Monthly Calendar-Report for October 2012

26T eastbound over Conemaugh Viaduct. (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

—The October 2012 entry of my own calendar is Train 26T eastbound on Track One over Conemaugh (“Kone-uh-MAW;” as in “awe”) Viaduct.
We are atop a promontory overlooking the viaduct, which is stone-arch.
Conemaugh Viaduct is part of the western slope ascending Allegheny summit. The railroad follows the Conemaugh River.
We had to make a long hike to get to this location.
Conemaugh Viaduct is west of South Fork.
The hike is over an old interurban grade now the Flood Trail, which parallels the railroad. (The Johnstown Flood started when a dam broke above South Fork, and then cascaded down the river valley.)
The hike was over a mile. A number of trains passed.
After a while we diverged off the trail to attain the overlook.
Conemaugh Viaduct bridges the Little Conemaugh river twice at the feet of a river horseshoe.
The stone-arch viaduct is obscured by undergrowth growing at bottom-right.
Faudi, etc. have occasionally cut back that undergrowth, but only a railfan would do that.
The railroad doesn’t. It isn’t out to give railfans pleasing photographs.
Norfolk Southern, attractive as it is at Allegheny Crossing, is not out to please railfans.
Which is what’s happening at Horseshoe Curve, the grandaddy of all railfan pilgrimage-spots, by far the BEST railfan spot I’ve ever been to.
I’ve been there hundreds of times; it’s only five hours from home.
Horseshoe Curve is part of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s east-slope ascent of the Allegheny mountains.
In the early 1800s the Alleghenies had been a barrier to west-east commerce, but the Pennsylvania Railroad and its Horseshoe Curve breached that.
By looping the railroad around a mountain valley, the grade over the Allegheny front was made manageable, only 1.8 percent on average. That’s 1.8 feet up per 100 feet forward. Steep enough to often require helper locomotives, but not impossible, like 4 percent.
The grade was also continuous, no switchbacks, a through railroad.
Switchbacks are cumbersome and slow. The train pulls forward into a switchback tail, a trainman gets off and throws a switch, and the train reverses up to the next switchback tail.
A trainman then throws another switch, and the train pulls forward out of the switchback tail.
Switchbacks usually come in twos, so the train ends up going forward after negotiating the switchbacks.
Switchbacks avoid heavy earthwork to climb a hill, but are slow to operate.
Horseshoe Curve involved two gigantic fills, a challenge to earth-moving at that time.
The fills were hand-constructed, using tailings blasted off a nearby rock-face that had to be reduced.
The fills cross two small valleys that feed a much larger valley.
Doing this made crossing the Alleghenies possible.
Pennsy’s line superseded an earlier state effort that used inclined-planes, and stationary steam-engines, to winch trains up the inclined-planes, to surmount the Alleghenies.
The inclined-plane railroad was part of a combined system including canals. It was the state of PA’s competition for NY’s Erie Canal.
But the Pennsylvania Railroad was so successful it put that state effort out-of-business, including a later state upgrade that ended the inclined-planes.
Transferring from canal to railroad was cumbersome and slow, compared to a through railroad; Pennsy.
Then too Pennsy was private enterprise, not state sponsored.
Pennsy used to consider Horseshoe Curve a tourist attraction. They used to announce the Curve to passengers on trains: “world-famous Horse Shoe Curve.” (Pennsy spelled it as two words.)
They considered it a triumph of engineering. It breached the Alleghenies!
There’s even a viewing-area in the apex of the Curve, and a paved road leads to it. The Curve has become a National Historic Site, complete with welcome-center and museum.
But Norfolk Southern, who replaced Pennsy after buying part of Conrail in 1999, doesn’t care. All they want to do is operate trains. If shrubbery grows in and blocks the view no matter.
If volunteers want to cut down the shrubbery, they get turned away. Norfolk Southern is afraid it would disturb the fills.
And so the railroad disappears at Horseshoe Curve; it sure isn’t what it was years ago — when you could see all the way around “the Mighty Curve.”
Same thing here; Conemaugh Viaduct disappears behind the shrubbery.
This picture is 2010.
I haven’t been back since.
Conemaugh Viaduct blows about an hour or more, and I’m sure by now the view in this picture is probably obscured.
Blow an hour and I miss three trains or more. If the view is obstructed, it ain’t worth it!




