Silly boy

Photo by BobbaLew.

A new refrigerator-magnet, depicted above, has joined the eclectic collection on the freezer-door (pictured at left) of our refrigerator.
It’s a Pennsylvania Railroad K4 Pacific steam-locomotive, 4-6-2, a refrigerator-magnet acquired during our recent visit to Station-Inn in Cresson, PA (“KRESS-in”).
Station-Inn is a bed-and-breakfast for railfans.
We stayed there because Tunnel-Inn, in nearby Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get”), the bed-and-breakfast we usually stay at in the Altoona, PA area (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”) wasn’t open yet.
Altoona is the location of Horseshoe Curve (the “Mighty Curve”), west of Altoona, by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to.
The railroad was looped around a valley to climb the mountains without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use.
I am a railfan, and have been since age-two (I’m 67).
The viewing-area is smack in the apex of the Curve; and trains are willy-nilly. Up-close-and personal. —I’ve been there hundreds of times, since it’s only about five hours away.
We visited the Altoona area to chase trains. (This was last month; the Curve was closed.)
After staying at Station-Inn, we prefer Tunnel-Inn. Station-Inn is almost Third-World, and furthermore Tunnel-Inn is right on top of the railroad.
Station-Inn is on the street that fronts the railroad, that is, across-the-street from the railroad.
Tunnel-Inn is trackside where the railroad tunnels under the summit of the Allegheny mountains.
The real difference is accommodations. Tunnel-Inn seems more civilized. Furthermore Tunnel-Inn can sleep two in one bed. Station-Inn is two single beds.
My wife and I have been sleeping together since married — that was over 43 years ago.
At Station-Inn: “I hope he’s all right over there. I can’t hear any breathing.”
At Tunnel-Inn: “I guess she’s still alive. I feel a warm body next to me, and she’s breathing.”
The K4 Pacific came to symbolize the Pennsylvania Railroad.
It’s an old design, yet very pretty.
The K4 Pacific was developed in the late ‘teens. Pennsy never developed modern steam power in the ‘30s. They were investing heavily in electrification.
What they did was doublehead the K4s to compete.
That’s two locomotive crews.
They could afford to. Pennsy was extremely profitable. It was the main conduit for midwestern freight to the east-coast megalopolis.

Photo by BobbaLew.

A Pennsy number-plate. (Actually this is plastic.)

Most attractive about the K4 was its red Keystone number-plate on its front smokebox door.
I always got the feeling that was Raymond Loewy (“low-eee”), the industrial-designer who did things for Pennsy.
Originally the K4 had a red circular number-plate, but that keystone could be an icon, much like Loewy’s Lucky-Strike cigarettes icon, or the Coke-bottle (also Loewy).
And the K4 was extremely well proportioned.
I saw other railroad steam-locomotives, mainly Reading Railroad (“REDD-ing;” not “READ-ing”). But they were ugly compared to Pennsy steam-engines.
The early K4s were prettiest. They had a horizontally-slatted cowcatcher, and the headlight was at the top of the circular smokebox-front like a Cyclops eye.
That was the best place to put it.
Centered was okay, but not the best place.
Later the slatted cowcatcher was replaced with a giant heavy casting with a drop-coupler. It wasn’t as pretty.
And then the front-end “beauty-treatment” was done; putting the electric generator on the smokebox front with a platform below to work on it.
The headlight was moved atop the smokebox in front of the smoke-stack, still frontward and up top, but no longer on the smokebox front.
But there was always that gorgeous red keystone number-plate.
Reading engines didn’t have that.
I got so I always looked for that red keystone on an approaching train, on the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines, where I became a railfan.
“Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” (PRSL) was an amalgamation of Pennsylvania and Reading railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much parallel track. It was promulgated in 1933. It serviced mainly the Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.
An onrushing red keystone meant I was gonna see a great-looking engine.
“Looks kinda delicate and almost feminine,” I always think to myself, seeing this refrigerator-magnet.
It’s those spindly spoked driving-wheels. The drivers on a K4 weren’t solid castings; they weren’t the more modern box-pok (“box-poke”) drivers.
They were the spoked wheels locomotives had been using as drivers since about the 1840s.
Flanged steel tires meet the railhead, but the wheel-centers were spoked castings.
Still, the drivers on a K4 were huge, 80 inches in diameter. 72 inches is six feet; 80 inches is almost seven feet. That’s taller than men that don’t play professional basketball.
A K4 was hardly delicate and feminine standing next to it, a throbbing, panting monster.
That boiler-vessel is holding back hundreds of pounds of steam-pressure.
Yet I could stand next to a K4. I was terrified of thunderstorms, but I could stand next to a throbbing steam-locomotive.
“Mommy, Mommy, look!” I’d cry. “A train is up there in the station. Let’s go see it!”
“Into the bank, Bobby. I got no time for those filthy old trains. I don’t know what you see in those things, silly boy. You’re driving me crazy!”
I should explain some of the other things on our refrigerator-door.
Primary is a line-drawing done long ago by my nephew Tom, probably about six at the time. (Tom is now almost 26, and is also a railfan like me.)
I posted it because he had correctly interleaved the letters of the Pennsylvania Railroad emblem — extraordinary for someone his age.
“MPN” is Messenger-Post Newspapers, where I worked almost ten years after my stroke. It was the best job I ever had.
Driving bus paid more, but it was dreadful. A post-stroke job-counselor wanted to get my job back driving bus, but I told him to forget it.
“Isaac” is our HVAC contractor.
We have other business-cards posted: “Certified Appliance Repair,” “The Door-Doctor” (our garage-door), “Miller Plumbing,” and “Ranchanna Kennels” (where we board our dog).
I also have a number of picture postcards posted of steam-locomotives — they were received over the years.
There also is a cartoon I received from my sister in Fort Lauderdale about Irish-Setters — our dog is an Irish-Setter.
My wife has also posted a picture of me on an old motorcycle I traded long ago. It was motorbike number-four; I’m now on number-six.
That picture ran in the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper early during my employ.
I had been told my stroke ended my motorcycling, but I wasn’t listening to that!
The picture on the refrigerator-magnet is credited to Andy Fletcher, and is probably a water-color, but on a side-elevation blueprint. No way in a million years could you get back far enough to get a true side-elevation of a steam-locomotive — not with a camera, anyway. Go back about 1,000 yards with a super-strong telephoto, and you might get things fairly flat. Closer than that, and the smokebox curves away, and the tender does the same.

• “Doublehead” means two locomotives in tandem.
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit-bus for Regional Transit Service, the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY. My stroke ended it.