Monthly Calendar-Report for January 2015

Coal-Extra approaches Gallitzin in the snow. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—(“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get.”)
In January of last year my brother and I went to the Altoona area, ostensibly to photograph trains in snow.
It was awful, frigidly cold and windy.
What I recall is my brother shivering in a hoody.
I was wearing a hoody myself, under a down jacket. I was also wearing my long-underwear.
It was about 15 degrees. We’d stand atop a bridge, backs to the frigid wind, often as long as 45 minutes.
And to manipulate a camera you have to have gloves off. Wait with gloves on, but when a train shows, gloves off.
Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”) was guiding us from his house. Phil used to lead me around chasing trains — he called ‘em “tours.” But he can’t any more; his beloved wife has Multiple Sclerosis, and he doesn’t like to leave her alone, in case she falls, and she has.
What he does is monitor his railroad-radio scanner in his house, and call my cellphone.
Phil can only monitor the Altoona side of The Hill. We were on the other side, but I have a scanner of my own.
Phil told us a westbound was starting up The Hill on Track Three, and we’d soon see it.
So we drove to Gallitzin, it snowing heavily.
When we got there, an eastbound coal-extra showed up on Track Two. It would obstruct our view of the westbound, and it did. (Track Three is outside Two.)
The January 2015 entry of my own calendar is my brother’s picture of that eastbound coal-extra.
The train is shrouded in snow.
Pictures like this make standing in the cold worth it.




Southbound stacker over the frozen Potomac. (Photo by Michael Breen.)

—Well, a toss-up.
Makanna’s Corsair or the Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar?
I’m more a railfan than an airplane fan, much as the Corsair is one of the most venerable propeller airplanes ever.
The January 2015 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a fantastic shot by Michael Breen. It’s a southbound Norfolk Southern stacker on the Crescent Corridor’s giant bridge over the frozen Potomac River at sunrise headed for Memphis.
This is a fabulous snag. I get ‘em occasionally myself.
Sunlight is glinting off trees encased in ice.
And the train is backlit, so it’s a silhouette.
Norfolk Southern’s Crescent Corridor is a recent and costly upgrade of existing railroads NS got when Conrail was sold and broken up in 1999.
Plus other railroads Norfolk Southern already owned.
It competes with Interstate-81 to the south, a route choked with trucks.
I guess the Crescent Corridor was partially funded by Federal tax-money to mitigate traffic on I-81.
The Crescent Corridor takes truck-traffic off I-81, which is what we see here, a long train of truck-containers.

(The locomotives are on the back-end of the train — it’s going away.) (Photo by Bobbalew with Phil Faudi.)

I have another picture I took once of a double-stack at South Fork on Allegheny Crossing. Hundreds of containers were visible; put all those trucks on an Interstate and it becomes a parking-lot.
I notice piers from another bridge still standing in the river. Probably a railroad-bridge, maybe even this railroad.
And they seem to have greater span than the bridge in use.
Railroad-bridges are not forever. Earlier bridges could not support increasing train-weights.

The Letchworth high-bridge. (Photo by Bobbalew.)

The bridge over Letchworth Gorge in western NY has become a bottleneck.
It’s so old and rickety trains can’t cross it faster than 10 mph.
Supposedly if a train went into emergency crossing the bridge it would take the bridge down.
I walked this bridge while in college, and about 30 years ago. And it had railings, and a walkway beside the track. You could even walk it with a train on it.
Not any more. But that could be the railroad concerned about pedestrian safety.
But the bridge is unsafe, and will be replaced.
Apparently the old bridge will be left standing — as a tourist walkway — and the new bridge built next to it.
The current bridge is supposedly bridge number-two, and replaced a wooden trestle that burned. The current bridge was erected in 1883.
The line is Erie Railroad’s old line to Buffalo, although now it’s Norfolk Southern’s line from Buffalo toward north Jersey.

Erie-Lackawanna freight on the Fillmore trestle. (Photo by Bobbalew.)

Erie also built a bypass to avoid steep grades near Alfred (NY).
That bypass included two long trestles: one east of Fillmore (NY), and the second across the Genesee (“jen-uh-SEE”) valley near Oramel (NY)
When that bypass was abandoned both trestles were removed.
All that remain are the concrete footings.








The most recognizable shape in aviation. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—Here it is! The most recognizable shape in aviation: the inverted gull-wing Chance-Vought Corsair.
The January 2015 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Chance-Vought Corsair.
Look at the size of that propeller! It’s gigantic, 14 feet in diameter.
That propeller is why the Corsair has that iinverted gull-wing. Chance-Vought didn’t wanna decrease the size of that propeller. It was needed to attain the speed a Corsair was capable of.
The inverted gull-wing would raise the airplane relative to its landing-gear.

