Monthly Calendar Report for January, 2011

Another year begins, and I wonder if I should keep doing this.
The Monthly Calendar Report is at least 12-15 hours per month, and I’m old and swamped for time.
What’s scribbled onto legal-pads is barely discernible. Words spill out that weren’t intended, are spelled incorrectly, or are often incomplete.
My ability to put pencil to paper is degrading with age. But the muse keeps cooking.
Sometimes I look at a calendar, and wonder what I’ll say. But something always comes to mind.
Blogging has become a way to kill time as a retiree.
Every morning as I sit down to my cereal I put pencil to paper.
Just about every day there is something INSANE to blog about. And when there isn’t I work on the Monthly Calendar Report.
The daily insanity-blogs are less frequent than in the past. Which gives me more time to work on the Monthly Calendar Report.
I can usually fully comment on a single calendar over one breakfast sitting. And my completed calendar-reports seem to fly on time.
So I guess I’ll keep doing them.
If I didn’t I’d have time on my hands.
Plus I like writing — shoveling, I call it.



WOW! The sun came out. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

―The January 2011 entry of my own calendar is probably the best snow-shot I ever got.
Seven of the photographs of my 2011 calendar ran in my 2010 calendar.
I happened to send my 2010 calendar to Mike Kraynyak (“CRANE-yak”), proprietor of Tunnel Inn, the bed-and-breakfast we stay at in Gallitzin (“guh-LITT-zin”), PA, near Horseshoe Curve.
He was so impressed, he suggested I do a 2011 calendar he could sell.
That’s my 2011 calendar.
Tunnel Inn is a railfan mecca; it’s right next to the old Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels at the top of the climb over the Allegheny mountains.
Kraynyak is especially marketing to railfans, so my calendar is right up his alley.
Last February we happened to go down to Altoona to do a train-chase with Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”).
The idea was to get snow-pictures.
Phil is the railfan extraordinaire from Altoona, PA, who supplied all-day train-chases for $125. —I did my first two years ago, alone, and it blew my mind.
He called them “Adventure-Tours.”
Faudi would bring along his rail-scanner, tuned to 160.8, the Norfolk Southern operating channel, and he knew the whereabouts of every train, as the engineers called out the signals, and various lineside defect-detectors fired off.
He knew each train by symbol, and knew all the back-roads, and how long it took to get to various photo locations — and also what made a successful photo — lighting, drama, etc.
I’d let Phil do the monitoring. I have a scanner myself, but I left it behind.
Phil knew every train on the scanner, where it was, and how long it took to beat it to a prime photo location.
My first time was a slow day, yet we got 20 trains. Next Tour we got 30 trains in one nine-hour day.
Phil gave it up; fear of liability suits, and a really nice car he’s afraid he’d mess up.
A snowstorm had inundated the mountain highlands west of Altoona.
Getting to Altoona was a slam-dunk. It had snowed, but the roads were clear and dry.
The snow was west of Altoona. As we drove up toward Gallitzin — which is west of Altoona — the snow deepened.
In Gallitzin we found Tunnel Inn buried under 3-4 feet of snow.
Kraynyak was trying to blow out his tiny parking-lot with a snowblower.
When Faudi showed up the next day, we wondered if we could get anything at all.
Horseshoe Curve was completely inaccessible; buried behind a four-foot snow-berm the plows had left.
“Don’t worry, Bob,” he said. “I figured out lots of places we could stop.
One was the railroad-crossing in Tipton, north of Altoona.
Amtrak’s eastbound “Pennsylvanian” was coming. (That was my Christmas-card.)
Later that afternoon we went south of Lilly along the old Pennsy right-of-way.
I climbed a tall snowbank, left by the street-plows, and promptly fell back down.
“Oh, Bob,” Faudi shouted. “Are you hurt?”
As always, I had tumbled in a heap.
“Nope,” I said. “I always tumble in a heap.”
Back up the snowbank I climbed; a train was coming on Track One, and I was determined to get it.
It had been snowing off-and-on, but the sun came out as the train approached.
That’s my January picture above.
One of many great snow-shots, but my best.
The snow was deep enough to cover the ties.



Got it! (Photo by Willie Brown.)

