It was a great concept.
Make the lowly Rabbit a pleasurable performance car by upgrading the motor for American conditions, plus add five-speed standard transmission, good tires, and sport suspension.
Obviously engineers and enthusiasts had played a part, making it handle well despite it being front-wheel-drive.
But it had a high-pressure fuel system exposed to road-salt.
It needed that high-pressure fuel system for its fuel-injection.
Everything was right out in the open.
A steel-tubing fuel-line rusted, and started spraying gasoline all over.
I had to replace everything, even the fuel-pump.
Everything was so rust-damaged it couldn’t be undone.
I managed to get reinforced high-pressure rubber tubing, so I wasn’t fixing the leak with replacement parts, which cost a fortune.
I fixed it, but thereafter quickly sold the car.
By then we had bought our next car, illustrated below, which was All-Wheel-Drive (AWD).
The GTI wasn’t. It was more likely to get stuck, like in our driveway, which I had to keep clearing.
It never got stuck, but was more a handful than our AWD Civic.

AWD Civic wagon. (Ours was this color.)

Our 1989 AWD Civic stationwagon was the BEST car we’ve ever had.
Not only did it never get stuck, but it was also automatic-transmission, so my wife could drive it.
It was small, yet incredibly useful.
Easy to drive, and very stable. I had replaced the water-balloon standard tires with sporting Goodyears.
It wasn’t very powerful, yet fast enough.
We drove it over 160,000 miles and it never failed us, although I went through three batteries and a completely new ignition-system.
We’d probably still be driving it, but my wife had an accident with it that totaled it, mostly because it was old.
I was tempted to fix it anyway — it wasn’t that damaged, but gave up. It was too old.
The AWD Honda Civic stationwagon wasn’t recommended specifically, but all Honda Civics were recommended generically.
To me this was proof yet again that I shouldn’t be enslaved to the recommendations of Car & Driver magazine.
I once drove our Civic to roadtest a four-speed ’55 Chevy hardtop with 400 cubic-inch Small-Block, a car very similar to what I dreamed about all through college.
The ’55 Chevy was a turn-off. Way more powerful than our Civic, but our Civic was much more friendly.
Quieter and more stable.
I got back in our Civic and drove home.
No sale! —Like, what did I ever see in that thing?
It was intimidating. Too much racket!
Our Civic wasn’t the fun my GTI was, but -a) my wife could drive it, and -b) it didn’t throw hairballs at me.
“160,000 miles, and never in the shop,” I used to say.

So now there is one more desirable car perhaps I shouldn’t be passing, the newer Ford Mustang.
It’s highly recommended, but there are two problems: -1) It’s not All-Wheel-Drive, and -2) Performance to me is no longer hot-rod performance, it’s function over the long haul.
What’s appealing about the Mustang is hot-rod performance.
I’d need standard-transmission, which cuts out my wife.
Beyond that, so what! What sense does hot-rod performance make stuck in traffic twiddling the stereo-knobs?
And 98% of what I drive isn’t flat-out performance.
It’s day-to-day shoveling; pillar-to-post.
So appealing as the newer Mustang is, I probably won’t buy one.

Brenda Tremblay

(“TROM-blay;” as in “trombone.”)

Brenda.

For the past few weeks yrs trly has been carrying on an e-mail exchange with Brenda Tremblay, the morning radio-host at WXXI-FM, 91.5, the classical-music radio-station out of Rochester we listen to, publicly supported.
Brenda replaced the inimitable Simon Pontin (“PON-tin;” as in “Avon,” the cosmetic), the morning radio-host at WXXI 33 years.

Pontin.