The November 2014 Ghosts calendar-entry. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

Makanna ran a picture of another Corsair two months ago.
On that picture you can see it’s a four-bladed propeller. All of the Corsairs I’ve seen are the three-bladed propeller.
I have yet to see a Corsair with the four-bladed propeller.
In the calendar-picture the propeller is so blurred I can’t tell.
Three-bladed propellers were an earlier, less powerful, version of the Corsair.
The four-bladed propeller was the incredible Pratt & Whitney R-2800 radial engine, 18 cylinders in two rows of nine, 2,800 cubic-inches of displacement, 2,300 horsepower.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“Development of the Corsair began in 1938, when the U.S. Navy issued a request for a new single-seat carrier-based fighter.
The Chance-Vought company won the contract with their unique, gull-winged airframe pulled by the largest engine then available, the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp at 2,000 horsepower.
The wing design was necessitated by the tall landing gear which was, in turn, necessitated by the huge propeller required to propel the plane at the desired high speeds.
The prototype of the Corsair first flew on May 29th, 1940, but due to design revisions, the first production F4U-1 Corsair was not delivered until July 31st, 1942.
Further landing gear and cockpit modifications resulted in a new variant, the F4U-1A, which was the first version approved for carrier duty.”
The January 2015 Corsair is an FG-1D manufactured by Goodyear.
Goodyear was manufacturing warplanes for the war-effort.
The second Corsair is an F4U-5N manufactured by Chance-Vought.
Japanese fighter-jockeys called the Corsair “Whistling Death.” Apparently they emitted a whistling sound.
American fighter-pilots loved the Corsair. It was a hotrod airplane.




Years ago Long Island Railroad was Pennsy. It’s a Long-Island H-10 Consolidation, but actually a Pennsy design. (Photo by Robert F. Collins©.)

—The January 2015 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Long-Island H-10 Consolidation (2-8-0) pulling a 28-car freight-train eastbound on Long Island Railroad.
The train is rounding a sweeping curve on Long Island’s main toward Ronkonkoma and Greenport (Long Island).
In 1900 Pennsy bought controlling-interest in Long Island to gain access to Manhattan and New York City commerce markets.
This is much like what I saw as a child pulling freight.
A Pennsy Consolidation pulling perhaps 20 cars, except it was Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines (“REDD-ing;” not “REED-ing”), not Long Island.
“Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” 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.
Most PRSL freights were locals; I don’t think I ever saw a long freight-train, solid coal for example.
The train would stop out along the line to shift cars onto an industrial siding, or pick up cars.
In Haddonfield (“Ha-din-feeld”), where I first watched trains, a freight-train might stop to shift a loaded coal-hopper into a local coal yard.
Haddonfield was an old Revolutionary-War town in south Jersey near where I lived as a child.
The hopper might get shoved up onto a trestle for unloading into coal-trucks below.
Short freight-trains like this no longer exist, or at least not as much as they once did.
I’ve seen local-freights on CSX, but this kind of freight was pretty much taken over by trucks.
That coal-yard in Haddonfield is long-gone. I think it was processing coal to heat houses, and houses no longer heat with coal.
And of course Long Island Railroad no longer exists as a standalone independent business enterprise. Pennsy sold its shares to the state of New York in 1966.
So now it’s a state entity, part of the “Metropolitan Transportation Authority,” helping to move commuters into, and out of, New York City.




Oh, well........ (Photo by Scott Williamson.)

—The January 2015 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is not especially inspiring.
I find myself not feeling it’s a hotrod, although of course it is. It’s based on a ’29 Ford Roadster.
It’s that two-piece windshield. I know hot-rodders were doing this; witness the popular Duvall windshield.

Duvall two-piece windshield.

But to me, a hotrod is very basic, they have the flat one-piece windshield of Fords of that era.
The racetrack nose, which this car has, was fairly popular. It looks okay, but not as good as the ’32 Ford radiator-surround.
I’ve seen good-looking hotrods with the racetrack nose, but I wouldn’t buy one.
To me a hotrod is what’s pictured below, a chopped ’32 Ford three-window coupe.


What I prefer. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I saw this car at a car-show. I should have asked its owner what he’d need to part with it.
The only thing wrong with this car is its color. Red is okay, but if it were yellow I would have flipped.




1970 Javelin Trans-Am. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

—The January 2015 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar is a 1970 AMC (American Motors) Javelin Trans-Am.
Actually this car looks pretty good — an excellent manifestation of the ponycar idiom.

A ’70 Camaro with the Endura bumpers.