―The January 2011 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography Contest calendar is a fabulous snow-picture; a Norfolk Southern freight through a snowy cut near Powhatan, OH.
I’m no longer getting the O. Winston Link calendar. All the good pictures have been used. Back to the Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography Contest calendar, which I used to get.
Norfolk Southern locomotive-engineer Willie Brown (the photographer) had just piloted a train through this area around midnight, and knew this train was behind him.
So when he got off at 5 a.m., he drove back, hiked in, and waited for the train.
It was just dawning as the train appeared, and it had been snowing.
It’s a fabulous shot. Snow is still on the trees, even on the railheads.
Very soon that snow will blow off; in fact, as the train passes it will take the snow off the railheads.
3335 is an EMD (Electromotive Division of General Motors) SD40-2, six-axle (six traction-motors), 3,000 horsepower, with updated Dash-2 modular electronics.
The SD40-2 was probably the most successful EMD product of all.
Many are still around, although I’m told other suppliers beside EMD made replacement parts for the SD40-2.
This is not the case with General Electric diesel-locomotives. They won’t let anyone else build replacement parts.
Or so I’m told.
For years SD40-2s did helper-service over the Allegheny mountains on the old Pennsy mainline, now Norfolk Southern.
The SD40-2 is also fuel-stingy.
The train appears to be solid coal-hoppers, and appears to be loaded.
The line must be slightly downhill.
The train is getting by with a single unit.



HiBoy.

―The January 2011 entry of my Oxman Hot-Rod Calendar is a 1932 Ford roadster hotrod, a HiBoy.
Purest-of-the-pure, standing tall.
Many times hotrods were lowered for appearance; tops chopped, body-sides sectioned, channels installed in the body to allow it to sit lower on the frame.
But some weren’t; these were called “HiBoys.”
The car appears to be raked a little — lower in front than in the rear, so it rakes down toward the front.
This is probably because the front beam-axle was “lowered;” i.e. re-bent to allow the wheels to mount higher.
Sometimes a completely different beam-axle was installed to allow the front to sit lower; often made out of a tubing.
We can’t see what this has; it’s hidden behind the wheel.
(It’s tubing, with drops bent in.)
Forks are installed to locate the front-axle beam.
Look at this car; it’s incredibly well-done.
Even the body indentation for the rear-wheels matches the tires, or more likely the tires match the body indentations.
I bet that took trial-and-error.
The rear-wheel indentation on the body-sides is stock; inalterable.
You mount the rear-tire, and see if it matches.
With a HiBoy this was more-than-likely.
The rear of the car isn’t being lowered relative to the rear axle.
Everything remains in proper proportion; styling delivered by Edsel Ford.
Edsel was Old Henry’s only son, the butt of considerable fatherly criticism.
But Edsel left a legacy.
Edsel ordained some of the greatest styling jobs ever; the Model A, and the ’32 Ford.
His father felt styling was anathema — a distraction from function.
The Model T was fairly attractive, but not the Model A.
Old Henry felt the Model T, and its idiosyncrasies, was all America needed.
But Edsel knew better, that the American car-buyer wanted more than mere function.
So we moved to the Model A, a leap from the Model T.
It had styling, a concession to American tastes, as advanced by Edsel.
The Model A also moved beyond the Model T’s idiosyncrasies, particularly its banded transmission, and its column-mounted settable tractor throttle.
The Model A was the first Ford with the controls every one else had moved to: the gas-pedal, and a clutched transmission behind the engine.
In a Model T, the bands were equivalent to a clutch.
And the ’32 Ford was the first Ford with more than four cylinders.
Old Henry refused to do a six.
So we got the incredible Flat-Head V8, the darling of hot-rodders.



Chestnut Hill branch. (Photo by Bill Janssen.)

—The January 2011 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is another great snow-shot, only this time February 5, 1966.
On which day yrs try turned 22, since February 5 is my birthday.
I would have been in my final year at nearby Houghton College.
Pennsy’s Chestnut Hill branch was its busiest commuter branch in the Philadelphia area.
It’s electrified, as it has been for years.
Electrification made it possible for Pennsy to stop using locomotive-powered commuter trains, plus increase train frequency.

Owl-Face.

