Monthly Calendar Report for September, 2011

Holy mackerel! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

―The September 2011 entry of my own calendar is a rerun; I ran it as the December entry of my own 2010 calendar.
But it’s one of the most fabulous photographs I’ve ever snagged.
It was my first train-chase with Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”).
If you need clarification, click this link, and read the first part. It explains Phil.
We were on Norfolk Southern’s Pittsburgh Division, which includes the old Pennsylvania Railroad’s crossing of Allegheny mountain west of Altoona (“al-TUNE-uh,” as in the name “Al”).
The Pennsylvania Railroad is no more. It went through various mergers, one of which (Penn-Central with New York Central railroad) failed.
The Pennsylvania Railroad used to be the largest and most powerful railroad on the planet, the “Standard Railroad of the World.”
But now most of it is owned and operated by Norfolk Southern, and the Pittsburgh Division may be Norfolk Southern‘s busiest segment.
Our train-chasing that day, Monday, August 4, 2008, was drawing to a close.
But 590, a coal-extra, was coming up Track One.
It was from South Fork Secondary, east of South Fork near Altoona, which has coal-loadouts.
We drove to the highway overpass in Lilly, I got out, and then Phil walked up after parking his car.
We could hear 590 hammering slowly toward us, but then Phil heard another train on his scanner, 20T eastbound on Track Two.
“We may get a double here, Bob.”
590 came into view: “Get ready, Bob; we’re gonna get a double.”
Here, all-of-a-sudden, was 20T, a stacker booming past 590.
BAM; got it!
First time I’d ever seen two front-ends; and obviously the first time I’d ever photographed it.



1969 Mach One Mustang. (Photo by Ron Kimball©.)

—Behold, the September 2011 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is what I consider the most desirable of all the so-called “musclecars,” the Mach One Mustang.
That is, if I were in the market for a collectible car, which I’m not, this is what I’d want.
Calling it a “musclecar” is debatable. It isn’t 400+ cubic inches.
In fact, it’s only 351, which is fairly large for a smallish car.
Plus it’s the Cleveland motor, based on the Ford Small-Block, but with special cylinder-heads with larger valves that can really breathe.
Plus the valves are splayed like the Chevy Big-Block; the famed Porcupine motor.
“Porcupine” because the valve-stems emanated from the cylinder-head at all angles, instead of in a row.
Splayed valves allowed almost a hemispherical combustion-chamber.
Such an arrangement could really breathe at elevated engine speeds. It also allowed larger valves.
The Boss 302 was also the Cleveland motor, but really strong, despite it’s tiny size: only 302 cubic inches.
The Boss 302 was the basis of Ford’s SCCA (Sportscar Club of America) Trans-Am series entry. Five liters (305 cubic inches) was the largest engine displacement permitted.
The Boss 302 is also desirable, but it’s more a racecar.
The Mach One Mustang is more a street car, more civilized.
A Boss 302 would be a handful in street driving. A Mach One would be more appropriate.

Photo by BobbaLew.

George Follmer’s 1970 Bud Moore Trans-Am Boss 302 Mustang.

The color I prefer isn’t the yellow on the calendar-picture car.
I prefer the “Mustard-yellow” used on Bud Moore’s Trans-Am racecars (see picture).
But using that color would be deceptive; it’s the color of Bud Moore’s Boss 302 Trans-Am Mustangs. —Although it was a stock Mustang color.
The color I’d prefer is red, although the red car pictured below is a 1970 Boss 302.
The calendar-car is 1969, but I think 1970 looks better.
1969 looks like they couldn’t make up their minds regarding headlights.

Photo by David Newhardt.

1970 Boss 302 Mustang.

Autumn glory onto the Sang-Hollow Extension. (Photo by Rich Borkowski.)

