Monthly Calendar Report for August, 2012

The snag of a lifetime! (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

—Here it is! The snag of a lifetime.
The August 2012 entry of my own calendar is two Norfolk Southern freight-trains face-to-face near the Tipton (PA) grade-crossing.
Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”), the guy I chase trains with in the Altoona area, had parked at the Tipton grade-crossing. An eastbound was coming.
I walked south along the right-of-way, and was about 100 yards south of the grade-crossing.
Phil was still at the grade-crossing.
The eastbound hove into view; it was approaching slowly.
I heard Phil shout: “Hey Bob, look at this!”
Behind me a westbound was quickly approaching.
We were gonna get a double. “Double” meaning two trains at once.
“I ain’t missin’ this,” I thought to myself. “The snag of the century.”
I set up looking west at the approaching eastbound.
Now, let the westbound appear. Wait for it. Let it appear in the picture-frame.
BAM! Got it!
The snag of the century.
Never again in a million years will I repeat this.
Two trains perfectly positioned, face-to-face.

Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.

Double at Brickyard.

Often I can get a second train passing another already partially past.
But two head-ends face-to-face is the snag of a lifetime.
Tipton is not actually Allegheny Crossing.
It’s the Pennsylvania Railroad’s final ascent to Altoona and the Allegheny mountains to the west.
The grade is easy enough to not require helper-locomotives.
West of Altoona we get The Hill over Allegheny ridge.
The railroad through Tipton is no longer Pennsy’s great “Broad Way.”
Only three tracks remain, and the one next to the eastbound is now a controlled siding, not a main track.




Flying Fortress. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—What we have here is a great photograph of a middling, though famous, airplane.
The August 2012 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress.
Press-guys named it the “Flying Fortress” during an early demonstration flight because it had so many machine-guns defending it.
But that chin-turret below the bombardier’s post is a later add-on.
B-17s were defenseless against frontal attack.
Enemy fighter-planes would attack from the front, and shoot the B-17s out of the sky.
Shoot down a B-17 and you’re losing a crew of nine or 10.
The prototype B-17 first flew in 1935 — a 1930s airplane.
The Army Air Corps (no Air Force yet) was impressed because it was so much faster for the time.
Development continued even though the prototype crashed.
When WWII broke out the B-17 was available as a heavy bomber.
But it was a slow turkey. German fighters, much faster and more agile, could easily shoot it from the sky.
All its machine-gun defense didn’t amount to much.
Early losses were catastrophic.
The B-17s got self-sealing fuel-tanks, and more armor.
But still losses were catastrophic.
It was determined the B-17s weren’t very good at fending off frontal attack.
Hence, the B-17G as pictured.
It has a machine-gun turret under the bombardier-post, the chin turret.
When fighter-planes attacked from the front, they could be blasted with machine-gun fire.
This helped the B-17 some, but it was still a sitting duck.
I saw a B-17 flying once.
It was slow.
Fighter-planes could have run circles around it.
Its machine-gun defenses would have been pot-shots.
Nevertheless, hundreds were used for heavy bombing runs into Germany. From England they had the range.
In fact, at first they had more range than accompanying fighters.
They were fighter-less over Germany, easy pickings for Messerschmitts.
It was not until the P-51 Mustang they could do a bombing-run with fighters along.
The Mustang had the range.
Plus the P-51 was superior to the Messerschmitt.

A YB-17.

Early B-17s had a different vertical control surface (rudder) at the tail than what came into use later.
It was more like a sail; it lacked the long curved leading edge.
The B-17 had four 1,200-hp Wright R-1820-97 Cyclone turbocharged radial piston engines, and a cruising-speed of 182 miles-per-hour.
Its ceiling was 35,800 feet (astounding), and it had a range of 2,000 miles with a 6,000 pound bomb load.
But it was a turkey.
The image of flying a B-17 bombing-run is heroic, but I’m no longer so inclined.
They were sitting ducks!
13 are still airworthy, one a “ “Memphis Belle” clone (from the movie) at 1941 Historical-Aircraft Group in nearby Geneseo.



One of the greatest styling-jobs ever.