At “the Mighty Curve.” (Photo by Don Woods.)

—The October 2012 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is not that good a photograph, but it’s at Horseshoe Curve.
SD-40E #6305 overpowers the photograph.
#6305 is one of a series of EMD (General Motors Electromotive Division) SD50s rebuilt to replace the SD40-2s used so many years as helpers over the Allegheny mountains.
The SD50s were downrated from 3,500 horsepower to 3,000.
Quite often a train is heavy enough to need helpers over the Allegheny mountains.
The railroad was engineered that way: easy approaches to Allegheny ridge, and then up over The Hill. That’s John Edgar Thomson, chief-engineer of the original Pennsylvania Railroad, who laid out Horseshoe Curve to manage crossing the Alleghenies with operable gradients.
Thompson had experience laying out railroads in the southeast, like Georgia Railroad. Easy gradients up to the mountain challenges, then helper-locomotives over the hills.
The westbound grade averages 1.8 percent (1.8 feet up per 100 feet forward).
That’s steep enough (though not impossibly steep) to stall a heavy westbound train.
Eastbound on the western side of the Alleghenies (the West Slope) is not as steep, although it steepens toward the top.
Sometimes helpers get added in Cresson (“KRESS-in”) just before the grade steepens. Sometimes the helpers run all the way from Pittsburgh or Johnstown.
The eastbound grade from Pittsburgh is easier, but continuous.
Fabulous as it is, Horseshoe Curve is not very photogenic.

Photo by BobbaLew.

At “the Mighty Curve.”

I’ve taken hundreds of photos there, but only the one at left worked, and that train is downhill.
Uphill is the thrill; “assaulting the heavens,” locomotives at full power.
No camera can do the Curve justice; you have to see it yourself.
Use a wide-angle view, and you don’t see what the eye sees as it pans the Curve.
I’ll never forget the first time I visited, 1968 or 1969.
I was lost; I didn’t know where I was.
Yet here we were smack in the middle of it; the high railroad embankments looped around us high above.
The railroad was pinned to the mountainsides.
“This is it!” I screamed; “‘the Mighty Curve!’”
It was still four tracks back then, and not the Historic-Site it is now.
No museum, no cable-car to the viewing-area. —Up the steps instead.
#7048 is a retired EMD GP9, used to replace Pennsy K4 Pacific #1361, the original display locomotive at Horseshoe Curve, placed there about 1957.
1361 was built in nearby Altoona.

Photo by BobbaLew.

1361.

1361 was removed for restoration and operation. It’s currently apart for repair, and may never be reassembled — it’s currently out-of-service.
Despite the facts -1) the shrubbery is obscuring the view, -2) the display engine is no longer a K4 Pacific steamer, and -3) you can’t easily get where this calendar-picture was taken — the viewing-area is fenced — “the Mighty Curve” is worth visiting. You’re trackside in the Curve’s apex. The trains are right in your face!




