Trains of the 1960s.....

......is a magazine-format special put out by Classic Trains Magazine.
I almost didn’t buy it, but I’m awfully glad I did. Many of the articles in it are by David P. Morgan, Editor of Trains Magazine in the ‘60s.
David P. Morgan is why I subscribed to Trains Magazine.
I’m a railfan, but DPM seemed like me. His reflections on trains were just like mine.
He was smitten by the drama of railroading, as am I.
He also wrote like I do, wallowing in rumination.
In fact, you could say David P. Morgan is a mentor. Like me, he’d view an ordinary subject, yet notice and depict the drama.
I’m at trackside long ago near Angola, NY, west of Buffalo.
I’m waiting for Norfolk & Western 611 on excursion out of Buffalo.
But a Conrail westbound was approaching, throttles-to-the-roof.
“Throttles-to-the-roof” is an old steam-locomotive expression.
Locomotive steam-input was controlled by a long throttle-lever hinged to the cab-roof. Cranking the throttle “wide-open” took the throttle-lever to the cab-roof.
It’s a slight upgrade, and the engineer had his locomotives in Run-Eight.
Diesel-engines aren’t throttled, so “throttles-to-the-roof” is imprecise. Run-Eight is full fuel, the equivalent of “wide-open.”
WOW! Hammering up the grade in Run-Eight: assaulting the heavens!
I bet DPM would have noticed too.
Like me, DPM apparently didn’t like to be photographed. I Google Image-Searched “David P. Morgan,” and got everything but DPM — wedding-pictures, people named “David Morgan,” books DPM published.
UHM, Google......... If I Google Image-Search “David P. Morgan,” I shouldn’t be getting anyone with “Morgan” as their last-name, or first-name. Or hits for Morgan’s books at eBay or Amazon.
Well, the fact DPM didn’t like to be photographed isn’t Google’s fault.
What few photos I’ve seen of him are not portraits.
The booklet also covers Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s storied “West End,” the first railroad over the Allegheny mountains.
The “West End” was B&O’s first mainline to the Ohio River.
Compared to railroads built later, it was horrible; two difficult grades per direction.
The first grade westbound was “Seventeen-Mile Grade” up to Altamont atop the Alleghenies.
Then the railroad descended down to Cheat River, but then it has to climb again up “Cheat River Grade” to Tunnelton, location of a short tunnel.
Eastbound was Newburg Grade up to Tunnelton, and then notorious “Cranberry Grade” up to Terra Alta in the Alleghenies.
All the grades were 2 % or more — that’s two feet up for every 100 feet forward. Cranberry averages 2.4 %, and was facing loaded coal-trains.
Pennsy’s crossing of Allegheny Mountain was easier; it averages 1.8 % westbound, less eastbound. Both Pennsy and B&O needed helper locomotives to conquer the grades, but 2 % severely limits the number of cars.
B&O managed to eventually access Pittsburgh — Pennsy had blocked it at first — and that new line was better railroad. But not as good as Western Maryland’s line around the end of the nineteenth century. (That line was abandoned.)
Pennsy is mountain railroad, but not as difficult as the West End.
(And of course Pennsy no longer exists; it’s operated by Norfolk Southern.)
Part of the reason B&O was always a third-rate railroad was because of its West End.
I’ve seen it myself, and compared to Pennsy it’s narrow. It’s two-track, often three.
But “Seventeen-Mile Grade” is carved right into the mountainside.
And weather is terrible. The wind blows and it snows.
Washouts are common; the railroad is not on stable soil.
And “Trains of the 1960s” covers the West End as it was in the ‘60s.
The West End still exists, although down to single-track in some locations.
And CSX, which now operates what was the B&O, has engineered locomotives to meet the demands of the West End.
This involves increasing locomotive weight, which increases tractive-effort.
A lot of what moves on the West End is heavy coal-trains.
The West End always interests me. Two difficult grades per direction are dramatic.
The top of Cranberry looks like a roller-coaster.
And there’s coal-empties on the Tray Run Viaduct climbing Cheat River Grade north of Rowlesburg.
And to think I almost didn’t buy the booklet.

I should run some of the FABULOUS writings of David P. Morgan:

We’ll adjust, but it won’t be easy.

It won’t be easy. (Photo by Philip R. Hastings.)

Replace the high-backed wooden benches with pews, add an altar or a pulpit, and you could have turned the waiting room of Missouri-Kansas-Texas’ San Antonio passenger station into a church.
That’s how well its architects and builders managed to blend functionalism with mission-style construction native to the region when the facility was completed in September 1917.
It was a beautiful, serene place, a civilized transition from one’s taxi to the observation-lounge of the Texas Special, a building Katy itself once extolled as “one of the most distinctive stations in the Southwest.”
When photographer Hastings came upon the depot in 1948 he found therein Mrs. S. A. Agnew, “a lovable, kindly Southern lady” who had been station matron in San Antonio since the waiting-room doors were first unlocked.
So here is Mrs. Agnew, presiding beneath the arches and chandeliers of a classic, a gem, a monument.
Those are Katy President John W. Barriger’s words of definition. It fell to him to demolish the building in 1967 when a fallen-from-grace, freight-only Katy required the real estate for other occupancy.
But gentleman John could not bring himself to dismiss the place without a suitable epitaph in the company’s annual report.
He wrote, “The [passenger station] at San Antonio, built in 1917, was renowned throughout the United States as a gem in the finest tradition of classical mission-type architecture. Much of the material and nearly all of the fixtures used in the construction of this beautiful building had been imported from Spain and Italy. As in the case of other railroad monuments, most notably Pennsylvania Station in New York, the San Antonio depot had to give way to the necessities of contemporary progress with its demands to transfer increasingly precious space within the heart of growing cities from lesser to more important assignments.”
So we'll take Mr. B's word for it; we’ll remember his kind farewell; we’ll adjust, but it won’t be easy. It never is when friends part for good. — David P. Morgan

Uninvited guest.