I was a little afraid our exchange might become one-sided in my favor, but it hasn’t. Quite often I find myself responding to e-mails from Brenda.
We share a commonality, that we both graduated from nearby Houghton College, me in ‘66, and Brenda in ‘90.
In fact, Brenda is a daughter of Sidney Bolton, a student at the college during my tenure.
Although he graduated two years before me (in ‘64) as a Music major.
I‘ve met a few Houghton-grads over the years, and they all seem to have their feet squarely on the ground.
I think that’s a reflection of the faculty at Houghton; people that seemed to care about us students, as opposed to self-absorbed elitists.
Although I terrified Brenda the first time I met her years ago.
“That place sure has changed,” she remarked, regarding our alma-mater.
“Yeah, gone to Hell in a handbasket!” I responded.
It was a reflection of all the silly rules we had to abide by while attending Houghton, which seem to have withered away since we graduated.
Like no TV or movies or theater, nor shorts or sleeveless dresses.
Girls playing basketball had to wear skirts, although that rule came off shortly before I arrived.
I’ve never regretted Houghton; it was the first time authority-figures listened to me. —Like they valued my opinions; like they could glean ideas from me.
Houghton was conservative, and overly-religious.
But I could live with that.
By poo-pooing extravagant venting of youthful energy, they made it possible to study hard.
I graduated as somewhat a ne’er-do-well, not approved of by the college; like they felt they had failed me.
But I graduated none-the-less; and Houghton rubbed off.
My tastes in music were set there. Bach and anything baroque.
I suppose I was tilted that way when I matriculated, but they encouraged that.
And now I listen to only classical music, WXXI.
And Brenda Tremblay, who isn’t Pontin, but that’s okay. They both are classical music lovers.

• “We” is me and my wife of 43 years, “Linda.”

Baloney alert!

Keillor.

Last night (Saturday, January 15, 2011) my wife turned on WXXI-FM at 6 p.m.
WXXI is the classical-music radio-station out of Rochester we listen to.
It was time for Garrison Keillor’s (“KEY-ler”) “Prairie Home Companion.”
But it wasn’t Garrison Keillor. It was a guest-host, apparently appointed by Keillor.
“It’s all about the music,” Garrison said.
“What a buncha baloney that is,” my wife said.
She turned the radio back off.
I wasn’t privy to this, as I was taking a nap.
Except I noticed the radio wasn’t on.
But it’s true. It’s not about the music. It’s also Garrison, his gentle offbeat humor. His poking fun at Lutherans and Unitarians, and life on the “frozen tundra.”
Years ago we didn’t listen to Prairie Home Companion; it seemed kind of schmaltzy.
But we gravitated to it. It’s that offbeat humor.
Tub-thumping Conservatives tell me Keillor is of-the-Devil. Just like Barack Obama.
Like, who is the Devil-incarnate anyway, Barack or Garrison?
It’s because Keillor proclaims himself a “liberal” (dread).
Like me, I don’t know as he’s actually “liberal,” but if you’re not avowedly Conservative, the Conservatives loudly badmouth you as “liberal.”
(Cue Rush Limbaugh and goosestepping Ann Coulter.)
“All Liberals should be lined up and shot,” I was once told.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Does that include me?”
But it wasn’t Garrison.
We protest!

• My wife of 43 years is “Linda.” Like me she’s retired, but she worked part-time at the West Bloomfield post-office. She retired as a computer programmer. She no longer works at the post-office.