—Usually I try to interleaf my train-calendar pictures so they aren’t right next to each other.
But I can’t this time.
The August 2012 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is one of the greatest styling-jobs ever.
“Old Henry,” Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, felt styling was stupid.
What mattered was function, that a car reliably deal with difficult highway conditions.
Old Henry was essentially a farmer. He had farmer values.
Styling didn’t matter, except to the car-buying public.
Ford Motor Company didn’t have a styling-department, like General Motors’ Art & Colour Section, set up by Harley Earl.
The General saw that styling sold cars, so made a huge effort to make its cars attractive.
Ford played second-fiddle, yet managed to manufacture some of the greatest styling efforts ever.
For example the Model A, the ’32 Ford, and this ’40 Ford five-window coupe pictured.
The Model A and the ’32 Ford are the influence of Edsel Ford, only son of Old Henry. Edsel had to endure put-down from his father, yet made the Model A and the ’32 Ford two of the prettiest cars ever.
They have the lines of a Lincoln. Grand-looking proportions and style.

The Buick Y-Job.

In 1938 General Motors Art & Colour Section presented the Buick Y-Job, the first concept-car ever.
It was immensely attractive, and set styling for GM cars throughout the ‘40s.
Apparently the Y-Job still exists. It was never scrapped, and made its way to GM’s Heritage-Center.
Ford Motor Company didn’t have a styling department comparable to GM’s Art & Colour Section.
Yet it fielded some of the best-looking cars ever.
Ford was essentially E.T. (“Bob”) Gregorie, hired by Edsel in 1932; working against Old Henry.
Gregorie can take credit for this gorgeous five-window coupe.
“Five-window” because it has five windows beside the windshield, that is it includes small side-windows behind the doors.
Actually it has six, since the rear-window is double.

1941 Willys three-window coupe. (Actually four windows. The rear-window is double.)

A ‘39 Ford five-window coupe.

A three-window coupe doesn’t have the windows behind the doors.
Ford built three-window coupes earlier, but by 1940 were no longer building them. Although Willys was.
The calendar-car pictured is a ’40 Ford. But its body goes back a few years, first introduced in 1938 (or ’37).
The best-looking version of this car is 1939.
It doesn’t have the busy grill of the 1940 model.
The Deluxe 1939 model was the Standard 1940 model. The calendar-car pictured is a 1940 Deluxe.
I saw one of these things in south Jersey once; it was painted a light metallic green.
Its owner had just driven it home from a show.
He had wrenched in a 350-Chevy SmallBlock with air-conditioning.
The car was attractive, but a bit cramped.
People seem to have got bigger since 1940. —This was 1990.
I also remember a black five-window up on cinder-blocks near my family’s house in northern DE.
The entire front-clip had been removed, and the car’s front-end frame-stubs were under a tarp.
Supposedly the owner was waiting for an Oldsmobile V8 to install. —This was about 1960.




Norfolk Southern merchandise-freight waits in a siding on the Crescent Corridor in VA. (Photo by Marc Hoecker.)

—The August 2012 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a nice photograph, but not nice enough to be ahead of that ’40 Ford five-window coupe.
Looking at that cloud-strewn sky in this picture reminds of my train-chases with Phil Faudi.
My most recent train-chase is a sterling example.
Not a cloud in the sky at first, fabulous light.
Then it started to cloud up, and later it thunder-stormed with almighty deluges.
Which is sorta what we see here. The sky has clouded up, but the sun broke through to illuminate the train.
And the photographer caught it.
I’d look skyward, the sun was out, but a cloud was fast approaching.
A train was coming, but wasn’t in sight yet.
Would it beat the cloud or wouldn’t it?
This train is waiting on a siding in VA on the Crescent Corridor for another train to pass.
It helps it’s waiting — for the sun to illuminate it between clouds.
The picture is a relief from the old Pennsy, now Norfolk Southern, that scores so many photographs in this calendar.

Photo by Rich Borkowski.

Norfolk Southern Stacker west over the old Pennsy stone-arch viaduct in Duncannon.