The GE U-boat demonstrators. (Classic Trains Collection.)

Do you remember anyone inviting General Electric to the locomotive party?
We don't.
The domestic diesel market had peaked and was in a predictable, relentless decline in 1953 when GE dissolved its relationship with Alco and went searching for an engine it could call its own.
And by 1959 when GE lowered Cooper-Bessemer V-16s onto the frames of a couple of prototype hood units numbered 751 and 752 the whole railroad business was in bad shape.
There wasn't room in the locomotive trade for one builder, much less Alco, EMD, and GE. Besides, the future of the business obviously lay in replacement units, and there were no old GEs to trade in on new ones.
And more to the point, what could novice GE teach veterans Alco and EMD?
Too many roads already possessed too many diesel “orphans” on their rosters to risk investing in yet another newcomer for second-generation units.
But the uninvited guest had guts. GE pulled an end run on conventional design with an uncomplicated but high-horsepower four-motor locomotive, sweated the bugs out of its power plant, and kept on barnstorming, advertising, demonstrating, and talking until the orders came. Today more than 300 GEs are rolling off more than 2&1/2 million miles a month on 17 U.S. railroads. —David P. Morgan

• And that’s back then. Now GE pretty-much dominates the locomotive market.

Out where a train is a train.
In his own caption for his masterful photograph, Richard Steinheimer says, “The silent desolation of the Smoke Creek Desert of Nevada yields momentarily to a 75-car westbound freight of the Western Pacific drawn by four GP35s.”
We think the scene is a rare pictorial definition of the train per se — an assembly of coupled cars, each with the built-in guidance system of flanged wheels tracking to steel rails, propelled by independent motive power units.
Which is why the railroader and the gallon of locomotive fuel both produce up to five times more transportation than their counterparts in trucking.
Trouble is, we so seldom see the pilot-to-caboose miracle of the freight train east of the Mississippi. Curves, cuts, buildings, and bridges preclude our witnessing simultaneously the entire train.
But beyond the Rockies and the Wasatch there is room on the desert floor to absorb the train, all 10,000 horsepower, and 3,500 or 4,000 tons of it.
It is ironic that buzzards, rabbits, and snakes are thus afforded daily demonstrations of a principle that eludes the eye of so many human beings.
Perhaps it would be in order to park campstools here in the sands of Smoke Creek Desert, and to seat thereon all of the members of the Congressional committees on interstate commerce.
Perhaps then they would comprehend that, unlike Americans, all modes of transportation are not created equal and that one mechanism of carriage in particular is intrinsically more efficient than its fellows.
Professor Steinheimer, please brief the Congressmen. —David P. Morgan


I gotta do my own picture, ‘cause Stein’s picture, which is better, is across the fold. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

• Morgan retired and died years ago and “Trains” had various editors, some rather moribund. —It’s in pretty good hands now, enough to continue my long-time subscription. But it’s not David P.

Good old Mercurochrome

Yrs trly skinned a knuckle yesterday (Friday, June 20th, 2014) mowing lawn.
Nothing serious. No gushing blood.
In fact, I wasn’t aware of it until I finished mowing.
Probably gouged by a forsythia branch. I trim as tight as I can.
So I paddled to my medicine-cabinet, and extracted my 48-year-old bottle of Mercurochrome.
Mercurochrome is an antiseptic from my childhood. It’s painful, but not as bad as tincture-of-iodine. My mother applied it to skinned elbows, knees, etc.
I don’t even know if you can get Mercurochrome any more. I purchased it in 1966 shortly after I came to Rochester.
I purchased it at a corner drug-store at Bull’s Head in Rochester, not far from where I roomed.
That drug-store, Ralph’s, is long-gone.
Bull’s Head (pronounced “Bull-Hyed” by local denizens) is a major intersection in Rochester. The main drag (Main St.) intersects another main street from the south (“Genesee St.;” “Jen-uh-SEE, as in “Jello”) and Brown St. to the northeast.
A building overlooks the intersection, and has a carving of a small bull’s head on a cornice — high above the street.
Just west of Bull’s Head Main St. ends, and forks into a street west (“West Ave.”), and one southwest (“Chili;” pronounced “Cheye-lie,” as in “eye,” not Chile the country or chili the food.)
At least four trolley-lines met at Bull’s Head; now they are bus-lines.
Bull’s Head was the place to wait for a bus.
At least two came up from the south on Genesee St., plus one from Chili and one from West Ave. Chili and West are now combined into one bus-line.
After Bull’s Head all the bus-lines turned east toward city-center on Main St.
Not too long ago my wife, who was still alive then, rummaged that medicine-cabinet looking for things to toss.
“How about this ancient bottle of Mercurochrome?”
“Absolutely not!” I said. “It still works. I use it occasionally.”
I Googled “Mercurochrome” for spelling last night. One of my hits was “What ever happened to Mercurochrome?”
I guess it fell out-of-use, replaced by less painful antiseptics. I think “Neosporin” is one, although Wikipedia says it’s more an antibiotic.
We also have Neosporin, but I used my Mercurochrome anyway.

• “Genesee St.” is named after the “Genesee River,” a fairly large river that runs south-to-north across Western New York, runs through Rochester, including over falls, and empties into Lake Ontario.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.

Uh-ohhhh.........