Commuter-coaches could be self-powered, e.g. the MP54, known as “Owl-Faces,” the motorized commuter-coach illustrated at left.
“Owl-Face” because of those round windows in the ends; that made them look like owls.
Pennsy’s electrification was a little different than other railroads.
The electricity was alternating-current (AC), and it was delivered over overhead wire, catenary (“kat-in-AIR-eee”); called that because the wire was suspended from a catenary of cables.
Many other railroad electrifications were direct-current (DC) via a ground-level third rail.
New York Central Railroad’s electrification into Grand Central Terminal in New York City is still third-rail DC.
AC has the advantage of traveling much better over long distances. DC degrades.
Third-rail was also down where it could electrocute people.
Pennsy’s tubes under the Hudson River were third-rail DC at first, but were eventually converted to overhead AC.
Pennsy’s overhead AC electrification was so successful, eventually their entire New York-to-Washington mainline was converted, plus Philadelphia to Harrisburg, and a number of associated freight branches and bypasses.
But it was the commuter-lines, e.g. Chestnut Hill, where electrification excelled first.
The self-powered MP54 commuter-cars served many years. Pennsy even had to build a separate terminal in Philadelphia to serve commuters: Suburban Station.
By the ‘60s, the MP54s were worn out, and hated by commuters.
They lacked air-conditioning, and were rudimentary.
But Pennsy was in no position to upgrade, so area governments had to help.
The upgrade was these “SilverLiner” cars pictured here, manufactured by Philadelphia-based Budd Company.
The SilverLiners rectified the overhead AC into DC for the traction-motors.
They were self-powered like the MP54, but much more modern and air-conditioned, and faster since their traction-motors were DC.
In fact they were so successful the Federal Government wanted to upgrade to self-powered cars on the New York-to-Washington line.
Experimental SilverLiners were manufactured, and tested to 156.1 mph. They were owned by the Department of Transportation.

Corridor car.

Budd eventually proposed and began manufacturing a “MetroLiner” car (at left), self-powered, that could get over 160 mph!
Many were built, but they weren’t successful. Too unreliable. Corridor trains are now pulled by locomotives.
I had to dicker this photograph some.
As is common in snow-photographs, it was blue-tinted.
The blue sky reflects on the snow. Your eye corrects that, but a camera doesn’t. (Or didn’t back then; now you can do color-correction digitally. Back then it was by color-correction filter.)
I did the color-correction with Photoshop® — I wonder why the calendar guys didn’t.
But like my Lilly shot, the snow covered the ties.



Again, WOW! (Photo by Ron Kimball.)

―My blowhard brother-in-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, has it right.
The January 2011 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is the best of the musclecars, a Grand-Sport Buick.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Not my brother’s car, but identical.

My brother-in-Boston has a modified 454 SS Chevelle, like the car pictured at left.
But he once told me the Grand-Sport Buicks were the best musclecar of all.
I agree.
The Buick Grand-Sport had a massive hot-rodded engine, but was still a Buick, exuding class.
Better yet, the engineers who developed the Grand-Sport Buicks made them handle.
As did Oldsmobile with their 4-4-2 musclecar.
I don’t know how reliable this assertion is, but the Buick and Olds musclecars were supposed to handle better.
Well, I hope so!
I drove my brother’s Chevelle, and it was frightening.
Too much power in a garden-variety sedan.
Like put your foot into it, and it spun you into the weeds.
Cars that could do 140+ mph with an unsophisticated chassis.
How many of those musclecars wrecked? How many were killed in musclecars?
Automobiles since are slower but less frightening.
I remember riding in a ’55 Chevy hotrod with a 400 cubic-inch Small-Block motor — the car I dreamed about through high-school and college.
It was noisy and whippy — frightening.
Our lowly Honda Civic stationwagon was better; slower but less frightening.
Probably the best musclecars are the current Mustang or the Corvette.
I doubt they would punish you like a late ‘60s/early ‘70s musclecar.



Mustang and B-17. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—So begins photographer Philip Makanna’s series of pictures of multiple airplanes, although there are only two such pictures in this calendar.
The B-17s were turkeys.
When they first started doing heavy bombing runs out of Britain into Germany, for which they had the range, they had to go unaccompanied.
Protective pursuit fighter-planes could only go so far, and then had to turn back. —They didn’t have the range.
Losing their fighter-plane protection, the B-17s thereafter became easy pickings for Hitler’s Messerschmitts. All the B-17s had were their many machine-guns, but they could easily be shot out of the sky. Their crews were mere cannon-fodder.
B-17s were fast at first — they first flew in 1935. But aircraft development leaped ahead. By WWII they were old and slow.
A Messerschmitt could run circles around them.
The B-17 was particularly vulnerable to attack from the front. A front chin-turret of machine-guns had to be added.
“What a turkey,” I said, seeing one fly.
The P51 Mustang was the first pursuit fighter-plane with the range to accompany B-17s over Germany.
The B-17 crews loved having Mustangs along. They could engage the Messerschmitts, vastly improving the survivability of B-17 crews.
The P51 was also a fabulous airplane — a hotrod.
Many went on to air-race.



First run of the Metropolitan.

