Monthly Calendar-Report for May 2014
(BLOGS NOT WRITTEN:
With my wife gone, I no longer have time to blog as much as I previously did.
I had to set aside blog-ideas to get this Monthly Calendar-Report done on time.
Missing is a blog about Ford’s Mustang. The Mustang debuted 50 years ago last month.
Maybe this month. The Mustang is that important.)
Eastbound stacker at Alto. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)
—The May 2014 entry of my own calendar is another photograph by my brother Jack Hughes.
It’s off the 17th St. bridge in Altoona, where I’ve taken many photographs myself — some successful, some not.
17th St. overpass is right next to the old Pennsy “Alto” (same as the singer) tower, visible in the photograph, the final open tower on Allegheny-Crossing.
It remained because Altoona had a lot of activity, especially helper-locomotives added or detached for The Hill.
Alto is closed in this photograph. It was closed recently.
Dispatching Altoona was moved off-site — to Pittsburgh.
Trackage through Altoona was also reconfigured.
There used to be a gigantic ex-Pennsy signal-bridge at Alto, but that was replaced by new signaling at other locations.
Alto was built in 1925, after a disastrous runaway destroyed an earlier installation.
It’s a classic Pennsy tower. Supposedly it will be saved, transferred to Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona.
Altoona was very important to the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was their shop town, and manufactured locomotives for the railroad.
The railroad, of course, is no longer Pennsy. It’s Norfolk Southern.
But Altoona is still the base of the railroad-grade over Allegheny Mountain, a barrier to cross-PA trade in the early 1800s.
Whether Altoona can be dispatched from Pittsburgh is debatable.
It was difficult at first.
Things are better, but now so much traffic flows over the mountain, rail-capacity is strained.
Most of that added traffic is crude-oil.
The grade over Allegheny Mountain is a unique challenge.
Plenty of traffic has to cross it, and often helper-locomotives have to be added to get up The Hill, then safely down.
Those helper-locomotives have to be attached and detached, although an on-the-move detaching system called “Helper-Link” has been instituted.
And as always the railroad has to be maintained. Tracks have to be closed for maintenance, switches freeze in winter, and rails kink under the hot summer sun.
Locomotives fail, and I’ve seen trains stall on The Hill for lack of power.
Closing Alto may have been a mistake with the added oil-trains.
Trains get stopped for lack of railroad.
Trains all use the same track; you can’t just drive around a stopped train.
At Alto you could at least look outside and survey the situation.
There also was the advantage of seasoned veterans doing the dispatching.
Switch to Pittsburgh, and -a) you lose your vantage-point, and -b) you lose your veterans — unless they transferred to Pittsburgh.
I have a scanner that picks up local railroad-radio transmissions.
I miss “Jeannie” and “Marlon,” the guy named Bob who talked like Marlon Brando’s Godfather.
“Pittsburgh-East” has become familiar, but he’s not them.
My last visit, an eastbound was stopped before Brickyard Crossing for lack of railroad.
I also view a railroad webcam in Cresson (PA; “KRESS-in”), eastbound up the west slope of The Hill. Often trains are stopped out front.
A “winged-warrior.” (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)
—The May 2014 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar is the most extreme musclecar of all time, a 1969 Dodge Daytona with the Hemi (“HEM-eee;” not “HE-me”) motor, what I call “the winged-warrior.”
Chrysler was worried about the race-winning aerodynamics Ford was applying to its NASCAR racers, particularly the bluff front-end of Torino Talladegas, and Mercury Cyclone-Spoilers.
Both were special-editions for NASCAR racing. They had a front-end that improved top-speed aerodynamics. The average Torino and Cyclone had a front-end that was more a scoop; it slowed the car.
Both were options. 500 of each had to be built to allow them to race NASCAR.
So what was Chrysler gonna do to counter Ford? Their car had the phenomenal Hemi motor, but not the high-speed aerodynamics.
Viola! The Daytona. A special penetrating fiberglass front-end grafted to the Charger, and a giant wing installed out back, high enough to allow the trunk to open.
Extreme overkill!
Dodge had already filled in the concave rear-window of the average Charger to improve NASCAR aerodynamics. The “Winged-Warrior” was over-the-top.
NASCAR’s same rule applied. Chrysler has to build 500 Daytonas for the street.
Plymouth had a similar car in its “SuperBird.”
The Daytona was smashing success at racing.
So successful it was outlawed. 7-liter engine displacement was outlawed too.
NASCAR wanted their racecars to be based on “stock” cars.
The Daytona was not what Granny would buy.
The Hemi was also not well-suited for idling in traffic-jams.
Buddy Baker qualified his Daytona for a NASCAR race at over 200 mph, first car to do so.
The Winged-Warrior was so successful it was ruled out.
So here we have a Dodge Daytona for the street.
I can’t see it as much a street-racer, traffic-light to traffic-light.