“Second attempt!” it screamed.
Funny, I don’t remember a first attempt.
“Warning: $2,000 fine, 5 years imprisonment, or both for any person interfering or obstructing with delivery of this letter, U.S. Mail TTT-18, U.S. Code.”
Grammar like that would have never passed this old newspaper employee.
“To be opened by addressee only. Please respond in five days.”
Sounds serious!
“Presorted standard mail, U.S. postage paid, Ft. Lauderdale FL.”
Sounds like Publisher’s Clearing-House.
These guys will say anything to get me to not trash their letter.
Little do they know. Unlike many, I open every piece of mail, although I shred just about everything.
I don’t want to inadvertently toss a bill.
But it wasn’t Publisher’s Clearing-House.
It wasn’t even a credit-card offer, and I get plenty of those, masquerading as dunning-letters.
Free dinner if you attend our hearing-aid trial. My ears work fine, and I don’t wanna endure a sales-pitch, even for a free dinner.
It was a solicitation to extend the warranty-coverage on my car.
Made to look like a threat from on high by the guvamint.
IN THE SHREDDER!

Walton’s Mercury

A ’56 Mercury Montclair convertible. (Photo by Terry Shea.)

The August 2014 issue of my Hemmings Classic Car magazine has a photograph of a grand 1956 Mercury Montclair convertible on its cover.
In 1956, when I was 12, our immediate neighbors in Erlton (“earl-tin;” as in “Earl”), Steven and Hilda Walton, got a brand-new ’56 Mercury to replace their faded maroon Beetlebomb ’48 Ford sedan.
Erlton was the south-Jersey suburb of Philadelphia (PA) where I grew up until I was age-13. It was founded by a developer named Earl in the ‘20s. All the houses he built — there were at least 10 to 15 — still stand. They are gambrel roofed.
Our house was built about 1940, as was Walton’s, on building-plots laid out by Earl. A lot of Erlton remained undeveloped until the ‘50s.
Walton’s car was a four-door sedan, and wasn’t the solid coral-green of the magazine car.
It was two-tone, dark green and white.
Mrs. Walton, faire Hilda Quincy Walton, founded Erlton Community Baptist Church with my father.
I’m sure there were others, but they were the movers-and-shakers.
They got an old rural chapel, refurbed it, and turned it into a church.
Like the suburbs in postwar America, it prospered enough to move and expand in 1952.
The main highway through town was closed, and the church building moved on flatbed to a new location.
I can still picture it; big doings for our little town.
Once moved, the church building was jacked sky-high so a basement could be built underneath.
The chapel was also doubled in length, all sanctuary.
You could see where the new construction was. The roof was still rippled over the old chapel, but straight over the new part.
Basement complete, the church was surrounded by earthen fill. So the church remains high overlooking the street below.
That wasn’t the end. By now Mrs. Walton, Sunday-School Superintendent, wanted a Sunday-School annex.
A massive brick two-story structure was built about 1955 that doesn’t match the church.
In fact, it looks like a school-building. Its roof is flat.
But now Mrs. Walton had a building worthy of her calling, which was to tell all we youngsters we were going straight to Hell.
Erlton Community Baptist Church moved on, as churches seem to do.
That is, it reflected its membership.
My father got mad when they had to get a new pastor. Apparently the first pastor was approved.
But that guy left, requiring the church get a new pastor, who my father didn’t approve.
My father was one of the deacons, but stormed out when the new pastor was hired.
Erlton Community Baptist Church was moving beyond its founders.
The excuse I perceived was the new guy wasn’t zealous enough; he wanted to discontinue Sunday-evening services.
My father dragged my sister and I to another church far away that still held Sunday-evening services.
My sister and I felt completely out-of-it among strangers, but that was of no consequence.
When our family moved to northern Delaware, Erlton Community Baptist Church fell into the past.
My father did a lot of research to find a church worthy of our membership — that is, one with a HUGE missionary budget. That is, it supported many missionaries.
We found such a church in the city of Wilmington (DE), but my parents left that church for another in the suburbs when the pastor of that city-church started speaking in tongues.
My father wanted to be a missionary himself, along with my mother, who was more-or-less tagging along.
But he was refused by a missionary organization. To be a missionary, you have to be tolerant. I doubt my father could have been tolerant.
But apparently Mrs. Walton continued her role as Sunday-School Superintendent after we left.
I visited Mrs. Walton in 1992; she was in her eighties.
She seemed glad to see me despite loudly pronouncing me Of-the-Devil back in 1957, shortly before my family moved to northern Delaware, because I was trick-or-treating as Elvis Presley, the so-called “bane of civilization” (her terminology).
Her husband Steven Sr. was long-gone; I think he smoked Lucky-Strike cigarettes. How he ever got that by faire Hilda I’ll never know.
The Mercury was also long-gone; she was driving a plain silver Oldsmobile Cutlass four-door.
Steven Jr. had suspended a ball in her tiny garage so she could get it in without ramming the back wall.
She still was at 627 South Jefferson Drive, right next to my original homestead at 625 South Jefferson Drive.
And her house was the same as during the ‘50s, with its strange addition out back.
Waltons were first to build an addition. They started with a porch, but then enclosed that and added more. The final layout was strange, but it added a downstairs bathroom, missing in all our houses.
Our family was next to add, an addition designed by my father.
It added a downstairs bathroom, a picture-window sunroom, and enlarged our kitchen.
Picture-windows were very in back then.
In other words, the kitchen was our original kitchen extended into the addition.
Compared to our addition, Walton’s was strange. It added a downstairs bathroom and that enclosed porch. But I don’t think the kitchen was enlarged. And you had to negotiate an unfinished storage-area to get to that bath, which was behind the kitchen. It wasn’t accessible from the porch.
That storage-area was still unfinished when I visited.