”Fifi.” (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The October 2012 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is the only B-29 SuperFortress still flying: “Fifi.”
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
The B-29’s predecessors, the XB-15 and the B-17 "Flying Fortress" were, in a sense, the failed products of United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) mid-1930s “Project A,” which was intended to give the U.S. a heavy bomber capable of flying 5,000 miles.
Ironically, the B-29’s origins lay in both the strengths and weaknesses of those predecessors, especially the B-17, which demonstrated impressive strength, firepower, speed, bomb load, range and altitude capability -- all of which were still inadequate for that original 1930s design request.
Based on Charles Lindbergh’s assessment of the potency of the Luftwaffe, American strategists in 1939 acknowledged that the United States would have to fight Nazi Germany from American soil should Germany invade England, which then seemed highly probable.
As a consequence, the USAAC initiated a request for proposals pertaining to a new very-heavy, very-long-range bomber to replace the B-17. Four prospective manufacturers, Boeing, Consolidated-Vultee (later Convair), Douglas and Lockheed were given individual experimental aircraft numbers (XB-29, XB-30, XB-31 and XB-32).
Of the four, only Boeing (XB-29) and Consolidated (XB-32) developed flying prototypes, and Boeing emerged the clear winner of the pair, even though its entry flew after the first XB-32 had flown.
From the beginning, the B-29 was a fountain of firsts, anticipating the methodologies and successes of the later NASA Lunar and Space Shuttle programs.
Before the first prototype had been constructed, manufacturing facilities had already been established, a risky process that had not been the norm in the aircraft industry.
And that bomber, the heaviest production aircraft built up to that time, would be the first to have pressurized crew compartments, centralized and computerized fire control, the capacity to carry up to a 20,000 pound bomb load, or the ability to fly 5,830 miles, with a top airspeed of 365 miles per hour.
Paradoxically, although the B-29 was designed to be a high-altitude weapons platform, its greatest WW II successes were accomplished at low-altitude in the fire-bombing of Japan.
Low-flying B-29s laid waste to most militarily important cities in Japan except Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Niigata and Kokura, which had been declared -- for reasons unclear to the active bomb groups -- off-limits to their bombing.
Only one B-29 remains airworthy, this one, “Fifi.”
I listened to a participant in the “Fifi” effort.
“Fifi” is the name of the wife of the major financier.
The participant also allowed that the original engines of the B-29 were replaced with more recent power-plants.
They were no longer able to get parts.
The engine-mounts had to be modified to work with the B-29.
From what I ever heard the B-29 was a bear to fly.
It only flew because it had a lot of engine — it’s engines made it fly.
The engines are four 2,200-horsepower Wright R-3350-23-23A/41 Cyclone double-row (9 cylinders each row, 18-cylinders total) turbocharged radial piston engines.
The participant, once an airline-pilot, and now a pilot for “Fifi,” mentioned that he had to have strength to fly “Fifi,” since the controls were all still cable, rather than hydraulic like modern aircraft.
I think I saw “Fifi” once down in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
At that time I had no idea “Fifi” was the only airworthy B-29.
At least there’s one B-29 still flying. “Fifi” is Commemorative Air Force, and tours with The Ghost Squadron.



1970 AAR ‘Cuda. (Peter Harholdt©.)

—This isn’t that good a picture.
I only do it because it reminds me of a recent Volkswagen ad, pictured below.
The October 2012 entry of my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is a 1970 AAR Plymouth Barracuda pony-car, Plymouth’s competition for the Boss-302 Ford Mustang.
The AAR ‘Cuda allowed Plymouth to race in the Sports Car Club of America’s (SCCA) Trans-Am series, premier during the ‘70s.
It’s a shame the AAR ‘Cuda was tricked up in appearance; the louvered rear-window cover, the raised hood, the body-side graphics.
The AAR ‘Cuda was a really good car, a bit porcine, but not a heavy boat-anchor of an engine to throw off the balance.
The AAR ‘Cuda has the 340 cubic-inch V8 engine, not the heavy Hemi (“hem-EEE;” not “he-me”).
Put in a Hemi and give up corner performance. The car will plow with so much weight over the front-end.
About all the Hemi was good for in a Barracuda, and there were such animals, was straight-line performance, the drag-strip or street-racing between traffic-lights.
Toss a curvy rural byway at it, and a BMW 2002 might beat it.
A BMW 2002 might beat an AAR ‘Cuda too, but a Barracuda without the Hemi on a curvy rural byway had a better chance.

Photo by BobbaLew.

This car has been slightly pranged. The plastic bodywork is cracked behind the right headlight.

I’ve seen similar cars that “fake fast;” like at left.
Youngsters add plastic body-cladding, giant wings, perhaps custom wheels.
Another giveaway is a loud exhaust system with a gigantic chromed outlet.
You can hear them coming, wings and body-cladding akimbo.
Stuff that doesn’t really improve the car’s performance much.
I remember putting a plastic J.C. Whitney air-dam on my Ford E250 van in hopes of making it aerodynamically slicker.
Still 10 miles-per-gallon. (It was a 460! 8.5 on Pikes Peak.)
The AAR ‘Cuda was a really great car.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Yates still has this car (the picture is recent).

Brock Yates of Car & Driver magazine had it right; although his car is a Dodge Challenger, the Dodge version of the Plymouth Barracuda.
His car was improved for performance by Cotton Owens of NASCAR fame.
It didn’t have all the trash, yet could have run with an AAR ‘Cuda.






Sharks. (Photo by Fred Kern.)