For example, last month’s photograph of a westbound Norfolk Southern stacker crossing the old Pennsy stone-arch viaduct in Duncannon (“done-cannon”) in the Susquehanna (“suss-kwe-HAH-nuh”) river valley north of Harrisburg, PA.
It’s a great photograph, but it’s old Pennsy.
Hundreds of photographs of Norfolk Southern trains on the old Pennsy have been in this calendar.
Norfolk Southern is benefitting from purchase and merger of the old Pennsy from Conrail. CSX has the old New York Central across New York state.
The “Crescent Corridor” is a joint effort of governments and the railroad to improve an old railroad route that parallels Interstate-81.
The railroad was sort of moribund, but could take heavy trucks off Interstate-81.
But to do so the railroad needed to be improved.
Governments and the railroad came together to make those improvements.
The siding the train is in is one of those improvements.
Those improvements allow higher train-frequency, and had to be added.
The “Crescent Corridor,” named after the old “Southern Crescent” passenger-train, goes far into the Deep South, leaving Interstate-81 behind.
It goes all the way to New Orleans.
The Crescent Corridor is fairly busy, but not as busy as the old Pennsy main (now Norfolk Southern) across PA.
But heavy trucking gravitates toward the Crescent Corridor.
The trailers end up as freight-containers on trains.
The Corridor is taking trucks off Interstate-81.
It’s investment well spent.




1970 Dodge Charger. (Peter Harholdt©.)

—The August 2012 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is another Harholdt side-elevation.
But it looks pretty good, since to me, by far, the best-looking musclecar ever is the Dodge Charger.

A ’70.

A ’69.

A ’66.

But this is a ’70, and I think the ’68-’69 looks better.
The ’70 has a chrome grill-surround the ’69 doesn’t have, and the Charger doesn’t need.
The later Chargers have fabulous styling.
Early Chargers were just a fastback roof grafted onto a Dodge Coronet intermediate.
But for 1968, they got it right!
Flying buttresses mimicked the fastback look, but the rear-window was inset.
Except a version for NASCAR, which actually made the car a fastback.
No doubt about it, the Charger looked fast.
General Motors musclecars might have been slightly better, but looked plain compared to a Charger.
The color of this car is dramatic; and I don’t remember it. Dramatic to look at, but I prefer dark green.
Too bad it’s a ’70. It has that silly chrome grille surround, which is insignificant in this picture, but there.
The car is also a Six-Pack, three two-barrel carburetors on a 440 Wedge.
Were it a ’69, I’d find it desirable.




The greatest railroad locomotive of all time. (Photo courtesy Bob’s Photo©.)

—Anyone who follows this blog knows I consider the GG1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”) the greatest railroad locomotive of all time.
The August 2012 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a GG1 pulling an express passenger-train southward on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s New York -to-Washington DC electrified line just south of Philadelphia’s massive 30th Street station.
The line is now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, upgraded to allow even higher speeds than Pennsy did, but still on the original alignment.
The Northeast Corridor is America’s supposed high-speed railroad, but restrictions are still in place that limit speeds to only 40 mph; for example Zoo-tower interlocking north of 30th Street, and the ancient tunnels through Baltimore.
The Corridor was extended to Boston, but entry into New York City is still “the Tubes” under the Hudson River finished in 1910.
The original Tubes are small, and won’t clear some Amtrak equipment, for example its double-deck cars.
They also can’t pass freightcars.
The “G” was incredible.
It could put 9,000 horsepower to railhead on short-term overload.
A recent General Electric Dash 9-44CW diesel can put 4,400 horsepower to railhead.
That 9,000 horsepower was great for blasting a train out of a station.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Our train back to Wilmington at 30th Street (behind the switcher).