Erlton Community Baptist Church. (The annex at right is not Hilda’s vaunted Sunday-School Annex; it’s part of the refurbed church that was moved.) (Photo by Bobbalew.)

We went up to Erlton Community Baptist Church.
It was the same as when I left. The sanctuary was not enlarged or widened as desired.
By now, faire Hilda was no longer Sunday-School Superintendent, and you could tell she was upset.
She still had a key to her vaunted Sunday-School Annex; they hadn’t taken her key!
She let me inside, but it was impossible to ascertain changes, 33 years having passed.
But apparently the first-floor was no longer what Hilda wanted; she poo-pooed the church Library, offices, the baby-sitting area, etc.
We went up to the second floor. The old Gym was still there, an area I hated because it was where the church-sponsored Boy-Scouts met.
That church troop was an offshoot of Erlton’s Boy-Scout troop, which all the evil Boy-Scouts joined because Erlton’s troop was run by a do-gooder.
The leader of our church troop was a castoff from the Erlton troop. He was also very lax.
My father wanted me in that troop because it was Erlton Community Baptist Church.
But I wanted no part of it, since most of the other scouts were evil.
We also visited the old auditorium where Hilda told us alcohol would rot our brains.
22 years have passed since that visit; I’m sure faire Hilda is gone by now.
Apparently Mercury’s Montclair series was very successful. Packard fixtures on the cheap.
You can see that in the beaked headlight-fairings, which mimic a ‘50s Packard.
Mercury sold even more cars from ’57 on when they broke free of the original Shoebox-Ford chassis — although that was when Ford also redesigned their car to be larger, also breaking free of the Shoebox-Ford.
The Montclair was so successful Ford thought they could market the Edsel, but that bombed.
I’d say it was mostly that silly suck-a-lollipop grill. Without it, the Edsel might have succeeded.


I include this hoary old photograph (Easter, 1954) because it displays the interior of Erlton Community Baptist Church. My sister is visible in the third row of the children in white choir-robes, left-most. Yrs try is also in this picture, but just my eyes are visible. Toward the top of the white-adorned crowd, next to (right) a grinning blonde whose name I don’t remember. The pastor my father approved, Bill Childs, is standing at right, and the choir-director and church organist, Mrs. Dager (“DAY-grrr”) is right of him. Mrs. Dager was a real pill; she was my second piano-teacher (Mrs. Walton was my first, and had a habit of smashing my knuckles with a ruler if I didn’t curve my fingers). Mrs. Dager wasn’t happy unless she got my sister-and-I crying in a lesson. She also loved to blow her nose into a soggy handkerchief, and then stuff that handkerchief into the bodice of her dress. —I recognize others in this photo: Joy Anderson and Phyllis Topham (“TOP-um”). I wonder if either are still alive. Phyllis was the A-student, but Joy was really cute. The boy at left in the second row is one of the Knox boys. Mr. Knox is right of the pastor. I also recognize Elaine Webb, the tall girl in the back. (Photo probably by John Regensburg, a resident of Erlton, also a photographer. He was a member of ECBC.)

• My sister died December of 2011; cancer.

No ‘Pyooter = No Fun

Yrs Trly has been without this here laptop almost a day.
I called my friend I used to work with at Transit, who has long been fooling with computers.
Actually I tried to e-mail him at first from my iPhone, but that bombed due to my not having his e-mail address in my iPhone.
“Can you imagine,” I told him; “what it’s like for us computer-junkies to be without a computer?”
“Here it is,” I said to my computer-service shop; “my all-time favorite toy!”
It’s true.
I re-enter my house from errands, and I immediately fire up this laptop.
Often I just let it keep running and sleep while I’m out.
Dishwasher started the other night, I finessed my dog per usual, but no ‘pyooter to fire up.
What to do? I read through blogs I plan to publish, and climbed the walls.
Who would have ever thunk 52 years ago when I graduated high-school my computer would replace television?
My friend has been driving computers since his first Atari.
I came later.
My first ‘pyooter was a Windoze PC with an eight-meg hard-drive. (This here laptop is 500 GIGS, for crying out loud.)
I switched to Apple Macintosh when my newspaper employer computerized with MAC.
I am now on ‘pyooter number four, this here Apple MacBook Pro.
It’s overkill for what I do; my next rig will not be a MacBook Pro.
Or maybe it will be! A friend told me video-files are HUGE, that I’d need a MacBook Pro to process it.
That video is on the back-burner; I’ve never processed it.
But I’ve always wanted to.
When I was in high-school, back in ’62, my 12th-grade English-teacher told me I could write very well.
“But Dr. Zink,” I said — his name was Zink; “all it is is slinging words together.”
“But Hughes,” he said; “you do that very well.”
I thought him joking, but over-the-years I found that true.
I’m not Tolstoy or F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I can sling words together pretty good.
That is, tell a story without mucking it up with grammatical and syntax errors.
I’ve also learned a few tricks over-the-years, like timing and letting your protagonists tell the story with dialog.
Readers prefer that over narration.
I’ve also learned the best writing is reporting some insanity. The best I’ve ever read was a report on skydiving by a girl who tried it herself.
And then there was the story a newspaper-reporter filed about his riding a 100-foot-high waterslide. —He wasn’t a kid.
So when it comes to some insane experience, just do it! Your muse will cook.
Early-on writing was a struggle.
I fell into covering sportscar racing for a small weekly newspaper out of Rochester (NY).
I’d write a report, then saw it needed revision. Insert this, delete that, move this, spelling errors, whatever.
Sooner-or-later so many revisions were needed, about all I could do was type the damn thing again.
But word-processing on computer ended that madness.
Inserts or deletions were easy. Moving text was also easy.
A spellcheck could flag misspellings.
My stroke 20 years ago added a new wrinkle.
Sloppy keyboarding.
But a spellcheck could flag mistypes.
My stroke was fairly serious, but I found I could still sling words together. —What a joy that was!
And my ‘pyooter was helping me do it.
It was like I’d had a stroke, and was severely mucked-up because of it, but the old me was still in there, and my ‘pyooter was making the old me possible.
So now I find myself slinging words together a lot, although not as much since my wife died.
‘Pyooters can also be a technical challenge, which I find interesting.
Post-stroke I would have not done as well at that newspaper were I not so intrigued.
So now my laptop is back; hard-drive defragged, junk removed, everything optimized to enhance speed. I was sick of watching that pinwheel.
Sweetness and light returns!

• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• “Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
• RE: “Windoze PC......” —“Windoze” is Microsoft “Windows,” the operating-system used on most-non-Apple personal-computers (“P.C.”) Macintosh users claim Windows is inferior, so call it “Windoze.” Apple-Computer has its own non-Windows operating-system, currently OS-X.
• As I understand it, a gig is 1,000 megs.
• My “newspaper employer” was the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over seven years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• RE: “Your muse will cook......” —Your “muse” it what slings the words together; your brain. I do my writing on a legal-pad; others just use their ‘pyooter.
• RE: “I was sick of watching that pinwheel......” —Computers display a “please wait” icon while they process. Years ago, on Windows, it was an hourglass. Some applications display a watch. Now Apple computers display a rotating multi-colored pinwheel, before that was a rotating soccer-ball; Windows machines may do the same. —If your ‘pyooter is bog-slow (overloaded with junk), it displays the “please wait” icon a lot.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.

The promise is sundered

Scarlett. (This is six years ago; now she’s grey in the muzzle.)(Photo by Linda Hughes.)

Six years ago, having just put another fabulous Irish-Setter to sleep because of cancer, my wife, who was still alive at that time, wanted another dog.
Seemed fine with me. That previous dog was very much attached to her.
We would get another rescue Irish-Setter.
Irish-Setters are hard to find. They don’t seem to be in demand any more.
My wife heard about a “meet-and-greet” In Buffalo (NY). The Irish-Setter Rescue organization in Ohio would bring dogs for a Rochester couple to see.
We decided to see them too.
The Rochester couple was looking for a proposed “therapy-dog.”
The Ohio group had one, named “Scarlett,” they thought appropriate. Scarlett is a people-dog.
It was surmised a dog we might be interested in was one of Scarlett’s puppies.
Google-maps in hand, with printouts of Google “Street-Views,” we set out for Buffalo.
We found the house without much difficulty. Google addresses for a Street-View don’t correspond with reality.
Finally the lady from Ohio arrived in her minivan.
She opened the side door. She had four dogs with her, all crated.
I could hear one dog thumping its tail.
“Oh, that would be Scarlett,” the lady said.
“Well, I gotta see that one,” I thought. I can’t resist a wagging tail.
We started leading the dogs around.
Scarlett was extremely energetic, her puppy wasn’t.
I couldn’t resist Scarlett. The whole idea of an Irish-Setter is a high-energy dog. A loose cannon.
Her puppy wasn’t very energetic. Seemed like not much an Irish-Setter.
The lady also had two other dogs along. One was “Rhett,” the puppy’s sire; the other was “Charlie-Brown.” Both were very laid back. They were Irish-Setters but didn’t seem it.
Scarlett seemed crazy; very much an Irish-Setter.
Not only that, she was gorgeous; the best-looking Irish-Setter I had ever seen.
Lots of feathering.
But she was a handful. Could I control a dog like this at my age?
“Is it fair,” I thought to myself; “to take on a dog like this at my age?”
“Well, I guess I can,” I thought. I had just put to sleep a very high-energy dog.
And I still felt fine at age-64. (I’m now 70, and bushed.)
We brought Scarlett home; the Rochester couple took home the puppy.
Scarlett would have been impossible as a therapy-dog. BOINK! Into the face of a shaky nursing-home resident.
We brought her home with my promise I’d do my best to give her a happy life.
But the promise is trashed.
My wife died leaving me with much more to do.
I don’t have much time for Scarlett any more.
Her toybox, which I used to toss toys out of willy-nilly, sits fallow and unused in my bedroom.
Once-in-a-while I make time to toss a toy for her, but it’s not like before my wife died.
It’s like I have to wedge that in among all the other things I have to do, like make my bed, do laundry, etc.
“You have that fabulous big yard,” my doggie-daycare guy says. “Toss a ball around for her.”
Like all-of-a-sudden I have 3-5 minutes to do that, wedged in among all the other things I have to do.
Scarlett loves that it’s me left; I was the boss-dog anyway, “the Master” so-called. My wife was quickly forgotten — although not by me.
I can no longer fulfill my promise.
Scarlett has learned to hunt. So far at least 10-15 rabbits and innumerable moles have died in her jaws.
But I can’t take her hunting any more.
For her a walk was hunting.
And worst of all is shoving her aside with yelling so I can do stuff.
“This is what life has become,” I yell. “It sucks!”

• “Linda Hughes” is my deceased wife.
• A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. (Scarlett was from a failed backyard breeder.) By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't bad. She’s my fourth rescue.

I’m getting snowed!