With the aerodynamics it had it would crush anything else at top-speed on the expressway.
A 454 Chevelle might make more sense traffic-light to traffic-light.
But the Daytona was needed for flat-out NASCAR racing.
With the Hemi motor it might win the drags too.
I remember drag-racer Bill Jenkins converting to Hemi from his 409-Chevy.
His 409 always won, but a Hemi with its hemispherical heads would continue generating immense power at high speed.
The Hemi would pass a 409 because at high-speed the 409 was puking-out — although not by much.
The Hemi would finish stronger.
But that aero-package is NASCAR.
Chrysler was also offsetting its wheelbase to enhance drag-race performance, relocating the rear axle ahead of its usual location, which increased weight-transfer, and enhanced traction.
NASCAR could have done that. But it would have made a bad handler. The only thing the offset wheelbase was good for was drag-racing.
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! (Photo by Mike Usenia.)
—The May 2014 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is two Pennsy I-1s Decapods (2-10-0) bringing a heavy ore-train into Weigh Scales on Pennsy’s Mt. Carmel branch.
Pennsy’s Decapod was their response to PA’s mountain challenges, a 10-drivered Consolidation — Consolidations were 2-8-0.
The Decapod was developed back in 1916 to produce 25% more power than the L-1s 2-8-2s.
It was so big for its time, Pennsy crews called ‘em “Hippos.”
The boiler was gigantic, although the firebox-grate was only 70 square feet, a standard Pennsy grate size, but still fairly large.
The Deks had such an appetite for coal, Pennsy assigned two firemen per engine at first. But even that wasn’t enough.
As far as I know, the Deks were the first Pennsy locomotive to receive mechanical stokers, an appliance Pennsy abhorred.
Pennsy hated appliances — they had to be maintained. Even appliances that enhanced steam-capacity. Just beef up the basic locomotive.
The Decapod had gigantic cylinders: 30&1/2-inch bore by 32-inch stroke.
They could generate immense power.
And since most of the locomotive-weight was on its 10 driving-wheels, it could generate immense tractive-effort.
Like all 10-drivered locomotives it suffered heavy vibration. All that heavy side-rod weight was flailing around.
You could offset it with counterbalancing, but you couldn’t do much with a small-drivered freight locomotive. —Plus the counterbalancing, like the side-rod weight, pounded the rail.
Pennsy modified its Deks, making an I-1sa. (“S” stood for superheat, as opposed to saturated steam — piping the steam back in the exhaust-flues to superheat it above 212°. Superheated steam was more efficient than “wet” steam, 212°. —As steam-locomotive development progressed, superheat became the norm, so Pennsy no longer used the letter “s.”).
The I-1sa increased the cutoff from 50% to 78%. The cutoff was the length of the piston-stroke steam was admitted.
Increasing cutoff increased tractive-effort, but more steam was used.
Not all Deks were converted to I-1sa, but most were. Pennsy had 598 Decapods, a huge fleet. Larger than any other railroad. Only Western Maryland’s were comparable in size, slightly larger. Western Maryland also had challenging terrain.
The Deks found excellent application late in their careers moving heavy iron-ore trains up Pennsy’s Mt. Carmel branch to an interchange with Lehigh Valley Railroad.
Two would pull, and two would push, slamming the heavy train up to the interchange.
The Dek also found application on the old line up to Sodus Point on Lake Ontario.
They’d move heavy coal-trains up the line from Williamsport (PA).
The line was difficult and torturous, what Deks seemed to excel at.
At Sodus Point the coal was transloaded onto a lake-ship.
Perhaps this train was to be weighed at Weigh-Scales.
Pennsy saved one of every significant steam-locomotive, unlike other railroads who scrapped old steamers.
Most of these locomotives are at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg, PA. But their Dek long ago was moved to the Westinghouse plant in Wilmerding, PA, then sold to a group in Buffalo, NY.
It still exists, and is apparently a veteran of the Sodus Point line, although it’s not operable.
It’s a hotrod, but not a Ford hotrod. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)
—The May 2014 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a Buick. It celebrates the overhead-valve straight-eight inline Buick engine.
In the ‘30s and early ‘40s, Buick was sort of a performance car.
In fact, the Buick Century could be said to be the first musclecar, a high-output engine in a light chassis.
A concept later marketed by Pontiac with its G-T-O.
“Century” signified 100 mph.
Kind of ridiculous when the speed of average motoring was 20-30 mph.
Most automobile engines were still flat-head; valves beside the cylinders, which rendered contorted breathing-passages and poor combustion-chamber shape.
Buick had their valves in the cylinder-head. Flat-heads were just simple valveless head castings. Most lawnmower engines are still the same.
Buick activated its valves with pushrods and rockers. Valve-in-head made for better engine-breathing.
Chevrolet did the same with its inline six.
Eight cylinders inline made for a long whippy crankshaft.
