Monthly Calendar-Report for June 2013

Eastbound Train 18N, all auto-racks, climbs The Hill. (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

—The June 2013 entry of my own calendar is Train 18N, all eastbound auto-racks, on Track One of the west slope of The Hill, at a location where five tracks of the old Pennsy cross under PA state route 53.
The train is on the New Portage alignment. Track Two is to the left of the train, and Main-Eight, a storage-track, is to the right of the train.
Tracks Three and Four are visible in the right side of the picture, and are on the original Pennsylvania Railroad alignment, which is lower.
Pennsy came to own New Portage, a solution to the original Portage alignment over Allegheny Ridge, which included inclined-planes due to poor grading when it was built.
Grading back then was in its infancy, very rudimentary.
Pennsy added New Portage because it included a tunnel through the mountaintop, which could increase Pennsy’s capacity across Allegheny Ridge.
We just managed to catch this train. I was with Phil Faudi (“FOW-deee;” as in “wow”), the railfan I chase trains with in the Altoona area.
He had heard this train coming east on his radio-scanner. (The train-engineer calls out signals on the train radio as the train proceeds.)
We rushed to the route-53 overpass just east of Cresson (“KRESS-in”), and took up position on an old abutment of an earlier route-53 overpass.
This picture is not extraordinary, although I’ve done fairly well at this overpass. April’s picture, looking east, is the same overpass. This picture is looking west.
This picture cannot be repeated (I’ve tried). Shrubbery has grown up obscuring the view.
Engine 9049, in the lead, is a General-Electric Dash 9-40CW, 4,000 horsepower (“40”), three-axle trucks (the letter “C”), and wide-cab (the letter “W”)
The following locomotive (#8429) is a Dash 8-40CW, originally a Conrail unit. Its trucks don’t have the “pants.”
This picture is fairly old, August 6th, 2010. At that time the Dash 8s were still in use. By now they may not be.
Faudi tells me 18N is all auto-racks. One wonders if they’re loaded.



HO-HUM! (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The June 2013 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a B-25.
Seems like B-25s are a dime-a-dozen.
That’s because I’ve seen so many. My WWII warbirds site says only 34 are still flying.
The Geneseo Airshow usually gets quite a few. One year it seemed it got about eight.
They do a “pumpkin-drop” competition.
The B-25s fly low over a target-area and drop pumpkins out of their bomb-bays.
The B-25 with the closest pumpkin wins. The pumpkins, of course, smash into soggy smithereens.
Another time I was driving through southeastern PA toward northern DE, and apparently a warbirds show was going on nearby. At least two B-25 roared over, maybe three.
I’ll let my warbirds-site detail the B-25:
“The B-25 was designed for the United States’ Army Air Corps (USAAC) before the Second World War.
The North American company had never designed a multi-engine bomber before. The original design had shoulder-mounted wings and a crew of three in a narrow fuselage.
The USAAC then decided its new bomber would need a much larger payload -- double the original specifications. North American designers dropped the wing to the aircraft’s mid-section, and widened the fuselage so the pilot and co-pilot could sit side-by-side. They also improved the cockpit.
The USAAC ordered 140 aircraft of the new design right off the drawing board. There were at least six major variants of the Mitchell, from the initial B-25A and B-25B, with two power-operated two-gun turrets, to the autopilot-equipped B-25C, and the B-25G with 75mm cannon for use on anti-shipping missions. ... In the end, the B-25 became the most widely used American medium bomber of World War Two.
The B-25 was made immortal on April 18, 1942, when it became the first United States aircraft to bomb the Japanese mainland.
Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, 16 Mitchells took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, flew 800 miles to Japan, and attacked their targets. Most made forced landings in China.
They were the heaviest aircraft at the time to be flown from a ship at sea. (And that was before steam-catapults flung the airplanes off the carrier-deck.)
After the war, many B-25s were used as training aircraft. Between 1951 and 1954, 157 Mitchells were converted as flying classrooms. They were also used as staff transport, utility, and navigator-trainer aircraft. The last B-25, a VIP transport, was retired from the USAF on May 21, 1960.”
My warbirds-site says one B-25 is still extant in Hollywood as a camera-plane.
One wonders if it’s the same B-25 used in the Cinerama movies from the ‘50s, where a triple-camera was set up to record a wrap-around view for display in a theater. A projector was needed for each camera. (Three projectors.)
The triple-camera was set up in the nose of the B-25, the bombardier’s post.
The B-25 was then flown down the East River toward Manhattan, underneath all the bridges, including world-famous Brooklyn-Bridge (which every American should be required to walk — I have).
It was thrilling, but not as thrilling as the next Cinerama movie (Cinerama-II), where the triple-camera was set up in the front of a Coney Island rollercoaster.
Whether the triple-camera was worth the trouble is debatable. The wrap-around view was nice, but synchronization and aiming was flaky. What we watched was the center camera.
A single camera in the nose of a B-25 or rollercoaster would have been as thrilling.
A B-25 also crashed into the Empire State Building on Saturday, July 28, 1945. The Empire State Building still stands; the crash did not compromise the building’s structural integrity.
The B-25 flew into the 78th through 80th floors, killing 14, 11 of whom were in the building. It was foggy, and the B-25 pilot became disoriented.
Damage was fairly severe, but the Empire State Building stayed up.
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were also crashed into by airplanes (airliners) back on September 11th, 2001. But both buildings collapsed.