Every day I trash at least 40-50 e-mails from my iPhone.
Every day at least 40-50 e-mails get added to this laptop’s “junk” folder.
My iPhone doesn’t “junk” stuff; my laptop does.
I could get an iPhone app that “junks” stuff, but so far I haven’t.
That was a while ago when I might “junk” 15 e-mails per day.
But now the “junk” is getting to be a pain.
Plus they all look the same = a link for satellite-Internet or a walk-in bath or replacement windows.
The links all look the same.
They might be worded differently, but they look identical and are in the same locations.
I get the feeling some computer-program is automagically generating these 89 bazilyun e-mails, worded appropriately with appropriate art added.
It’s getting irksome, especially when I receive identical e-mails.
I survey this laptop’s “junk” folder, and there might be four “satellite-Internet” e-mails, all identical.
This morning I got two identical e-mails, one after the other, to purchase an American flag (made in China, no doubt).
My iPhone is a joy. I keep my grocery-lists in it, as well as my events schedule. I also use it to preview my valid e-mails, and often reply. —And of course it’s also a phone, and I text with it.
But 40-50 junk e-mails is ridiculous.
I fire it up, and it showers me with junk e-mails to trash.
Thank goodness it’s not an Android. I had one at first, and it dinged me every e-mail.
I have my iPhone on perhaps a minute, and it blasts me with e-mails to trash — while I’m trying to do something else.

Monthly Calendar-Report for June 2014

Empty coal-cars up The Hill. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—The June 2014 entry of my own calendar is a photograph by yrs trly at a location my brother-and-I found the weekend restored Nickel Plate steam-locomotive #765 was in Altoona for employee-appreciation excursions.
That is, it’s not a Phil Faudi location, Phil being the railfan extraordinaire who takes me to various locations in the area to photograph trains.
They are the basis of my calendar.
But this location is not one Phil ever took me to.
In fact, I ended up taking Phil to it myself.
Phil monitors the railroad-radio, so can know if a train is approaching.
As I recall, this photograph is a result of Phil calling me from his house.
He was not leading me around, as he often does.
He was at home with his beloved wife who has Multiple-Sclerosis.
But he was monitoring his railroad-radio from his home as my brother-and-I chased trains.
He’d call my cellphone if something was coming.
My brother-and-I were leaving this location when Phil called to report this train had just left Altoona, and we would soon be seeing it.
DROP EVERYTHING! Set back up again. Sure enough, in about five minutes here it came.
Phil saved the picture. Without Phil we would have missed it.
It’s a train of coal-gondolas, probably empty, headed back to be loaded.
We’re on The Hill over Allegheny mountain.
The locomotives are EMD SD70ACe (part of the SD70 series), what Norfolk Southern often uses for road-power.
“AC” stands for alternating-current traction-motors. Most diesel locomotives used direct-current traction-motors, and have since dieselization began.
As I understand it, alternating-current traction-motors pull better at slow speed.
These locomotives are also built to meet the new Tier-Two emission regulations, as signified by the letter “e.” Earlier SD-70s weren’t.
If the train is empty, it’s probably climbing The Hill unassisted — no helpers.
Soon it will be circling Horseshoe Curve, passing MG tower (“MG” stands for “mid-grade,” not Morris Garages, manufacturers of MG sportscars), and cresting The Hill at the tunnels in Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get”).
Then it will go back down the west slope of The Hill, and pass the webcam in Cresson (“KRESS-in”) I watch on this computer.


(It’s hard to know what to place where, since they’re all pretty good this month, except perhaps the last.)


An Iron-Works hotrod. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The June 2014 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is the greatest fighter-plane Grumman ever fielded in the ‘Cat series, the Bearcat.
The ‘Cat series began with the Wildcat, an excellent aircraft-carrier fighter-plane, except its landing-gear was too narrow, which made it tippy.
Slammed into a carrier-deck, it might tip and drop a wing into the deck, and perhaps veer off into the ocean.
The Grumman Hellcat rectified that by retracting the landing-gear out on the wings, spreading it.
Thousands of Hellcats saw duty.
The Bearcat is sort of a souped-up Hellcat.
Well, same motor, but a smaller and lighter airframe.
And of course, its engine, the Pratt & Whitney 18-cylinder radial, was at the apogee of its development.
2,100 horsepower in the Bearcat versus 2,000 horsepower in the Hellcat.
Engineering and ingenuity were extracting incredible power from air-cooled radials.
The Navy was partial to air-cooling. Water-cooling could be disabled.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“The Bearcat was the last of Grumman’s piston-engine carrier-based fighters.
Two XF8F-1 prototypes were ordered in November 1943, and the first of these was flown on August 21st, 1944.
Grumman decided once again to utilize the most powerful engine available at the time, the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp -- the same engine that had powered both their Hellcat and Tigercat designs.
This time, the engine was fitted to the smallest, lightest airframe that could be built. This resulted in a highly maneuverable, fast airplane with a rate of climb 30% greater than the Hellcat.
Production of the F8F-1 began just six months after the first flight of the prototype, and the first airplane was delivered to the U.S. Navy’s VF-19 squadron on May 21st, 1945.
Only a few Bearcats had been delivered to the Navy when the end of the war halted production.
Production resumed after the war, and at least 24 U.S. Navy squadrons flew the Bearcat, some until as late as 1952.”
A few years ago (perhaps 5-10 years) I watched a Bearcat fly aerobatics. It could do anything a Mustang can do.
I call it “Iron-Works” because Grumman fighter-planes had the reputation of being tough; for which reason the manufacturer was called “Iron-Works.” Grumman fighters always returned to base — usually an aircraft-carrier — even when severely shot up.



Way to go! (Photo by Mark Shull.)