Two inline four-cylinders made into a V8 wasn’t as difficult, except cylinders had to share crank-journals, two per journal.
That wasn’t as whippy as an inline eight-cylinder crankshaft.
Apparently the owner of the car pictured had already built two Ford-based hotrods, including a T-bucket.
His grandson suggested he build something non-Ford, so he decided to build a Buick speedster powered by the overhead-valve Buick straight-eight.
Ford hotrods are a dime-a-dozen. You can build one from non-Ford parts supplied by secondary outlets. Even the frame, and steel body-parts.
Used to be your non-Ford body-parts had to be fiberglass. But now you can get steel.
So now you don’t have to start your hotrod with an original Ford.
You can even build a ’32 Ford roadster hotrod out of non-Ford parts. Used to be you couldn’t.
The ’32 Ford roadster is the most desirable hotrod of all.
I even saw a kit for sale of reproduction parts for the Milner-coupe in American Graffiti. Everything but the motor and drivetrain.
Parts for a Buick Speedster would be almost impossible to get.
Yet this guy did it.
The Buick overhead valve straight-eight is hereby celebrated. A high-output engine for its time.
The greatest railroad-locomotive of all time. (H. Gerald MacDonald Collection©.)
—Could there be an All-Pennsy calendar without a GG-1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”)?
The May 2014 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is two GG-1 electric locomotives pulling a northbound freight toward Pennsy’s North Philadelphia station.
The train started in Potomac Yard near Washington, D.C., and is headed toward north Jersey: New York City.
Anyone who follows this here blog knows I consider the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG-1 electric locomotive the greatest locomotive of all time.
They could put 9,000 horsepower to the railhead per single locomotive. A single current diesel locomotive is good for 4,400 horsepower.
In the early ‘30s Pennsy wanted a locomotive better for its crack passenger express-trains than its P-5 (4-6-4) electric.
Pennsy would experiment. They built two locomotives: the R-1 (4-8-4) and the GG-1 (4-6-6-4). The GG-1 was patterned after an electric locomotive on New Haven Railroad.
Pennsy expected the R-1 to succeed; it was essentially an eight-drivered P-5.
But the GG-1 won. It was more stable, and tracked better. The R-1, like the P-5, tended to “hunt,” lunge side-to-side.
The R-1 was never duplicated, yet the GG-1 was built in quantity.
Time to trot out my GG-1 pictures. I was lucky enough as a teenager to live near Pennsy’s Washington/New York electrified line through northern DE.
I saw GG-1s galore; and it seemed every time I saw one they were doing 90+ mph!
Here comes the Congo (“Congressional”). —That Baldwin switcher was in the way. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
In 1959 my neighbor and I went up to Philadelphia, from home in Wilmington, DE, to railfan. (My neighbor, like me, was a railfan.)
We would return on Pennsy’s Afternoon Congressional, by then a commuter-train that included coaches, no longer the premier Congressional Limited.
The picture is our train approaching Philadelphia’s 30th-St. station. Once on board, the engineer put the hammer down. Within minutes we were cruising at 80+ mph.
GG-1s could do that. 9,000 continuous horsepower would overheat the traction-motors, but you could do that pulling out of a station.
STAND BACK!” (Photo by BobbaLew.)
Another time I pedaled my bicycle up to nearby Claymont station — a commuter station.
I set up beside the four-track main, figuring a GG-1 express would be on an inside track.
But it wasn’t! It was on the track I was right next to. I was about eight feet from the track.
All-of-a-sudden here it came, a southbound GG-1 passenger-express doing 90+ mph.
Had I not had my arm hooked around a light-standard, similar to the one pictured, I woulda been sucked into the train.
And my father’s old Kodak HawkEye stopped it. Its fastest shutter-speed is 1/125th.
I will never forget it! That’s goin’ to my grave.
There were other locations. I reconnoitered many. A GG-1 at speed was a siren-song.
I remember viewing a rainy high-school football-game in Newark, DE, hard by the Washington/New York main. We lost, but all another railfan and I did the whole game was watch the GG-1s flash by.
Only one other location works.
Over Shellpot Creek. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
Over the flyover. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
That’s where Pennsy built a flyover over the Edgemoor Yard-entrance.
Edgemoor was the yard for Wilmington, DE, and the yard-entrance was at the outlet of Shellpot Creek into the Delaware River.
Northbound GG-1 passenger expresses would take the flyover, which had a long down-ramp back to grade-level north of the flyover.
That ramp would help a train accelerate.
But often a GG-1 express was already doing 80+.
If I am correct, the early low-numbered GG-1s were regeared down for freight-service. The lead GG-1, #4817, is one of those freight GG-1s.
A Pennsy K-4 Pacific (4-6-2) steam-locomotive powering a train for Pennsylvania-Reading (“REDD-ing,” not “READ-ing”) Seashore Lines in south Jersey is visible in the distance.
“Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” (PRSL) is 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 south Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.
My railfanning began watching trains on Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines.
Quite a few GG-1s were saved, but the one pictured below is best. It’s at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, #4935, painted in the original Raymond Loewy cat-whisker paint-scheme.
It’s not operable.
Pennsy’s old Washington/New York electrified-line has been upgraded as Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. GG-1s would no longer work.
#4935. (Photo by Tom Hughes.)
(“Tom Hughes” is my nephew, the only son of my brother in northern DE. He’s also a railfan.)
As always, I note the rubber hose encasing a chain on the front-door is askew. If I had been the engineer I would have straightened it.
A daily train of automobiles passes Rutherford, PA, bound for north Jersey. (Photo by Bruce Kerr.)
—The May 2014 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a trainload of autos from Bellevue, Ohio, bound for the New York City area.
It’s on the old Reading Harrisburg-north Jersey line that Conrail made its freight-route toward New York after the old Pennsy electrified line became Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
Norfolk Southern took over the line when Conrail was broken up and sold in 1999 — Norfolk Southern purchasing most of Conrail’s lines in PA.
The lead locomotive is not what I thought it was, an EMD SD-70, frequently used on Norfolk Southern freight-trains.
It’s an SD-60 manufactured in 1985. It’s followed by an SD-60M (1993), another SD-60 also in the Wiki listing. (The purple-text is a hyper-text link, as are “EMD” and “SD-70” above.)
EMD is Electromotive Division, the locomotive manufacturer of General Motors. But it was sold to Caterpillar with the GM bankruptcy.
I did some Google-satellite research. Reading interchanges with the old Pennsy south of Harrisburg on the east bank of the Susquehanna (“suss-kwe-HAN-uh;” as in “and”) river. But it also crossed the river on a long bridge.
That Reading line then continues south; I don’t see it interchanging with Pennsy’s west-shore riverside line up to Enola (“aye-NOLE-uh;” as in “hay”) Yard.
So I don’t know as trains from the west can access Enola before switching onto the Reading line to get to the New York area.
I think Pennsy had other bridge crossings south of Enola, but a train from the west might have to cross Rockville Bridge, and thread Harrisburg, to get to the Reading line.
This photograph looks a lot like one I took at Allegheny Crossing.
It’s also solid auto-racks, and uninspiring.
It may even be the same train.
Near Cresson. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
The judges for the Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar always tilt toward a flower-picture for May.
At least they’re not biplanes. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)
—And now, at last my final calendar.
The May 2014 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is three Ryan “Recruit” trainers flying in echelon formation.
My running this picture last probably isn’t fair. The “Recruit” was a pretty good airplane, but not the P-51 Mustang, a Spitfire, or a Lightning.
Nor any of the fabulous Navy fighters, like the Corsair and the Grumman Hellcat.
But in order to fly such a hotrod, the would-be pilot had to start somewhere.
The lowly “Recruit” was a basic-trainer.
And a monoplane at that. Basic-trainers were often biplanes (“buy-plain;” I say that because yrs trly was at first mispronouncing it “BIP-lane”).
For example, the Stearman trainer was a biplane; it had two wings.
The Recruit only has one wing, a monoplane.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“The Ryan Recruit was the U.S. Army Air Corps’ first monoplane primary trainer.
Initial testing of a single Ryan S-T-A (Sport-Trainer-A) resulted in an order for 15 more aircraft, re-designated the YPT-16, for evaluation in 1939.
Finding this tandem two-seater to be an excellent design, the USAAC ordered a production batch of 30 aircraft, designated the PT-20.
In 1941, the Army decided a new more powerful engine was needed to endure the rigors of training new pilots. Ryan Aeronautical replaced the inline engine of the previous version with a Kinner radial engine.
The resulting PT-21 was so superior that many PT-16s and PT-20s were upgraded with the new engine, becoming PT-16As and PT-20As.
With flight training programs expanding across the United States, 1,023 more planes were ordered. These had an improved Kinner radial, no wheel spats, and the deletion of the main landing gear fairings. This became the PT-22. [What’s pictured.]
The Navy also ordered Recruits and re-designated them as NR-1s, and the Netherlands ordered 25 Recruits and called them NR-3s. The Navy used these trainers until 1944, and the U.S. Army Air-Corps would retire the Recruit at the end of WWII.”
It’s an excellent photograph. I only run it last because the airplanes aren’t WWII hotrods.
I also notice the terrain below. It looks very familiar, like terrain approaching Tehachapi Pass (“tuh-HATCH-uh-PEE”) in central California.
A railroad was opened in 1876. It has to get from the low elevation of the San Joaquin valley up to California’s Mojave Desert — the so-called “high desert.”
The Tehachapi mountains separate the two.
Hills approach Tehachapi Pass, and the railroad has to climb those hills over a steep and torturous grade. The railroad even has a loop in it known as Tehachapi Loop.