HOOOT-HOOOT-HOOT-HOOT! (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

—The June 2013 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is another photograph by Jim Shaughnessy, a Pennsy 2-10-0 Decapod returning south toward PA with empty coal-hoppers from the coal-dock on Lake Ontario at Sodus Point, NY.
Shaughnessy was up-and-down this line, Pennsy’s Elmira branch, all because Pennsy was using its Decapod steamers  to deliver coal to the Sodus Point coal-dock.
The Decapod is a fairly old design — it goes back to 1916 — but it was well-suited to this service.
It was so large and heavy when fielded, Pennsy’s crews christened it the “hippo.”
Those coal-trains were heavy, and the line to Sodus Point is torturous. It included steep grades and extreme curvature.
I’ve driven along side it to Penn Yan in NY. It certainly wasn’t the Pennsy main; only one track weaving back-and-forth.
Only the first and last driver-set of a Dek’s five driver-sets were flanged, to make it possible to negotiate extreme curvature.
Those Decapods were immensely powerful, but you had to be careful about steam-usage. I have a recording of a Dek running out of steam. The drive-pistons are huge, yet the firebox is only 70 square feet of grate-area.
And there’s no combustion-chamber. Pennsy’s first locomotive with a combustion-chamber was the M1 Mountain (4-8-2), a Decapod-sized boiler, but with a combustion-chamber. (A combustion-chamber was added space for the fire to burn. They came into wide use after about 1920.)
The Dek also suffered from the bane of all 10-drivered steam-locomotives, namely the heavy weight of its long side-rods, which hammered the rail, and caused vibration at speed.
A Dek was good for about 50 mph, if you could stand it!
Those side-rods shook the cab up-and-down as the driving-wheels rotated.
You could counterweight a driver to offset the vibration, but as a freight locomotive the drivers had to be small. You couldn’t put in much counterweighting, plus the counterweighting hammered the rail too.
So here comes a Dek, whistling for a road-crossing near Watkins Glen, NY, empty coal-hoppers in tow. Back for another trainload of coal.
As I recall, Pennsy freight-locomotives had single-tone hooter whistles.
The Sodus Point coal-dock shipped coal to Canada, and eventually America too, but became moribund. Coal-loading facilities with greater capacity succeeded it.
There also is training mine-to-consumer. My guess is by now the coal-consumer gets its coal directly by train, cutting out the ship.
That coal-dock was abandoned in 1967, and it burned down during dismantling in 1971. It accidentally caught fire.


The Sodus Point coal-wharf. (A Decapod is pushing cars.)

The trestle pictured above, at 60 feet above the water, is 20 feet higher than the original trestle, which was installed about 1886.



440 ‘Cuda. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

—The June 2013 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecars calendar is a 1970 440 Barracuda convertible.
“440” is the engine-displacement, a gigantic 440 cubic-inches.
A hot-rodded 440 cubic-inch engine would strike fear into passengers, perhaps even the driver.

Not my brother’s car, but same model and color. (Photo by Bobbalew.)