Hounds of Hell

Yesterday (Thursday, January 13, 2011) was the first time I blew out our driveway this season.
That is, the first time I used our snowblower.
Our snowblower is a fairly large 28-inch Honda (pictured at left), that sounds like the Hounds of Hell when running.
It really hammers.
We bought it 17 years ago, brand-new.
We’ve had various issues with it.
When we got it, our driveway was crusher-run.
The rock ate holes in the housing. I got a new housing and changed it myself. We also had our driveway paved.
It has a pulley-brake that broke a cotter-pin.
The pulley-brake destroyed itself, and I had to replace that.
I also did that myself.
All these repairs were done by me after my stroke. They seemed doable.
It so happens you can install the snow-augers backwards, and that’s what I did.
You don’t see this operating the snowblower from behind, but it was moving the snow out to the sides of the housing, instead of in toward the paddle.
So I fixed that — reversed the snow-augers. But it still wasn’t throwing snow.
Brooks-Gravely, which no longer exists, on Brighton-Henrietta Town-Line Road, where I bought it, suggested it needed a “tune-up;” that is, replace and tighten the pulley. Seems I had done all that earlier including the pulley-wheel.
(That errant pulley-brake destroyed the pulley.)
By then I was thinking I should tractor-mount, like my neighbor across the street.
But the good people at Brooks-Gravely suggested my Honda was the best snowblower money could buy, and a tractor-mount would be unbalanced.
So they “tuned it up,” and now it throws snow 40 feet or more.
It was cranky about starting, as it always is, after sitting for months unused in the bitter-cold of my unheated garden-shed.
But it has electric-start, that is a starter-motor that operates on house-current.
I have a giant 100-foot extension-cord out to our shed.
I plugged it in.
I cranked about five minutes, checking the fuel and choke.
All-of-a-sudden, BRAP-uh! The Hounds of Hell.
Both our cars are All-Wheel-Drive, partly so we don’t get stuck, but mainly so I don’t have to blow out that driveway every time it snows.
My threshold is eight inches; less we can drive through.
It had snowed fairly deep, almost a foot.
But it was powder, fluffy stuff; probably drivable.
But I blew it out anyway.
I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I turn 67 in a couple weeks.
It’s like mowing our huge lawn.
Seems doable, so I ain’t sellin’ my mower or snowblower yet.

• “We” (“our”) is me and my wife of 43 years, “Linda.”
• “Crusher-run” is a sub-base of rock and dust left as residue by a rock-crusher. It’s often used as a sub-base for paving, since it drains well. Driveways often start as crusher-run applied atop a road cutting.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993.
• “Brooks-Gravely” was a lawn-implement seller.
• “Brighton-Henrietta Town-Line Road” separates the two suburbs of Brighton and Henrietta, both southeast of Rochester, Henrietta south of Brighton. It’s right on the town line.
• “All-Wheel-Drive” is all four wheels driven, as opposed to just two. Our cars are a 2003 Honda CR-V and a 2005 Toyota Sienna minivan.

Cellphone wars

About three months ago my hairdresser introduced me to his Verizon Droid© Smartphone, which he loved.
“You might be interested in this,” he said. “You should get one yourself.”
I was skeptical. To me a cellphone is mainly a phone.
“Since you drive Apple (this computer is a MAC), you might be interested in Apple’s iPhone instead,” he said. “Verizon is gonna do iPhone; so I hear.”
I was skeptical until I drove his phone myself.
A Droid will do Internet.
What a great idea. Out in the middle of nowhere, and do Internet from the satellite.
I.e. Not require wi-fi.
Most of the places I’ve visited have wi-fi, but there would be places that don’t.
So I got a Droid of my own, the Droid-X pictured.
That was a month ago, and now the TV news is announcing Verizon will do iPhone.
I could have held off, but iPhone uses a soldered-in battery.
To me this is silly.
My Droid has a regular battery I can easily replace.
Score one for the Droid.
Which is why I got my Droid instead of iPhone.
From what I understand, both Droid and iPhone can do pretty much the same things.
But with a Droid I can easily change out the battery.
With iPhone I can’t.

“We have met the enemy, and they are us”

As quite often happens, I take a pot-shot at Arizona politics — “If anyone was too poor and unfortunate to get a transplant, ice-flow for them, baby!” — and some idiot goes and shoots a congresswoman. In where else? Arizona.
News events quickly race ahead of my comments; making my comments stale and inappropriate.
A good friend of mine said “two thumbs up” regarding yesterday’s blog, but with Gabby Giffords fighting for her life, his congratulations seem unfortunately stale.
So now I fly this wondering if it too will become stale; the possibility Giffords might die.
The Pima County sheriff in Tucson, Clarence Dupnik, said it best. He’s worried about the vitriolic level of political discourse our nation has fallen to — that Arizona seems to be the nexus.
....the influence of blowhards on talk-radio and blind Internet-posts.
I’m reminded of a discussion I overheard a few months ago in the Canandaigua YMCA locker-room.
“Let’s go down to Washington, Joe. Take our guns and take out that Pelosi lady.”
Yep. As expounded in the Godfather movies, life is cheap. It doesn’t take much to kill someone.
I’m reminded of NY Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino versus reporter Fred Dicker: “I’ll take you out, buddy!”
A few well-placed bullets to change the course of history.
This all leaves me wondering about the value of the constitutional right to bear arms.
My brother firmly believes having a gun in his house would protect him from intruders. No matter more-than-likely that gun would kill him.
It’s a right I more-or-less agree with, except it presumes the rationality and temperance of the arms-bearers.
Yet we always seem to have irrational and intemperate arms-bearers, egged on by talk-radio and the Internet.
We seem to have acquiesced to frenzied attempts to offset terrorists.
Sometimes I wonder if we should more limit the right to bear arms, to offset the terrorists among us.
As Pogo said long ago: “We have met the enemy, and they are us.”

• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA exercise-gym. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 15 miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)

Lemonade chronicles

Yesterday (Friday, January 7, 2011), in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym (Wellness-Center), I watched as Senator Mitch McConnell celebrated the fact president Obama had named William Daley to be the new White House Chief-of-staff.
That this boded well, that at long last Obama had finally named someone from the private sector, instead of some professorial academic (dread).
That Daley would understand the value of a dollar because he had once operated a lemonade-stand — those are McConnell’s words.
So in other words, the fact I’m a Democrat (gasp), who never operated a lemonade-stand, means I don’t understand the value of a dollar.
This is despite the fact we pay off our credit-card balance in full every month, which is often over $2,000.
Plus we don’t owe anyone anything, our house is paid for in full (we own it free-and-clear), plus we have hundreds of thousands of dollars socked away in savings for retirement.
Plus we’ve never owned a Corvette, or a speedboat, nor a giant RV land-barge; plus our house isn’t a Taj-Mahal. I.e. We never buy anything we can’t afford.
What I think is we don’t comprehend the value of a tax-break or tax-abatements to locate our lemonade-stand in your little town.
Nor do we understand the importance of using other people’s money to finance our lemonade-stand.
So that in the end we get our hands on a Mercedes or BMW with other people’s money, and live in a multi-roomed estate.
Before we shut down our lemonade-stand for lack of favors.
And if anyone was too poor and unfortunate to get a transplant, ice-flow for them, baby!

• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA exercise-gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center.” (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 15 miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)

Droid within range

“DROID!”