The railroad loops over itself, 77 feet above itself.
Tehachapi Loop is one of the railfan pilgrimage spots.
I’ve seen it myself, and the terrain is just like what’s pictured.
Grass grows in Spring, then becomes tinder in Summer, when it’s arid and dry.
With my wife gone, I no longer have time to blog as much as I previously did.
I had to set aside blog-ideas to get this Monthly Calendar-Report done on time.
Missing is a blog about Ford’s Mustang. The Mustang debuted 50 years ago last month.
Maybe this month. The Mustang is that important.)
Eastbound stacker at Alto. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)
—The May 2014 entry of my own calendar is another photograph by my brother Jack Hughes.
It’s off the 17th St. bridge in Altoona, where I’ve taken many photographs myself — some successful, some not.
17th St. overpass is right next to the old Pennsy “Alto” (same as the singer) tower, visible in the photograph, the final open tower on Allegheny-Crossing.
It remained because Altoona had a lot of activity, especially helper-locomotives added or detached for The Hill.
Alto is closed in this photograph. It was closed recently.
Dispatching Altoona was moved off-site — to Pittsburgh.
Trackage through Altoona was also reconfigured.
There used to be a gigantic ex-Pennsy signal-bridge at Alto, but that was replaced by new signaling at other locations.
Alto was built in 1925, after a disastrous runaway destroyed an earlier installation.
It’s a classic Pennsy tower. Supposedly it will be saved, transferred to Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona.
Altoona was very important to the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was their shop town, and manufactured locomotives for the railroad.
The railroad, of course, is no longer Pennsy. It’s Norfolk Southern.
But Altoona is still the base of the railroad-grade over Allegheny Mountain, a barrier to cross-PA trade in the early 1800s.
Whether Altoona can be dispatched from Pittsburgh is debatable.
It was difficult at first.
Things are better, but now so much traffic flows over the mountain, rail-capacity is strained.
Most of that added traffic is crude-oil.
The grade over Allegheny Mountain is a unique challenge.
Plenty of traffic has to cross it, and often helper-locomotives have to be added to get up The Hill, then safely down.
Those helper-locomotives have to be attached and detached, although an on-the-move detaching system called “Helper-Link” has been instituted.
And as always the railroad has to be maintained. Tracks have to be closed for maintenance, switches freeze in winter, and rails kink under the hot summer sun.
Locomotives fail, and I’ve seen trains stall on The Hill for lack of power.
Closing Alto may have been a mistake with the added oil-trains.
Trains get stopped for lack of railroad.
Trains all use the same track; you can’t just drive around a stopped train.
At Alto you could at least look outside and survey the situation.
There also was the advantage of seasoned veterans doing the dispatching.
Switch to Pittsburgh, and -a) you lose your vantage-point, and -b) you lose your veterans — unless they transferred to Pittsburgh.
I have a scanner that picks up local railroad-radio transmissions.
I miss “Jeannie” and “Marlon,” the guy named Bob who talked like Marlon Brando’s Godfather.
“Pittsburgh-East” has become familiar, but he’s not them.
My last visit, an eastbound was stopped before Brickyard Crossing for lack of railroad.
I also view a railroad webcam in Cresson (PA; “KRESS-in”), eastbound up the west slope of The Hill. Often trains are stopped out front.
A “winged-warrior.” (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)
—The May 2014 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar is the most extreme musclecar of all time, a 1969 Dodge Daytona with the Hemi (“HEM-eee;” not “HE-me”) motor, what I call “the winged-warrior.”
 |
| Torino Talladega. |
Both were special-editions for NASCAR racing. They had a front-end that improved top-speed aerodynamics. The average Torino and Cyclone had a front-end that was more a scoop; it slowed the car.
Both were options. 500 of each had to be built to allow them to race NASCAR.
So what was Chrysler gonna do to counter Ford? Their car had the phenomenal Hemi motor, but not the high-speed aerodynamics.
Viola! The Daytona. A special penetrating fiberglass front-end grafted to the Charger, and a giant wing installed out back, high enough to allow the trunk to open.
Extreme overkill!
Dodge had already filled in the concave rear-window of the average Charger to improve NASCAR aerodynamics. The “Winged-Warrior” was over-the-top.
NASCAR’s same rule applied. Chrysler has to build 500 Daytonas for the street.
Plymouth had a similar car in its “SuperBird.”
The Daytona was smashing success at racing.
So successful it was outlawed. 7-liter engine displacement was outlawed too.
NASCAR wanted their racecars to be based on “stock” cars.
The Daytona was not what Granny would buy.
The Hemi was also not well-suited for idling in traffic-jams.
 |
The Winged-Warrior was so successful it was ruled out.
So here we have a Dodge Daytona for the street.
I can’t see it as much a street-racer, traffic-light to traffic-light.