My blowhard brother-in-Boston, the macho Harley-dude, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, has a hot-rodded 454 cubic-inch 1971 SS Chevelle.
He took me for a ride in it once. It was frightening.
Everything shook. The hood shook. The front-end shook. The entire car vibrated with each piston-thrust. We pounded the pavement.
Thankfully he never showed me “wot she’ll do.....” I was afraid he would!
We were just going to buy gas. We purchased some 103-octane elixir; it cost over 100 buckaroos to fill his 20-gallon tank.
Coming home we picked up his Harley at a cleaner-guy, and my brother had me drive his Chevelle home.
Thankfully it had auto-tranny, but it liked to soot its plugs. I managed to keep it running, although I think I stalled it once.
But a hot-rodded 454 cubic-inch engine was frightening.
My parting impression is of that hood shaking.
The 440 cubic-inch engine in this ‘Cuda is not the Hemi (“Hem-eee;” not “he-mee”).
At that time Chrysler’s Hemi was 426 cubic-inches, also quite large.
But its advantage was a Hemi would breathe well at high revs.
It had valving aimed at its manifolds. A 440 cubic-inch “Wedge” motor doesn’t aim at the exhaust manifolds.
Its cylinder-valves are all in a row parallel to the crankshaft, aimed toward the intake manifold.
(“Wedge” because its combustion-chambers were wedge shaped, unlike the Hemi, which had hemispherical combustion-chambers.)
The Hemi’s valves were at 90 degrees to the crankshaft. They could be aimed at each manifold. A “Wedge” restricted exhaust-flow due to its contorted passageways, which restricted engine-breathing at higher engine-speeds.
The Hemi was immensely powerful at high speed. The Hemi was so strong, NASCAR outlawed it; both the Hemi and the Ford “Cammer,” a large single-overhead-cam motor Ford brought out to compete with the Hemi. —Like the Hemi it had hemispherical combustion-chambers.


Pennsy T-1 stops at Englewood out of Chicago. (Photo by V.O. Harkness.)

—Next is my All-Pennsy color calendar. The June 2013 entry is #6110, one of the two original Raymond Loewy-designed (“low-eeee”) T-1 duplexes (4-4-4-4).
Pennsy had 50 T-1s, but later T-1s were modified from the original Loewy styling. The restyling was to ease maintenance, and they don’t have that long chamfered prow.
The later T-1s had the chamfered prow, but not as long as Loewy designed.
And I see Loewy’s elegant cow-catcher has been opened up to ease access to that foldaway coupler.
On a duplex the front driver-set is not hinged to the rear driver-set like an articulated. All drivers are on a single frame.
The T-1 wasn’t good at curves. It needed straight track, like through Ohio and Indiana toward Chicago.
Throw a crossover at it and it might derail.
A duplex is not articulated. What a T-1 really is is a 4-8-4 with multiple cylinders, four instead of just two.
Duplex cylinders were supposed to be advantageous. It reduced the heavy side-rod set, which had to be counterbalanced to avoid hammering the rail at speed.
But of course you’re multiplying drive-piston and valve-gear maintenance by two. Plus it was hard to keep one driver-set from slipping. The front driver-set was carrying less weight, so would slip even at speed, like 100 mph. —Madly rotating, and hurling the fire out the stack!
Perhaps that could have been mitigated by individually throttling steam output to each individual driver-set. But that wasn’t done, plus I’m sure metering steam to each individual driver-set would be an immense challenge.
It was hard enough to extract good performance from an ordinary two-piston steam-locomotive.

A non-Loewy T-1

The T-1 was somewhat a failure. It cruised well at 100 mph, but was smoky and hard to start.
Plus there was that tendency to slip a driver-set at speed. If that happened, the whole engine had to be throttled back until footing was regained.
And I’m sure starting was a bear. If a driver-set started slipping the whole engine had to be throttled back. Plus slipping often compromised the fire. With wild slipping your fire might get blown out the stack.
Worst of all, the T-1 came online the same time Pennsy was dieselizing. A set of E-units was easier to deal with than a T-1. The T-1 was Pennsy trying to stick with coal, not dieselize.
A steam-locomotive had to have water and coal. Both required expensive lineside capital building: water and coal-towers.
A diesel only needed lineside fuel storage and a fueling facility.
Plus water used in steam-locomotives (the water boiled) often had to be treated to not compromise performance, for example foam.
The T-1 was doomed at the outset. but Pennsy was hanging on, committed to coal-fired steam-locomotion; they were heavily into shipping coal.
The T-1 was first built as an experimental. For example 6110 — styled by Loewy. Only two T-1s had the Loewy styling; all the rest were the modification.
The Loewy T-1s look best.



Not bad, but a bit strange.