— The October 2012 entry of my AII-Pennsy color calendar is a brace of Baldwin Sharks — called that because they supposedly looked like sharks.
If I am correct, they were styled by Raymond Loewy, in attempt to get away from Baldwin’s “baby-face” look.
Baldwin Locomotive Works had been a primary manufacturer of railroad steam-locomotives.
When railroads started converting to diesel-locomotives, Baldwin tried to convert to manufacturing diesel-locomotives.
Their first locomotives were cab-units, much like EMD’s (General Motors Electromotive Division) E and F units.

A New York Central BabyFace.

In fact, they looked like E and F units; their engineer area looking much like EMD.
Except the area was smaller, so was called “baby-face.”
Pennsy was a prime Baldwin customer. Baldwin was in southeastern PA, located on a Pennsy line.
This was true even in Philadelphia, and later when Baldwin moved out of Philadelphia to Eddystone.
Pennsy developed its own locomotive designs, but often had Baldwin build in quantity. This was true of the K4 Pacific (4-6-2) and the I1sa Decapod (2-10-0).
Pennsy was one of the steam holdouts. They didn’t start dieselizing until later.
And EMD, the preferred builder, couldn’t build the quantity Pennsy needed.
Pennsy had to buy from anybody and everybody, often less reliable than EMD.
Baldwin diesels were terrible. They were unreliable, and would give up at the slightest hint of trouble.
Crippling on a railroad is nothing like crippling on a highway, where ongoing traffic can drive around the cripple.
Both the cripple and anything following share the same track. So a cripple plugs the railroad.
The only way to unplug is to send out rescue units.
Until the cripple is moved, the railroad can’t move anything.
Baldwin diesels had a nasty habit of crippling, plugging the railroad.
But Pennsy had to buy Baldwin diesel-locomotives. Baldwin was a preferred vendor, but most importantly, Pennsy could not get the huge quantity of diesels it needed from EMD, whose diesels were much more reliable.
Loewy developed a relationship with staid Pennsy as their industrial designer. It was Loewy that restyled the GG1-electric (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”) and made it as gorgeous as it was triumphant.
And he didn’t do much to the GG1.
Loewy went on to style the T1 steam-locomotive (4-4-4-4; but a duplex — that is, the eight drivers and four cylinders were on a single frame, not articulated). He applied shark-nose styling, a chamfered smokebox with the headlight atop an overhanging prow.
Such styling could be applied to Baldwin diesels, what we have here, the “shark.”
Its nose is chamfered, with the headlight atop an overhanging prow.
Unreliable as it is, a shark is assayed as gorgeous.
Yet the crew of this train probably has its fingers crossed, hoping the diesels don’t break down and cripple.
In which case they get called in before management and accused of incompetence.
We’re on the storied Middle Division at Perdix, PA. The date is October 20, 1957.
(The Middle Division is between Harrisburg and Altoona; the original Pennsy mainline. —Pennsy from Pittsburgh east was a main conduit of freight. Just a single route, but eventually four tracks or more.)
Pennsy wasn’t the only railroad with sharks.

Photo by Doug Wingfield©.

A B&O shark

An Alco salesman’s dream. (Photo by Gene Collora©.)

—The October 2012 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a photograph of all Alco locomotives at an engine-terminal in Phillipsburg, NJ in 1960; two RS-11s (#s 8631 and 8634), a steam-generator equipped RS-1 (#8857), and an S-2 switcher (#5689).
“Alco” is American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, NY.
For years, American Locomotive Company was a primary manufacturer of railroad steam locomotives. (It was originally a merger of many steam locomotive manufacturers.)
With the changeover by railroads to diesel-locomotives, American Locomotive Company brought out a line of diesel-electric railroad locomotives much like the railroads were changing to, and changed its name to “Alco.”
Alco tanked a while ago; they never competed as well as EMD.
If I am correct, the RS-11 was third in a series of road-switchers introduced in 1941 as the RS-1.

Photo by BobbaLew.

Tioga Central’s RS-1 (ex Washington Terminal).

An EMD cab-unit (a restored Great Northern F7).