With the aerodynamics it had it would crush anything else at top-speed on the expressway.
A 454 Chevelle might make more sense traffic-light to traffic-light.
But the Daytona was needed for flat-out NASCAR racing.
With the Hemi motor it might win the drags too.
I remember drag-racer Bill Jenkins converting to Hemi from his 409-Chevy.
His 409 always won, but a Hemi with its hemispherical heads would continue generating immense power at high speed.
The Hemi would pass a 409 because at high-speed the 409 was puking-out — although not by much.
The Hemi would finish stronger.
But that aero-package is NASCAR.
 |
| (Note rear-wheels offset forward.) |
NASCAR could have done that. But it would have made a bad handler. The only thing the offset wheelbase was good for was drag-racing.
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! (Photo by Mike Usenia.)—The May 2014 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is two Pennsy I-1s Decapods (2-10-0) bringing a heavy ore-train into Weigh Scales on Pennsy’s Mt. Carmel branch.
 |
| Pennsy’s I-1s Decapod (2-10-0). |
The Decapod was developed back in 1916 to produce 25% more power than the L-1s 2-8-2s.
It was so big for its time, Pennsy crews called ‘em “Hippos.”
The boiler was gigantic, although the firebox-grate was only 70 square feet, a standard Pennsy grate size, but still fairly large.
The Deks had such an appetite for coal, Pennsy assigned two firemen per engine at first. But even that wasn’t enough.
As far as I know, the Deks were the first Pennsy locomotive to receive mechanical stokers, an appliance Pennsy abhorred.
Pennsy hated appliances — they had to be maintained. Even appliances that enhanced steam-capacity. Just beef up the basic locomotive.
The Decapod had gigantic cylinders: 30&1/2-inch bore by 32-inch stroke.
They could generate immense power.
And since most of the locomotive-weight was on its 10 driving-wheels, it could generate immense tractive-effort.
Like all 10-drivered locomotives it suffered heavy vibration. All that heavy side-rod weight was flailing around.
You could offset it with counterbalancing, but you couldn’t do much with a small-drivered freight locomotive. —Plus the counterbalancing, like the side-rod weight, pounded the rail.
Pennsy modified its Deks, making an I-1sa. (“S” stood for superheat, as opposed to saturated steam — piping the steam back in the exhaust-flues to superheat it above 212°. Superheated steam was more efficient than “wet” steam, 212°. —As steam-locomotive development progressed, superheat became the norm, so Pennsy no longer used the letter “s.”).
The I-1sa increased the cutoff from 50% to 78%. The cutoff was the length of the piston-stroke steam was admitted.
Increasing cutoff increased tractive-effort, but more steam was used.
Not all Deks were converted to I-1sa, but most were. Pennsy had 598 Decapods, a huge fleet. Larger than any other railroad. Only Western Maryland’s were comparable in size, slightly larger. Western Maryland also had challenging terrain.
The Deks found excellent application late in their careers moving heavy iron-ore trains up Pennsy’s Mt. Carmel branch to an interchange with Lehigh Valley Railroad.
Two would pull, and two would push, slamming the heavy train up to the interchange.
The Dek also found application on the old line up to Sodus Point on Lake Ontario.
They’d move heavy coal-trains up the line from Williamsport (PA).
The line was difficult and torturous, what Deks seemed to excel at.
At Sodus Point the coal was transloaded onto a lake-ship.
Perhaps this train was to be weighed at Weigh-Scales.
Pennsy saved one of every significant steam-locomotive, unlike other railroads who scrapped old steamers.
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| The sole remaining Pennsy Dek, shorn of its boiler-wrap and asbestos insulation. |
It still exists, and is apparently a veteran of the Sodus Point line, although it’s not operable.
It’s a hotrod, but not a Ford hotrod. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)
—The May 2014 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a Buick. It celebrates the overhead-valve straight-eight inline Buick engine.
In the ‘30s and early ‘40s, Buick was sort of a performance car.
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| 1936 Buick Century. |
A concept later marketed by Pontiac with its G-T-O.
“Century” signified 100 mph.
Kind of ridiculous when the speed of average motoring was 20-30 mph.
Most automobile engines were still flat-head; valves beside the cylinders, which rendered contorted breathing-passages and poor combustion-chamber shape.
Buick had their valves in the cylinder-head. Flat-heads were just simple valveless head castings. Most lawnmower engines are still the same.
Buick activated its valves with pushrods and rockers. Valve-in-head made for better engine-breathing.
Chevrolet did the same with its inline six.
Eight cylinders inline made for a long whippy crankshaft.
Two inline four-cylinders made into a V8 wasn’t as difficult, except cylinders had to share crank-journals, two per journal.
That wasn’t as whippy as an inline eight-cylinder crankshaft.
Apparently the owner of the car pictured had already built two Ford-based hotrods, including a T-bucket.