―The September 2011 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a stack-train westbound going onto the Sang-Hollow Extension, a lo-grade line west of Johnstown, PA.
It’s crossing the Conemaugh river.
The old Pennsylvania Railroad main toward Pittsburgh angles off to the right.
The Sang-Hollow Extension was built by Pennsy to give them easier gradients east out of Pittsburgh.
The Sang-Hollow Extension is essentially river gradients. —But it’s not as direct as the old Pennsy main into Pittsburgh.
The train is also headed downhill. Johnstown is west (downhill) of the summit of the Alleghenies, east of the photo-location.
The Pennsylvania Railroad was founded in 1846 as a private response to the utter failure of the Pennsylvania Public-Works System.
The Public-Works System was the state’s response to the phenomenally successful Erie Canal in adjacent New York.
And like-it-or-not, no matter how much one abhors government efforts, the Erie Canal was a government effort — just like the Interstate Highway System and airports are today.
The Erie Canal was so successful it made New York City the supreme ocean-port it still is.
In the early 1800s Philadelphia and Baltimore were languishing.
Plus both had to contend with the Allegheny Front, a mountain barrier that impeded west-east commerce.
New York didn’t have the Alleghenies; they didn’t extend that far north. —Which was why the Erie Canal could be built.
Crossing the Alleghenies took days by wagon and/or pack-horse.
Commerce from the nation’s interior to Philadelphia or Baltimore was effectively blocked.
Baltimore’s response was the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the nation’s first common-carrier railroad, opened in 1827.
When it was built, grading was not the slam-dunk technology it is today.
Its line to the Ohio River had many difficult grades.
Pennsylvania’s response was its Public-Works System, another government effort, a combination of canals and railroads.
Philadelphia to the Susquehanna (“suss-kwee-HAN-uh;” as in “at”) River inland was existing railroad.
The Susquehanna blocked land transportation until it could be bridged. (The Pennsylvania Railroad did this at Rockville, north of Harrisburg.)
Inland to the Alleghenies was canal.
At the Allegheny front the Public-Works switched back to railroad, and since grading at that time was so rudimentary, inclined-planes up the mountainsides had to be included.
(No way could a canal go through the Alleghenies.)
The canal packets would be transferred to railroad flatcars, and then the flatcars winched up the inclines.
There were ten inclines over the mountain. Between the inclines was level railroad; the flatcars got dragged between inclines by horses, then early steam-locomotives.
The railroad extended west to Johnstown, and then it was back to canal.
But the Public-Works System was cumbersome and time-consuming.
Capitalists in Philadelphia decided a continuous through railroad made more sense.
Beyond that, a canal was inoperable in winter when it froze, and the Public-Works railroad over the Alleghenies refused to operate at night.
As first built, the Pennsylvania Railroad used the Public-Works inclined-plane railroad over the Alleghenies.
But then Pennsy built its own through railroad over the Alleghenies, which through advances in grading, and guile-and-cunning, e.g. Horseshoe Curve, avoided steep grades (e.g. inclined-planes).
A train could run continuously, Pittsburgh to Harrisburg, without the delay of the Public-Works System.
The Pennsylvania Railroad became vastly successful, the largest conduit of freight from the nation’s interior to the east-coast megalopolis.
Pennsy merged with hundreds of lines, many of which fed Pittsburgh. But the only railroad they built was Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.
The Pennsylvania Public-Works System eventually failed. The Pennsylvania Railroad bought it for a song — they had put it out of business.
The canal was obliterated, as was most of the inclined-plane railroad.
About all that remains are two tunnels; one of which Pennsy used over the summit of the Alleghenies.
The other tunnel, Staple Bend Tunnel, is at the top of an incline, so is unusable.
It’s also some ways from the old Pennsy mainline.
Staple Bend was the first railroad tunnel opened for service. It opened in 1833. It’s about 900 feet long — we’ve walked it.
The Public-Works System also built regular railroad to circumvent the inclined-planes railroad, but that too failed.
That was the line that had the other tunnel.
Pennsy made that newer Portage-Railroad line an added bypass over the Alleghenies, and the old New-Portage Tunnel became part of the mainline over the Alleghenies.
That bypass has since been abandoned; only three of the six tracks over the Alleghenies remain — on Pennsy’s original alignment.
The calendar-picture is at the peak of Fall foliage, which in my experience is in October.
The photographer admitted he perused various web-cams throughout Pennsylvania to snag when the trees turned.
I’ve tried to do this myself. But snagging the peak of Fall foliage is pure luck.
You have to live there.
Last Fall we arrived in the area at least a week or two early; the trees were just starting to turn. Plus the weather was awful. Rainy and cloudy. Other times there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
To make a visit I have to reserve well in advance. That includes -a) the bed-and-breakfast, and -b) the guy I chase trains with.
Pennsy built a number of lo-grade lines to bypass challenging grades the original railroad had.
The train is entering one of these lo-grade bypasses toward Pittsburgh, although it’s downhill.
So the crew won’t have to struggle to keep the train from running away.
Using the Sang-Hollow might have meant they could get by with one or two less locomotives to hold the train back with dynamic-braking, e.g. a two-unit SD40-E helper-set.
This picture looks like no helper-set. Helpers might be needed to get up the other side of the Alleghenies out of Altoona.
But I’ve seen long stackers master The Hill without helpers.