About a month ago, yrs trly purchased a Motorola Droid-X® Smartphone from Verizon.
It came without a manual; I was on-my-own.
First requirement: get it to operate as a phone, which of course it is.
It seemed rather unfriendly compared to my previous cellphone.
I couldn’t delete any of the calls I had made, at least not the way I did with my previous phone.
The phone keeps a record of all the calls you made, plus my old phone kept separate records of all calls received, plus missed calls.
If you missed a call, you could call back.
You can do that with a Smartphone too, but it’s lumping everything together.
There are tiny indicators on each call to delineate sent from received and/or missed.
Two days ago (Monday, January 2, 2011) I visited my hairdresser.
He has a Droid himself, although an earlier model.
He is half the reason I purchased a Droid-X.
The other half is I can’t resist a technical challenge.
My brother-from-Boston and I were in Altoona, PA (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”) to visit Horseshoe Curve, the best railfan spot I’ve ever visited.
I’m a railfan, and have been since age-two.
We are in a convenience-store to buy subs.
I see the store has a computer touch-screen for ordering subs.
“Hmmmnn, looks interesting,” I say.
I start fingering the screen.
“I speak English,” my brother rudely bellows.
The clerks started trembling.
I was unable to try that computer touch-screen until my next visit, when I was alone.
The Tops supermarket in nearby Canandaigua has “U-Scan” terminals.
Scan your order yourself; no check-out clerk.
I can’t resist; I should be able to drive them things.
Like every technical challenge, it throws mysteries at me that require quick reasoning.
Lest I get the dreaded “Call Attendant” message; in which case the attendant comes over and implies you’re stupid.
Strong Hospital in Rochester has computer gizmos to process your parking-fee.
They also have human attendants at the parking-lot exits.
Not this kid!
We’re usin’ them gizmos; I should be able to drive those things.
So I drag out my Droid-X at the hairdresser.
He grabs it, to compare it to what he has: an earlier Droid.
Mine is small, but bigger than his; a display-screen about 2&1/2 inches by four, instead of 2&1/4 by three.
People probably complained about the small screen.
But a larger screen makes it larger. My previous cellphone was about one-plus by three inches — pocket size.
With my Droid I can no longer put keys in that pocket.
“You got a lotta apps,” he said. He had brought up the app-screen.
“Except right now I’m trying to get it to act like a phone,” I said.
“For example, I can’t seem to delete my recent calls,” I said. “With my old phone it was a slam-dunk.”
He fired up “recent calls,” hit “Menu,” and then “clear-all.”
“WHOA!” I said. “You just made it as easy as my old cellphone.”
Then we started looking for “Missed Calls.”
Could not find.
“So I’ll call your phone, don’t answer, and we’ll find the ‘missed call.’
There it is; it’s in your ‘Recent calls.’ See that red arrow? That’s a missed call. ‘Recent calls’ is everything. That arrow tells you if it’s sent, received, or missed. —If it’s red, it’s a ‘missed call.’”
Probably the most important thing he said was ”menu everything.”
Okay; e-mail — we’ll try it.
My Smartphone is downloading the same e-mail my ‘pyooter gets.
There they all are.
I hit “menu.”
“Clear-all?”
SHAZAMM!
Easy as pie! Before, I had to open every one just to trash ‘em.
What a pain that was; and what if there’s an e-mail I don’t wanna open — like I suspect a virus?
I don’t filter everything. I usually dump spam every day.
“Okay, next issue,” I said. “I can’t get voice-recognition to work.”
We hit Google and the virtual keyboard appeared.
“See that microphone over there? That’s your voice-recognition. Try it!”
“That keyboard is a pain. It’s too small,” I said.
“I never use that keyboard. Voice-recognition, baby!
“MyCast,” I said, my Internet weather-site.
BOOM; there it is — my MyCast login screen.
“Verizon has classes to show you how to use a Droid,” he said.
“I know; I’m thinking of doing that,” I said.
“But what I’d rather do is pick the brain of a user like you, not some elitist technocrat.”
I headed out; the hairdresser started working on his next customer.
I thought I’d call my wife on our landline; I have it in my “contacts” as “Home.”
“Please say a command,” my phone said.
“Call home,” I said.
“Did you say ‘call Adam?’”
“No,” I shouted.
(Adam is my baby-sister’s oldest son in VA — he’s going to college.)
“Did you say ‘call Colvin’ (“COAL-vin”)?”
“No!” Since when does “home” sound like “Adam” or “Colvin?”
(“Colvin” is Gary Colvin, a retired bus-driver like me, and also a techie.)
“Unable to process your command; please try again;” and into the ozone we went.
“Don’t use that!” my hairdresser said; “it never works. Just scroll your contact-list.”
Which is what I finally did, and thereafter called my wife.
Before leaving his shop I tried again; this time a different approach.
I fired up my contact-list, hit search, and then said “home.
There it was! “Home,” right in my search-result.
I showed the hairdresser.
We’ll figure that sucker out.

• Every time I fire up my Droid, about 15-20 seconds into boot-up, it says “DROID!”
• “Verizon” is my cellphone service provider, also my hairdresser’s cellphone service provider.
• “Horseshoe Curve ,” is by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to. Horseshoe Curve is now a national historic site. It was a trick by the Pennsylvania Railroad to get over the Allegheny mountains without steep grades — the railroad was looped around a valley to stretch out the climb. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use.
• RE: “Tops supermarket in nearby Canandaigua......” —“Tops” is a large supermarket-chain based in Buffalo we occasionally buy groceries at. They have a store in Canandaigua. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.)
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• RE: “Retired bus-driver like me.....” —For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke ended that. (I had a stroke October 26, 1993.)