His grandson suggested he build something non-Ford, so he decided to build a Buick speedster powered by the overhead-valve Buick straight-eight.
Ford hotrods are a dime-a-dozen. You can build one from non-Ford parts supplied by secondary outlets. Even the frame, and steel body-parts.
Used to be your non-Ford body-parts had to be fiberglass. But now you can get steel.
So now you don’t have to start your hotrod with an original Ford.
You can even build a ’32 Ford roadster hotrod out of non-Ford parts. Used to be you couldn’t.
The ’32 Ford roadster is the most desirable hotrod of all.
I even saw a kit for sale of reproduction parts for the Milner-coupe in American Graffiti. Everything but the motor and drivetrain.
Parts for a Buick Speedster would be almost impossible to get.
Yet this guy did it.
The Buick overhead valve straight-eight is hereby celebrated. A high-output engine for its time.
The greatest railroad-locomotive of all time. (H. Gerald MacDonald Collection©.)
—Could there be an All-Pennsy calendar without a GG-1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”)?
The May 2014 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is two GG-1 electric locomotives pulling a northbound freight toward Pennsy’s North Philadelphia station.
The train started in Potomac Yard near Washington, D.C., and is headed toward north Jersey: New York City.
Anyone who follows this here blog knows I consider the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG-1 electric locomotive the greatest locomotive of all time.
They could put 9,000 horsepower to the railhead per single locomotive. A single current diesel locomotive is good for 4,400 horsepower.
In the early ‘30s Pennsy wanted a locomotive better for its crack passenger express-trains than its P-5 (4-6-4) electric.
Pennsy would experiment. They built two locomotives: the R-1 (4-8-4) and the GG-1 (4-6-6-4). The GG-1 was patterned after an electric locomotive on New Haven Railroad.
Pennsy expected the R-1 to succeed; it was essentially an eight-drivered P-5.
But the GG-1 won. It was more stable, and tracked better. The R-1, like the P-5, tended to “hunt,” lunge side-to-side.
The R-1 was never duplicated, yet the GG-1 was built in quantity.
Time to trot out my GG-1 pictures. I was lucky enough as a teenager to live near Pennsy’s Washington/New York electrified line through northern DE.
I saw GG-1s galore; and it seemed every time I saw one they were doing 90+ mph!
Here comes the Congo (“Congressional”). —That Baldwin switcher was in the way. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
In 1959 my neighbor and I went up to Philadelphia, from home in Wilmington, DE, to railfan. (My neighbor, like me, was a railfan.)
We would return on Pennsy’s Afternoon Congressional, by then a commuter-train that included coaches, no longer the premier Congressional Limited.
The picture is our train approaching Philadelphia’s 30th-St. station. Once on board, the engineer put the hammer down. Within minutes we were cruising at 80+ mph.
GG-1s could do that. 9,000 continuous horsepower would overheat the traction-motors, but you could do that pulling out of a station.
STAND BACK!” (Photo by BobbaLew.)
Another time I pedaled my bicycle up to nearby Claymont station — a commuter station.
I set up beside the four-track main, figuring a GG-1 express would be on an inside track.
But it wasn’t! It was on the track I was right next to. I was about eight feet from the track.
All-of-a-sudden here it came, a southbound GG-1 passenger-express doing 90+ mph.
Had I not had my arm hooked around a light-standard, similar to the one pictured, I woulda been sucked into the train.
And my father’s old Kodak HawkEye stopped it. Its fastest shutter-speed is 1/125th.
I will never forget it! That’s goin’ to my grave.
There were other locations. I reconnoitered many. A GG-1 at speed was a siren-song.
I remember viewing a rainy high-school football-game in Newark, DE, hard by the Washington/New York main. We lost, but all another railfan and I did the whole game was watch the GG-1s flash by.
Only one other location works.
Over Shellpot Creek. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
Over the flyover. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
That’s where Pennsy built a flyover over the Edgemoor Yard-entrance.
Edgemoor was the yard for Wilmington, DE, and the yard-entrance was at the outlet of Shellpot Creek into the Delaware River.
Northbound GG-1 passenger expresses would take the flyover, which had a long down-ramp back to grade-level north of the flyover.
That ramp would help a train accelerate.
But often a GG-1 express was already doing 80+.
If I am correct, the early low-numbered GG-1s were regeared down for freight-service. The lead GG-1, #4817, is one of those freight GG-1s.
A Pennsy K-4 Pacific (4-6-2) steam-locomotive powering a train for Pennsylvania-Reading (“REDD-ing,” not “READ-ing”) Seashore Lines in south Jersey is visible in the distance.
“Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” (PRSL) is 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 south Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.
My railfanning began watching trains on Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines.
Quite a few GG-1s were saved, but the one pictured below is best. It’s at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, #4935, painted in the original Raymond Loewy cat-whisker paint-scheme.
It’s not operable.