Unfortunately, too much motor.

—The September 2011 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a really great picture of a great-looking hotrod.
Unfortunately, it has too much motor.
The motor is the monstrous “Cammer” 427 cubic-inch elephant motor Ford developed to compete with Chrysler’s dominant 426 cubic-inch “Hemi” (“hem-EEE;” not “he-MEEE”) motor in NASCAR competition.
Chrysler’s Hemi was just hemispherical cylinder-heads grafted to their B-block.
That’s the second iteration of the Hemi. The first iteration was 1951 to 1958, ending at 392 cubic-inches.
“Hemi” means the engine-valves are 90 degrees from the crankshaft axis, allowing a hemispherical combustion-chamber.
The intake-valves were aimed at the intake manifold and carburetor; the exhaust-valves were aimed at the exhaust manifold.
This is unlike ordinary practice where the valves are all in a row parallel to the crankshaft.
The intake-valves might be aimed at the intake manifold, but if so the exhausts were aimed the wrong way, since they were the same way as the intakes.
With valving aimed advantageously a Hemi could really breathe at high engine speed.
Trouble is, the Hemi was extremely heavy. Massive cast-iron cylinder-heads were needed to accommodate two separate rocker-shafts for intake and exhaust.
Ford’s Cammer was also a hemi, and was heavy.
Beyond that, it was also single-overhead camshaft; and Cammers are pretty rare — only 700 were built.
The car looks great; it’s a ’32 Ford Three-window coupe.

The Milner coupe from “American Graffiti.”

The Milner coupe from “American Graffiti” is a five-window.
The color is perfect too, but that motor is overkill.
A friend of mine, since deceased, built a Model-A Ford roadster hotrod with a souped-up ’56 Pontiac V8.
The Pontiac V8 probably weighed 100-200 pounds more than what was in there in the first place — probably a Flat-head Ford V8. The frame was heavily modified ’46 Ford.
That Pontiac engine totally overwhelmed the front-suspension. The shocks were still stock, and were crushed.
The car was drivable, if ya didn’t mind the front-end drove like a lumber-wagon.
I can imagine this calendar-car being similar. You can try various shock-rates, but you’re not Detroit engineers.
This car is great to look at, but I bet it’s a handful to drive. Only a show-queen.
That Cammer is nice, but more appropriate might have been a Chevy Small-Block.
The best hotrod I’ve ever seen pictured in this calendar is the one below, the July entry. It’s a ’32 three-window coupe with a Small-Block Chevy.
Too bad it’s not the yellow color of this calendar-car.


Best of the best.



Mikado assembles train in Enola yard. (Photo by Don Wood©.)