The road-switcher concept was very attractive to railroads, a diesel-locomotive that could be very easily operated in either direction.
EMD’s early diesels were cab-units (as at left), hard to back up due to poor visibility from the cab.
The road-switcher narrowed the motor-enclosure with walkways outside the engine-hood, like a switcher, allowing ease of vision.
Yet a small hood was ahead of the engine-cab to protect the crew.
Although at first many railroads operated their road-switchers long-hood forward.
Short-hood forward after the manufacturers started cutting down the short hood to permit vision over that hood.

An EMD GP30 (note shortened front hood in front of cab).

The road-switcher concept flowered.
Even EMD got into the road-switcher concept with its GP7, essentially an F7 cab-unit as a road-switcher.
EMD placed a lotta GP series (“Geeps”). Cab-units went out of manufacture. The road-switcher became preeminent.
Alco did fairly well for a while. Their locomotives were fairly reliable.
Alcos were also less fuel-hungry than EMD. But they were all turbocharged (exhaust-gasses used to spin a supercharger), a gizmo that could fail. Early EMDs weren’t turbocharged.
If an Alco was gushing black smoke, which occurred fairly often, that indicated a turbocharger problem, like the turbo was not spinning up as fast as the fuel input.
Or suppose the turbo never got to full revs. Yet fuel-input was as if the turbo was a full revs. Continuous black smoke. Turbos weren’t as reliable then as they are now.
Pennsy had a lotta Alcos.
But of course Pennsy had a lotta non-EMD diesels.
But their Alcos weren’t side-lined as quickly as Baldwins, for example.
In fact, Pennsy continued to buy Alcos when newer models were debuted, for example, the Century-series.

Photo by BobbaLew.

This Century-630 is actually Penn-Central, used uphill as a pusher on Pennsy’s Horseshoe Curve. (Six axles, 3,000 horsepower.)

Now railroads are using General-Electric diesels, and EMD no longer hogs the market.
And of course Pennsy no longer exists.
One wonders if they’d pig out on the new General Electric Dash-9s, or the new GE “Evo” units.
They probably would, but both GE and EMD.




Beetle-Bomb.........


—The October 2012 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is unfortunately the worst-looking car Ford Motor Company ever brought to market, the post-war Fords (this is a ’46).

A 1941 Ford.

A ’39 Ford five-window coupe (one of the best-looking cars ever).

“Shoebox.”

Photo by BobbaLew.

A flat-head Ford V8 (hot-rodded).

A 1949 Mercury (slightly customized).

The body-style debuted as the 1941 Ford, pre-war (at left).
(Pre-war became post-war for all the auto-manufacturers due to non-production and non-development during WWII.)
“Unfortunate” because the BeetleBomb (fat-fendered) Fords followed one of the best-looking cars ever marketed, the ’39 and ’40 Ford coupes (also at left).
They had the good lines and proportions the BeetleBomb Fords lacked.
Then too the BeetleBomb Fords were antediluvian.
Scuttlebutt was Ford Motor Company was doomed by its adherence to antique design principles.
Henry Ford II (Old Henry’s grandson, “the Deuce;” Old Henry [Ford] being the founder of Ford Motor Company) prompted the development of the Shoebox Ford of 1949, the Ford that saved the company.
“Shoebox” because of its squarishness.
The Shoebox was a modern car, that is, more modern than the BeetleBomb and its ilk.
Although the Shoebox was saddled with an antique engine.
The engine was still the old Flat-head V8, first marketed in 1932. By then the competition was bringing out overhead-valve V8s, but Ford couldn’t afford to develop such an engine.
At least not yet. The overhead-valve Y-block debuted in the 1954 model-year.
Although the 1954 car was essentially the Shoebox rebodied (rebodied for 1952).
Ford was barely keeping up with General Motors.
And Chrysler, the number-three automaker, was making great strides.
As I understand it, the ’49 Mercury was originally the ’49 Ford, yet the Deuce rushed through a modern car.
And the ’49 Mercury used a lot of the Shoebox’s engineering.
If that original Ford had been brought to market with the same antediluvian engineering in the BeetleBomb, Ford would probably have failed.
This calendar-car suffers from being a two-door sedan (“tudor”).
Even the ’39 and ’40 Ford Tudors were as plain.
But the BeetleBomb coupes were also plain.

The hotrod 1948 Ford in the movie “Grease.”

I was appalled when the “Grease” movie centered on a BeetleBomb convertible.