—Look at that sky!
Photographer Shull managed to snag one of the best photographs in this year’s Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar.
The June 2014 entry is a mixed Norfolk Southern freight to Hickory, N.C. passing a field of soybeans in Elmwood.
A friend I used to work with at the Canandaigua Messenger newspaper, who is more successful at photography than me, tells me the sky is what counts.
Shull managed to get this picture between thunderstorms.
He’s been trying to get it for years.
I find it appealing because it depicts the world the railroad traverses. —Locomotive shots are a dime a dozen, I’ve taken plenty myself.
Shull tried the previous year, but the field was corn.
The farmer rotated crops; soybeans this year.
There is a farm-field not far from where I live. The farmer does the same thing. Field-corn, then soybeans, then field-corn, ad infinitum.
Shull asked permission to stand out in the field. The farmer would get a calendar if the photo ran.
One also wonders about train-frequency. At Allegheny-Crossing they run often enough I can do pretty good despite not being hip.
But I doubt they run often in N.C.
Shull would have to know this train was coming.
Like me, he probably carries a railroad-radio scanner, which gets defect-detectors and train-engineers calling out signals.
But he’s also a Norfolk Southern employee, and likely knows this train is scheduled.
My knowledge of what’s coming is poor, but Allegheny-Crossing is busy enough to get by.
The locomotives are #6160, an ex-Norfolk & Western SD40-2, built in 1978, followed by #3309, an ex-Southern Railway SD40-2, built in 1979, and #3484, a rebuilt ex-Burlington-Northern Santa Fe SD40-2, originally built in 1980.
Norfolk Southern is a long-ago merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway.
So-called “Dash-2” locomotives use modern electronics, as opposed to rudimentary switchgear used since time immemorial; which the SD-40 used.



’32 Ford five-window coupe hotrod. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)

—The June 2014 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a 1932 Ford five-window coupe made into a hotrod.
It’s pretty stock; the top hasn’t been chopped.
The car is raked down toward the front, as if the front-axle has been “dropped.”
“Dropped” meaning the forged I-beam axle, or an aftermarket tube-axle, has the ends positioned above stock so the front-end is “dropped.”
To “drop” a stock forged I-beam axle, you had to heat the ends to bend the forging.
An aftermarket tube beam-axle was curved so the center mounting-point lowered the car’s front-end.
The rear of the car sits at stock height.
What we have here is a stock ’32 Ford five-window coupe. Five windows because it has five windows other than the windshield. A three-window coupe doesn’t have the small windows behind the doors. I think the three-windows look better, especially chopped.

A three-window coupe with WAY too much motor. (Photo by Scott Williamson, I think.)

The car is built out of the entire drive-train of a wrecked ’58 Corvette. The engine is ‘Vette, as are the tranny and rear-axle.
The exhaust-headers also have lakes-caps, which removed leave open exhaust. When capped the exhaust diverts through mufflers.
A hotrod lives near where I live, a chopped ’32 Ford two-door sedan in gray primer. It’s very low to the ground, and its exhaust is open.
It’s not very loud, but its exhaust is clearly open.
Every once in a while I hear it revving up through the gears: glorious!
A few years ago I attended a car-show where a guy was tooling around in a ’60 283 Chevy with open-exhausts.
I was smitten.
I hadn’t heard anything like that since attending drag-races in the middle ‘60s.
I notice this car has a coon-tail attached to its radio-antenna. A period-touch I would never do.
When I was in high-school (early ‘60s) the period-touch was to mount dual swept radio-antennas atop the rear fenders. We also walked our high-school hallways with two pencils wedged atop our ears — “duals” we called ‘em.
Does anyone remember this stuff? If the Ivy-League buckle on your chinos was unbuckled, it meant you were unattached and available. If buckled you were “going steady.”
I notice this car also has an Indianapolis-Speedway decal.



Ready to roll west. (Joe Suo Collection©.)

—The June 2014 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Pennsy Mountain (4-8-2) cooling its heels near Duncannon before heading west on Pennsy’s storied Middle Division.
The Susquehanna (“suss-kwee-HA-nuh;” as in “and”) river is at left, View Tower is ahead, and that’s Cove Mountain behind.
More than anything, the Middle Division was Pennsy. Rivers of freight travelled it. The Middle Division is part of the railroad originally built.
When torrents of freight got routed into Pittsburgh, it was aimed at the Middle Division. The Middle Division was essentially Harrisburg to Altoona, PA, half the original Pennsy main.

Mountains get serviced at Denholm. (Photo by Don Wood.)

Pennsy built a giant locomotive servicing facility at Denholm, PA, about halfway into the Middle Division.
It was once 12 tracks; it’s down to five in the picture at left.
Denholm ended with the stopping of steam-locomotion, and was torn down.
The train pictured will probably stop at Denholm. There it would be coaled and watered before continuing to Altoona.
In Altoona the Mountain would be replaced with something more appropriate to slogging The Hill.
But on the Middle Division the Mountain locomotives were perfect. A grade somewhat, but not much. That engine might cruise at 50 mph.
The Mountain was probably Pennsy’s most successful steam-locomotive design. Others came later, but the J-1 wasn’t a Pennsy design, and the T-1 was smoky and slippery.
There were massive Q-series duplexes, but they weren’t very successful.
Furthermore, a duplex has a long driver wheelbase. It needs straight track.
The Mountain had only a 70-square-foot firebox grate, a standard Pennsy size. 70 square-feet was used on many Pennsy locomotives, like the K-4 Pacific (4-6-2), and the I-1 Decapod (2-10-0). 70 square-feet is large for a Pacific.
But the Mountain also had a combustion-chamber ahead of the firebox, an area to more fully burn its coal.
Other Pennsy engines didn’t have a combustion-chamber. They weren’t as good generating steam as a Mountain.
The Mountain is pretty much devoid of “gadgets;” appliances that enhance steam-generation. Pennsy abhorred “gadgets;” they had to be maintained.
Just beef up the basic locomotive.
Sadly, Pennsy’s steam-locomotive development sort of fell apart after the ‘20s, mainly due to the expense of electrification. The Mountain, developed in the ‘20s, was Pennsy’s last successful steam-locomotive.
Pennsy’s biggest mistake was jumping on Baldwin-Locomotive-Works’ duplex bandwagon. Multiple cylinders over a long driver wheelbase.
This vastly reduces the weight of the siderod assembly.
But it also requires straight railroad. West of Pittsburgh is fairly straight, but Pennsylvania isn’t.
The T-1s and Q freighters are duplexes.