—The September 2011 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black and white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Mikado (2-8-2) assembling a train in Enola (“eh-NOLE-uh;” as in “hay”) yard across the Susquehanna river from Harrisburg, PA.
Of particular note is the Pennsy L1 Mikado freight steam-locomotive is the same boiler and firebox as the K4 Pacific (4-6-2), a landmark design for the teens.
This was because it had a lot of firebox-grate pushing that boiler. 70 square feet is fairly large, such that a K4 could boom-and-zoom. (Plus the boiler was also large.)
Unfortunately, later steam-locomotive design skonked it, particularly SuperPower in the late ‘20s, with firebox grates over 100 square feet.
Pennsy never did SuperPower; they were investing in electrification — the fabulous GG1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”), the greatest railroad locomotive design of all time.
What they did instead was doublehead K4 Pacifics. That’s two engine-crews per train, but Pennsy could afford that.
The L1 Mikado was the next step up from Consolidations (2-8-0), of which Pennsy had many.
With a Mikado you weren’t fitting the firebox atop the driving-wheels, or worse yet, between them, which made the grate very narrow.
(The grate between the wheels was a very early design.)
Putting the firebox atop the driving-wheels limited the height and volume of the firebox.
Hanging it behind the drivers, as in the Mikado, allowed increased firebox volume — which enhanced fuel-burning.
Yet Pennsy wasn’t satisfied with the Mikado for drag service.
They wanted massive locomotive weight all on the drivers.
Enter the Decapod (Dek), a 2-10-0, with its boiler upsized.
So large it was nicknamed “the hippo” by engine-crews.
But it had only a 70 square foot firebox grate, which was borderline for a boiler as large as the Dek was. A Dek could run out of steam.
The Dek was what Pennsy wanted; the Mikado served a support role.
It was used where Consolidations were underpowered; and Pennsy used Consolidations even in yard-switching service. —They never used a dedicated 0-8-0 yard switcher in quantity.
The local-freights were usually Consols (Consolidation).
I remember Consol-powered local-freights paddling out to my town in south Jersey to switch the sidings — e.g. the heating-coal company.
The railroad’s profile was often mountainous, so a ponderous Dek was more appropriate than the Mike (Mikado).
Enola Yard, across the Susquehanna from Harrisburg, became the destination for Pennsy freight, after the yards in Harrisburg became overwhelmed.
The original Pennsylvania Railroad was Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, but came to carry so much traffic both ends were overwhelmed.
And there was little room to expand in either city.
Freight from the east used dedicated freight-lines that crossed the Susquehanna south of Harrisburg to access Enola Yard.
Freight from the west went down the river past Harrisburg for transfer to Pennsy’s electrified lines to the east.
Harrisburg was where electrification ended, Enola for freight.
Passenger-trains would switch out their GG1s at Harrisburg station for replacement by steam or later diesel.
Freight-trains switched out their electric locomotives at Enola.
Occasionally a transfer would be required, Enola to the yards in Harrisburg.
That is what is happening in the calendar-picture.
A Mike is assembing a transfer, Enola to Harrisburg.
The Mikado was well-suited for this, and they were kept around clear into the ‘50s. (This was despite their being an engine from the late teens.)
Which was when photographer Wood was photographing Pennsy steam.
Often the transfers worked the other way: Harrisburg to Enola via mighty Rockville Bridge.

Photo by Don Wood©.

One of Wood’s most dramatic photographs is a Mikado heading a transfer off Rockville Bridge toward Enola.
Rockville Bridge is the original crossing over the Susquehanna of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Susquehanna was a barrier to the railroad’s building.
I think the current bridge is number two or three.
It’s stone, and would need a direct hit from a nuclear warhead to take it out.
It was built for four tracks, but is down to two. —It was three at the western end.


(From now on are only passable. The Ghosts calendar-entry is a great picture of an uninteresting airplane, and the All-Pennsy color calendar is a dreadful photograph of an interesting, though partially unsuccessful, steam-locomotive.)