—My last calendar is my worst. And that’s despite my thinking the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”) electric locomotive was the greatest railroad locomotive of all time.
The January 2011 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black and white All-Pennsy Calendar is a publicity-shot of the Metropolitan on its first run out of Broad St. Terminal in Philadelphia.
Broad St. Terminal, a stub-end, no longer exists.
It became kind of moribund with the ascendency of New York City, and Pennsy’s attaining New York with its tunnels under the Hudson River.
Broad St. Terminal also became moribund because it was stub-end. Trains had to end there, or back into it to start.
Pennsy was the only railroad to actually access New York City from New Jersey. (New York Central wasn’t facing the Hudson River.)
Other railroads ferried their passengers across the Hudson, as did Pennsy at first.
Proposals were bandied about to build a union railroad-bridge into the city, but that never happened.
Such a bridge would have been far upriver.
The Hudson had to remain navigable for ocean-going ships.
That also required a bridge be high, lest it block navigation.
Either that or a massive lift-bridge with bridge-tenders. —And lift-spans at that time were somewhat narrow.
Pennsy’s tunnels were the right solution, although now they are too small and restrict equipment size.
My saying Pennsy’s GG1 was the greatest railroad locomotive of all time is biased.
I had the fortune of being a teenager in northern Delaware, back in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, when the GG1 reigned supreme.
Every time I saw one, it was doing 80-100 mph!
I remember a rainy high-school football game hard by the Pennsy main through Newark, DE. Me and a fellow railfan spent the entire game watching crack GG1 passenger-expresses flash by.

Photo by BobbaLew.

STAND BACK!

One time I pedaled my bicycle up to tiny Claymont commuter-station on the main line.
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. —I had my father’s ancient Kodak Hawkeye camera.
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, the fastest the old Hawkeye would do.
I will never forget it. That’s goin’ to my grave.
A reporter rode the Metropolitan to Harrisburg, this first trip.
She remarked how smooth electrified train-travel was, that the GG1 seemed “as graceful as a bird.”
My paternal grandfather rode Pennsy’s “Congressional Limited” once on the New York-to-Washington main, and was forever awed.
“Must be the Congressional,” he’d always say, on hearing or seeing a GG1 streamliner flash by.
I rode the “Congressional” myself in 1959. 17 cars, Philadelphia to Wilmington, DE.
Within minutes we were up to 80 mph!
The GG1s were incredible.


I should fly one more calendar picture.


At Cassandra Railfan Overlook. (Photo by Roger Durfee.)

―The Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography Contest calendar also does an entry for December of the prior year, in this case December 2010.
It’s at a location I recognize instantly, Cassandra (“kuh-SAN-druh;” as in “Anne”) Railfan Overlook.
Cassandra Railfan Overlook is an old abandoned one-lane highway-bridge where PA State Route 53 once crossed the four-track Pennsy main.
53 used to go into and through Cassandra, as did Pennsy at first.
The overpass was taking advantage of a deep cut Pennsy made through rock when it bypassed Cassandra in 1898.
The bypass removed a lot of tight curves, but that cut has to be protected with rock-slide fences, which trigger stop-signals if broken by a rock-slide.
The old bridge was never removed, and railfans started congregating on it to watch trains.
The train pictured is on the old Pennsy main over the Allegheny mountains, Track One of Norfolk Southern’s storied Pittsburgh line.
The fourth track was removed long ago by previous owner Conrail.
So many railfans were visiting, the mayor of Cassandra ran with it, put in benches, and started mowing the area.
I’ve been to Cassandra Railfan Overlook many times myself. It’s a great railfan spot mainly because it’s shady.
You’re not out in the hot sun.
To the west is the cut; part of a long straightaway to Portage. In the distance is the signal-bridge you can see in my picture below.
To the east, uphill, is a gentle curve to the left.
The bridge is between two defect-detectors, 253.1 and 258.9; 253.1 near Lilly, and 258.9 in Portage.
Monitoring with a scanner, you can hear trains coming.
One afternoon, every time we got up to leave, another train was coming.
“Norfolk Southern milepost 253.1, Track Three, no defects.”
That’s one coming downhill from Lilly.
“Norfolk Southern milepost 258.9, Track One, no defects.”
That’s one up The Hill in Portage.
Durfee was probably scanner-monitoring himself.
Beside defect-detectors, the train engineers call out the signal-aspects as they pass.
A scanner will pick that up; another indication a train is coming, and where it is.

Photo by BobbaLew.

I thought Durfee’s view was better than mine.
But looking at them, they are nearly identical.
Durfee was shooting through the same bridge-gap I shot through.
The difference is the weather; mine is summer sun, Durfee’s is a blizzard.
—That blizzard obliterates the distracting signal-bridge in the distance, and negates the strong afternoon backlighting.
It’s probably the same blizzard in which I got my first picture above.
In fact, I wondered if it’s the same train, but it’s not.