In 1959 I rode a GG1-powered Pennsy passenger-train from 30th Street to Wilmington, DE, where I lived at that time.
Put the hammer down!
Within minutes we were up to 80 mph, soon cruising at near 100.
Our train was long and fairly heavy, but not much to our GG1.
And we weren’t being driven by a wild cowboy, pedal-to-the-metal exhibitionists that sometimes piloted trains.
What our GG1 was doing was very much standard practice.
A GG1 could blast a passenger-train out of a station.
Crews loved the GG1.
Once a fan rode along as a GG1 brought his train into Harrisburg station, where electrification ended.
There the GG1 would be replaced by four EMD (General Motors Electromotive Division) E-unit passenger diesels, the equivalent of that single GG1.
The GG1 engineer poo-pooed the E-units. What a drag to have to replace that G-motor, which was fabulous, with those sorry things.
The GG1 engineer’s comment was why would the railroad want to change out a GG1 when it was such a good locomotive?
Of course, the railroad wasn’t electrified west of Harrisburg, although the railroad considered it.
And west of Harrisburg begins mountain railroad, uphill via slight river-grade all the way to Altoona, and then the Allegheny mountains.
Electrification was great for mountain railroading, but maintenance-intensive and costly to install.
The GG1 pictured, #4925, is no longer in its Raymond Loewy-inspired cat-whisker paint-scheme, five gold pin-stripes.
It’s the less-costly single-stripe paint-scheme with its big red keystone thought to inspire brand-identity.
I, for one, don’t think the single-stripe scheme was that bad. It followed the same lines laid down by Loewy.
Looking at this picture I notice the hose-encased chains in front of the front door are misaligned.
I always abhor that.
If I were the motorman, I’d go up front and align the chains.
Order out of chaos! It’s the artist in me.




Tea-pot ready-to-roll. (Photo by Fred Kern.)

—Another Fred Kern photograph.

Photo by Fred Kern.

Last month’s calendar-picture.

Seems a lot of Fred Kern photographs run in this calendar.
Last month (at left) was Fred Kern. Next month will be Fred Kern.
The August 2012 entry of my AII-Pennsy color calendar is an H-9 Consolidation (2-8-0) just serviced at Lewistown, PA in 1953.
The Pennsylvania Railroad was essentially the 2-8-0 Consolidation steam-locomotive.
At one point they had 3,335 in service.
Pennsy had a number of Consolidation designs in service over the years. The H-9 is a later iteration.
Earlier Consols were smaller, and go clear back to the 1800s.
If pulling-power had to be increased to conquer mountains, Pennsy would just multiple the engines.
They could afford multiple crews.
Steam-locomotives can’t be multipled like diesels. Each locomotive has to have a crew. This is especially true of firing.
Each locomotive had to be fired specifically, and operated specifically. You couldn’t just M-U a steam-locomotive.
Other railroads went with multiple driver-sets under a single boiler: articulateds. (Called that because the front-driver-set was hinged, and could swing side-to-side.)
That way a single crew could operate the increased power of multiple driver-sets, although usually the most you saw was two.
Erie tried three driver-sets under a single boiler, but it would run out of steam.
Pennsy never got into articulation. They felt such locomotives were costly to maintain.
They also could afford multiple crewing. Most railroads couldn’t, so they went with articulation.
Pennsy also used Consols for switching. They designed a dedicated 0-8-0 switcher, but never manufactured it in quantity.
Consols got downgraded to switcher-service.
Pennsy built 0-4-0s and 0-6-0s for smaller dedicated switcher-service, but large switcher-service went to Consols (2-8-0).
The H-9 is one of a series of Consols that started with the H-8. The H-10 was the final iteration.
The H-8 was a redesign of the H-6 with a larger boiler.
That boiler was standard, and used on other wheel-arrangements.

A Pennsy E-6 Atlantic.

That boiler was also used on the E-6 Atlantic, 4-4-2, and was rather large for an Atlantic.
Pennsy abhorred additional driver-axles, so maximized the 4-4-2 layout.
Although, of course, Pacifics (4-6-2) came to Pennsy, the K-2 and then the famous K-4.
Pennsy was also maximizing the Consolidation layout instead of doing a Decapod layout: 2-10-0.

A Pennsy Decapod, shorn of its boiler-jacketing and piston-rods. (The only one not scrapped.)

Although Pennsy eventually did a Decapod, their massive “Hippo.”
(Called that by the crews because they were so large for their time.)
The later Consols were mainly shufflers, and Pennsy did a lot of shuffling. Trundling short local-freights out to work industrial sidings.
I remember this from my youth.
A short local-freight would be sent out to Haddonfield (NJ; “HAH-din-FIELD”) to shunt cars into and out of industrial sidings.
A single Consol might be good for 10-20 cars.
It’s what you see in this photograph, although I suspect the locomotive pictured is a switcher, or could be used to work a local-freight.