Pennsy’s old Washington/New York electrified-line has been upgraded as Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. GG-1s would no longer work.
#4935. (Photo by Tom Hughes.)
(“Tom Hughes” is my nephew, the only son of my brother in northern DE. He’s also a railfan.)
As always, I note the rubber hose encasing a chain on the front-door is askew. If I had been the engineer I would have straightened it.
A daily train of automobiles passes Rutherford, PA, bound for north Jersey. (Photo by Bruce Kerr.)
—The May 2014 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a trainload of autos from Bellevue, Ohio, bound for the New York City area.
It’s on the old Reading Harrisburg-north Jersey line that Conrail made its freight-route toward New York after the old Pennsy electrified line became Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
Norfolk Southern took over the line when Conrail was broken up and sold in 1999 — Norfolk Southern purchasing most of Conrail’s lines in PA.
The lead locomotive is not what I thought it was, an EMD SD-70, frequently used on Norfolk Southern freight-trains.
It’s an SD-60 manufactured in 1985. It’s followed by an SD-60M (1993), another SD-60 also in the Wiki listing. (The purple-text is a hyper-text link, as are “EMD” and “SD-70” above.)
EMD is Electromotive Division, the locomotive manufacturer of General Motors. But it was sold to Caterpillar with the GM bankruptcy.
I did some Google-satellite research. Reading interchanges with the old Pennsy south of Harrisburg on the east bank of the Susquehanna (“suss-kwe-HAN-uh;” as in “and”) river. But it also crossed the river on a long bridge.
That Reading line then continues south; I don’t see it interchanging with Pennsy’s west-shore riverside line up to Enola (“aye-NOLE-uh;” as in “hay”) Yard.
So I don’t know as trains from the west can access Enola before switching onto the Reading line to get to the New York area.
I think Pennsy had other bridge crossings south of Enola, but a train from the west might have to cross Rockville Bridge, and thread Harrisburg, to get to the Reading line.
This photograph looks a lot like one I took at Allegheny Crossing.
It’s also solid auto-racks, and uninspiring.
It may even be the same train.
Near Cresson. (Photo by BobbaLew.)
The judges for the Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar always tilt toward a flower-picture for May.
At least they’re not biplanes. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)
—And now, at last my final calendar.
The May 2014 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is three Ryan “Recruit” trainers flying in echelon formation.
My running this picture last probably isn’t fair. The “Recruit” was a pretty good airplane, but not the P-51 Mustang, a Spitfire, or a Lightning.
Nor any of the fabulous Navy fighters, like the Corsair and the Grumman Hellcat.
But in order to fly such a hotrod, the would-be pilot had to start somewhere.
The lowly “Recruit” was a basic-trainer.
And a monoplane at that. Basic-trainers were often biplanes (“buy-plain;” I say that because yrs trly was at first mispronouncing it “BIP-lane”).
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| Two wings (a Stearman). |
The Recruit only has one wing, a monoplane.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“The Ryan Recruit was the U.S. Army Air Corps’ first monoplane primary trainer.
Initial testing of a single Ryan S-T-A (Sport-Trainer-A) resulted in an order for 15 more aircraft, re-designated the YPT-16, for evaluation in 1939.
Finding this tandem two-seater to be an excellent design, the USAAC ordered a production batch of 30 aircraft, designated the PT-20.
In 1941, the Army decided a new more powerful engine was needed to endure the rigors of training new pilots. Ryan Aeronautical replaced the inline engine of the previous version with a Kinner radial engine.
The resulting PT-21 was so superior that many PT-16s and PT-20s were upgraded with the new engine, becoming PT-16As and PT-20As.
With flight training programs expanding across the United States, 1,023 more planes were ordered. These had an improved Kinner radial, no wheel spats, and the deletion of the main landing gear fairings. This became the PT-22. [What’s pictured.]
The Navy also ordered Recruits and re-designated them as NR-1s, and the Netherlands ordered 25 Recruits and called them NR-3s. The Navy used these trainers until 1944, and the U.S. Army Air-Corps would retire the Recruit at the end of WWII.”
It’s an excellent photograph. I only run it last because the airplanes aren’t WWII hotrods.
I also notice the terrain below. It looks very familiar, like terrain approaching Tehachapi Pass (“tuh-HATCH-uh-PEE”) in central California.
A railroad was opened in 1876. It has to get from the low elevation of the San Joaquin valley up to California’s Mojave Desert — the so-called “high desert.”
The Tehachapi mountains separate the two.
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| Tehachapi Loop. (Photo by Bobbalew.) |
The railroad loops over itself, 77 feet above itself.
Tehachapi Loop is one of the railfan pilgrimage spots.
I’ve seen it myself, and the terrain is just like what’s pictured.
Grass grows in Spring, then becomes tinder in Summer, when it’s arid and dry.
Labels: Monthly Calendar Report
posted by BobbaLew at 3:01 PM
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