A 1970 Mark Donohue Javelin SST. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

—The June 2014 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar is a 1970 Mark Donohue AMC Javelin SST ponycar, what American Motors entered in SCCA’s 1970 Trans-Am wars.
The SST isn’t really a Trans-Am entry.
It’s engine is 390 cubic-inches.
Trans-Am was limited to 305 cubic-inches, although you can get a lot of horsepower out of a racing Trans-Am V8.
390 cubes is a lot for a ponycar. One wonders about weight, and how it might effect handing.
Yet that 390 could be streetable. A racing Trans-Am V8 would be impossible.
Trans-Am entrant Roger Penske (“penn-SKEE”) and race-driver Mark Donohue won the Trans-Am championship in ’68 and ’69 for Chevrolet’s Camaro.
But for 1970 they switched; I’m sure AMC was offering a fortune.
This is an earlier Javelin. It’s not the one I remember Donohue racing, although that would be 1971.

Mark Donohue’s 1971 Penske Javelin.

All I remember is feeling “sell-out;” that Penske/Donohue had sold out Chevrolet switching to Javelin.
Javelin also raced in Trans-Am’s early years. They were raced by “ARA,” sponsored by Javelin dealers.

An ARA Javelin.

I cranked “ARA Javelin” into my Google Image-Search, but only came up with one hit — among 89-bazilyun pictures of Donohue’s Javelin, a fighter-jet, and Olympic javelin-throwers.
And the ARA Javelin pictured appears to be 1971.
I also came up with the 1970 Penske Javelins, which the calendar-car mimics.
The ARA Javelins weren’t top-drawer, but they were competitive. They had good drivers in Peter Revson and George Follmer.
I remember Revvy wound to-the-moon approaching the hairpin at Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant (St. Jovite [“sahn-joe-VEET”]) in an ARA Javelin.
St. Jovite was a really nice road-course near Montreal in the Laurentian Mountains. It was the farthest north I went in pursuit of road-racing. Very French-Canadian (foreign).
Donohue won two Trans-Am championships in a Javelin in 1970 and ’71.
But more impressive to me were the Bud Moore Mustangs. Compared to them, Donohue’s Javelin looked like a turkey.
And by then Chevrolet was no longer competitive. With Penske/Donohue they would have been.


The way it used to be. (Photo by Robert Olmsted.)

—Last but not least.....
The June 2014 entry of my All-Pennsy color calendar is Pennsy’s Manhattan Limited leaving Chicago Union Station back in 1954.
This calendar-picture runs last, but it’s pretty good.
If my Ghosts calendar was a biplane, it would run last.
Various car-pictures might also run last.
Next month’s Musclecar Calendar is a ’67 G-T-O.
Booby-prize for it, baby!
The train would arrive in New York City the next day scheduled at 6:40 a.m., allowing pursuit of business in New York the day following.
As the calendar says, we’re still in the era of inter-city train-travel, before the airlines took over the business.
Interestingly, the train next to it is Gulf, Mobile & Ohio’s Alton Limited headed for St. Louis.
The first jetliner I remember is the Boeing 707. It wasn’t the first jetliner, but it was the first nail in the coffin.
The locomotives are EMD E-units, two E-7s and an E-9.
E-units had two V12 diesel engines.
Pennsy, late to dieselize, tried many diesel passenger locomotives, including those of longtime supplier Baldwin Locomotive Works.
But Baldwin’s diesels were a disaster. They were unreliable, and unreliability clogs a railroad. You don’t just drive around a crippled locomotive. It’s on track you need.
EMD’s E-unit was the one that succeeded. They were reliable.
The lead unit has Pennsy’s single-stripe paint scheme, and it looks like the others do too.
E-units were first painted with the five pinstripe scheme, the “cat-whisker” scheme; a takeoff of Pennsy’s GG-1.
The five-stripe scheme was more costly to maintain than the single-stripe scheme.
The single-stripe scheme is what I grew up with, and I still think it looks pretty good.
The “cat-whisker” scheme is before-my-time.
No doubt 5901 and the following locomotives were scrapped

The Levin Es. (Photo by Bobbalew.)

Two E-units were saved, and were originally Conrail’s “Executive Es,” for executive train use. They were extensively rebuilt, probably re-engined, then sold with the Conrail breakup in 1999.
Conrail’s Executive-Es were purchased by Juniata Terminal (“june-ee-AD-uh”), the Levin brothers of Baltimore. They were repainted tuscan-red (“TUSS-kin;” not “Tucson, Ariz.) with the Pennsy wide yellow single-stripe.
I don’t think any are ex-Pennsy, although 5809 may be.
They now perform excursion service, including for railfans like me.
I’ve ridden behind them, and they are awesome. They can boom-‘n’-zoom.