—I consider the June 2013 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar more a custom than a hotrod.
It’s a ’36 Ford, so it starts as a hotrod.
But it has a ’39 LaSalle grill, which would require extensive bodywork.
A hotrod would stick to stock appearance, probably lowered and top chopped.

Stock ’36 Ford.

The front of the calendar-car.

I’ve included a photo of a stock ’36 Ford, for comparison with the LaSalle grill.
The Lasalle is a great-looking car. It’s a masterwork of GM styling, perhaps the best-looking car GM marketed.
It’s the LaSalle grill that does it. Majestic yet simple.
Compare it to some of the turkeys GM marketed at the same time.
The LaSalle was supposed to be a cheaper Cadillac. GM was marketing low-buck versions of its marques. For example, the Pontiac was a low-buck Oakland. Funny, Pontiac lasted while Oakland tanked.
Sadly, LaSalle didn’t last. It’s a shame the best-looking car GM ever marketed was a low-buck Cadillac.
Yet the Buick lasted with its glitz.
Too much chrome in its shiny grill.
And Cadillac seemed to do the same. Overwrought styling, acres of chrome, chrome dagmars up front, and the beginning of fins. The taillight of the postwar Caddy was supposed to mimic the P-38 fighter-plane.
It’s like GM forgot the Caddy was a car.
Perhaps the worst example of overwrought styling is the ’59 Chevy. Massive gull-wing fins on a plebeian car. —Yet the fins of a ’59 Caddy were just as ridiculous, although better-looking.
But to meld the LaSalle grill into a ’36 Ford makes it a custom to me.
It still seems a hotrod with its flame-paint.
And it looks pretty good.
A ’36 Ford hotrod would have a stock ’36 Ford grill.
The only thing that makes this car a hotrod is the 350-Chevy that powers it.



Norfolk Southern stacker passes surfacing equipment on a siding extension on the “Crescent Corridor” in VA. (Photo by Michael Breen.)

—Last is the June 2013 image in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar, a photograph that falters only because it depicts completion of a siding-extension on the so-called “Crescent Corridor.”
That is, it includes track-maintenance equipment that detracts from the drama of a straight train photograph.
Norfolk Southern is forever trumpeting its Crescent Corridor, a main route south from the northeast. It was cobbled from various old railroad lines which comprised a route south, but wasn’t what the Crescent Corridor has become.
A lot of improvement had to be done to make the route capable of heavy traffic, line improvements and straightening, easing junctions, and in this case lengthening a siding and doubling its speed capability.
Such improvements increase potential traffic-flow.
The Crescent Corridor also takes truck-traffic off a parallel interstate. Imagine all the trucks it would take to move all the containers in that stack-train. There’s probably at least 200 containers; 200 trailers.
The railroads were there before the Crescent Corridor, but not serious.
This is not a dramatic photograph. I get the feeling it’s in the calendar because it depicts improvement of Norfolk Southern’s beloved Crescent Corridor.
As a photograph, it would have worked better without that track equipment.
I see people taking photographs of highway trucks converted to track-speeders.
Not this kid.
What matters are long trains led by gigantic locomotives. Engines that assault the heavens, and shake the ground with their piston-throbs.
Of course, such equipment can’t operate on inferior track.
We rode a tourist-line once, the Arcade & Attica, that was awful. It was in a creekbed, and was good for five mph. We kept bucketing and leaning this-way-and-that.
Track is fragile, and has to be tended to.
But the equipment that does it is nowhere near as photogenic as an actual train.
Yrs Trly had to rotate this picture almost five degrees clockwise.
The original picture was tilted. Not enough to derail the train, but obvious.
I wonder about the calendar-producers, also the photographer. Perhaps the calendar-producers have a rule about reproducing the photographer’s exact image, no matter how bad it is.
Breen’s image was probably shot from a tripod, then opened in Photoshop®. I level occasionally, although never has it been five degrees. Usually it’s less than a degree with a calendar-picture — sometimes more with me, especially grab-shots.
I also color-correct. Old color-slides often fade and need color-correction. An old slide may have gone bluish as the red dye faded or bleached away.
This is especially true of the All-Pennsy color calendar, which often uses old slides — although the steam in a recent All-Pennsy color calendar picture was still bluish. (Add more red and it looked reddish.).
So why couldn’t Breen rotate his image to correct its tilt? Maybe his tilt was intentional to suggest train-movement.
If so, the train is falling slightly downhill.