Klemm. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The September 2011 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a really great photograph of not much of an airplane.
The airplane is a Klemm basic-trainer, apparently what the Germans used to train Luftwaffe pilots.
I had to look it up on Wikipedia. It’s not on my WWII Warbirds site.
The airplane, a KI 35D, was one of a series of light aircraft built by Klemm Leichtflugzeugbau GmbH (“Klemm Light Aircraft Company,” a German aircraft manufacturer noteworthy for sports and touring planes in the 1930s.
The airplane is entirely wooden-framed, for strength and lightness.
I’m sure it’s a very docile aircraft, not the hotrods the Messerschmitt Bf 109s were.
The Messerschmitt was fuel-injected, which gave it an advantage over Allied fighter-planes. It could do extreme maneuvers without fuel-starving the engine.
Allied fighter-planes had carburetors, which could starve for fuel in extreme maneuvers.
Later Messerschmitts had an 1,800 horsepower Daimler-Benz inverted V-12 engine, fuel-injection being individual fuel-delivery by spray for each cylinder.
That fuel-delivery didn’t go south with extreme maneuvers.
Carburetion was one fuel-source supplying all the cylinders (unless there were multiple carburetors).
Plus a carburetor had a fuel-bowl that could empty under extreme G-forges.
This, of course, wasn’t an issue with a basic-trainer like the Klemm. You weren’t hanging loops or power-dives.
Just get the turkey airborne, and don’t confuse the would-be pilot with hotrod antics.
The Klemm is a light-plane. It could get by without much motor.
The wings weren’t heavily loaded.
The KI 35 was a basic-trainer version of the Klemm light-plane.
It doesn’t even have retractible landing-gear.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a basic-trainer that did. (The North-American Texan is not a basic-trainer.)
The Messerschmitt was a great airplane, but the P-51 Mustang was even better.
More important was the Mustang’s range. It could accompany long-range heavy bombers over Germany to protect.



A Pennsy T-1 (4-4-4-4) duplex. (Photo by Barney Stone.)

The September 2011 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is a dreadful photograph of a fairly significant, though flawed, post-war Pennsy steam-locomotive.
I tried mightily to make this photograph look good, but it’s too bad to save.
My guess is the photographer made a cheap-shot slide, and the calendar-publishers decided to do something with it, because the T-1 is fairly significant.
It looks like it was shot with an InstaMatic.
The T-1 was Pennsy’s 4-8-4.
The Whyte System calls it a 4-4-4-4, but it’s not articulated. The front driver-set is not hinged like an articulated.
What it is is a duplex: all eight driving wheels are on a common single frame. (Articulated is two frames hinged.)
It’s just that it has four drive cylinders instead of two.
Doing so reduces the number of drive-rods, the rods needed to connect the drive-wheels to only two cylinders.
Such a massive rod-assembly is heavy, and hammers the rail as it rotates.
Which is why Pennsy went with duplex design, multiple drive-pistons over the driver-set. It reduces the number and weight of the rods.
Pennsy didn’t develop a 4-8-4 in the ‘30s.
Investment was going into electrification.
The T-1 is post WWII, when Pennsy was finally allowed to develop its own locomotives again. During the war it couldn’t.

A Q-1 (4-6-4-4).

photo by Bob Lorenz©.

A Q-2 (4-4-6-4).

Pennsy also tried duplex freight locomotives, the Q-1 and Q-2.
The T-1s were fairly successful.
The intent was one T-1 replacing double-headed K-4 Pacifics (4-6-2) on passenger-trains.
That’s two operating-crews per passenger-train; one crew per locomotive.
But Pennsy was so flush with money it could afford that. A cost of electrification.
The earliest T-1s were styled by industrial-designer Raymond Loewy, who improved the GG1, the greatest railroad locomotive ever made.

Loewy’s T-1.

But Pennsy operating-men had to make Loewy’s design easy to service. This involved various compromises to Loewy’s design, like removal of side-skirting, and decreasing the front-end chiseling.
The T-1 pictured in the calendar is the final design. It’s not Loewy. There were only two Loewy engines.
The T-1 was fast and powerful, but also smoky.
They also used Franklin poppet-valving, much like a car engine. But it wore out quickly, and was harder to service than the usual slide-piston valving.
Another problem was slipperiness, a problem on anything with multiple driver-sets, e.g. articulateds.
One driver-set might start slipping and spinning, even at 100 mph.
Everything had to be throttled back to stop the slipping.
The T-1 was also up against the diesel-electric locomotive, supremely effective pulling at low speeds.
Steam locomotion, by comparison, only worked well at high speed; which wasn’t Pennsy.
The T-1 also wasn’t very flexible with its long driver wheelbase.
The only place the T-1 excelled is the Fort Wayne Division east out of Chicago.
It was straight enough to allow 100 mph running.