A Pontiac Trans-Am. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

But not as good as the 1970 Camaro with the Endura bumpers — one of the best-looking cars of all time.
Even better is the 1970 Firebird. The same body, but with a non-Ferrari front-end.
This body suffered as time advanced. The gumint was requiring 5 mph bumpers, massive steel planks that ruined the looks.
Pontiac also festooned the Firebird with tons of plastic body-cladding; stuff that was supposed to improve aerodynamics, but looked ridiculous.
The 1970 Javelin Trans-Am is the first Javelin raced by Mark Donohue in the SCCA (Sports-Car Club of America) Trans-Am series.
For 1971 American Motors introduced a new Javelin. It looked fat and dorky.
The fact Donohue had success with it was supposed to make the Javelin more attractive.
But I preferred the Bud Moore Mustangs. They also seemed faster.
I think I said earlier the 2015 Motorbooks Musclecar calendar was no longer Harholdt. But this picture is, as are all the others.
But it doesn’t look like Harholdt’s previous work.
Harholdt is playing with light to reflect off the car’s shiny surfaces.
He also has the cars on a reflective floor.
A 1970 Javelin Trans-Am looks pretty good on its own.
Just a standard Harholdt portrait, like before.
What we have here seems overdone.



Eastbound doubleheaded Mountains on mixed-freight toward Enola. (Photo by Fred Kern.)

—Another Fred Kern photo.
The January 2015 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is two Pennsy Mountains (4-8-2) headed southeast past Marysville toward the huge yard in Enola (PA) (“aye-NOLE-uh;” as in “hey”).
Enola yard is the yard built by Pennsy in 1905 to offset the fact Harrisburg was becoming a bottleneck.
The original Pennsy is Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, but so much freight was being moved over the line Harrisburg became cramped.
Harrisburg also didn’t have much room for expansion. Enola is across the river from Harrisburg, and could feed alternate freight-lines east.
Enola was also the end of Pennsy freight electrification. Lines east and south of Enola were electrified, but since have been de-energized.
Electrification is the best way to railroad, but entails huge expense to maintain the wire.
Pennsy did a lot of electrification, but all that remain are New York City/Washington DC (what became Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, and the Philadelphia-Harrisburg line.
Both lines are Amtrak. Norfolk Southern has trackage-rights on some of the Northeast Corridor, but uses diesels.
Pennsy’s main stem across PA, its Middle-Division from Enola to Altoona, was the final stomping-ground for the 4-8-2 Mountain steamers.
It’s a river-grade, only slight, but uphill the whole way.
The Mountains were extremely well-suited. They could hold a constant 40-50 mph, even 60.
A lot of freight moved over the Middle-Division, and Mountains were pulling it.
So here we see two doubleheaded Mountains at the end of a run from Altoona approaching Enola.
So there’s Fred out there shooting color-slides.
Regrettably photography back then (1954) wasn’t what it is now. The locomotives are almost lost in an overwrought background of orange and red.
I try to imagine taking this picture with my digital Nikon D7000.
For one thing I’d go down trackside so the locomotives had sky as background. Not that mishmash of track and freightcars.
Even then, it’s on the wrong track. I wouldn’t wanna cross the two tracks at right of the train; they look like active railroad.
I dickered this scan a little with my Photoshop: change the color-balance to offset the bluishness of the mountains in the distance.
I also lightened shadows, to supposedly make the locomotives more apparent.
But there wasn’t much I could do with this picture; dicker too much and it looked unnatural.
Photography still ain’t perfect, but it’s much better than it was in 1954.

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—Last, but not least.....
I include a calendar I didn’t order.


’68 Impala SS.

It was given me by my friend Jim LePore (“luh-POOR”). Jim, like me, lost his wife of many years, and I met him at a church grief-share meant to deal with bereavement.
He’d lost his wife about a year after I’d lost mine, and seemed very distraught. Distraught as I still am, I thought I could help him.
So now we share dinner every Wednesday night at a restaurant in Canandaigua — he lives in Canandaigua.
Now it’s like our roles have reversed. He seems to have gotten over it, but I haven’t yet. Who knows how devastated he still is; one never knows what goes on in the background.
But I feel like the one needing help is me.
Be that as it may, Jim, like me, is a car-guy.
So he got me this calendar.
It purports to be a musclecar calendar, but I don’t feel it is, that is, not entirely.
It was apparently put together by a GM car-dealer, and it’s all GM cars. Not a single Ford or Chrysler product — not even a Mustang.
The January 2015 entry of this calendar is a full-size 1968 Impala SS convertible, the kind of car this car-guy avoided like the plague.
The first thing I said was “what motor?” —Hoping it was a Big-Block. But there’s no indication what motor it is.
Apparently “SS” was just a trim-option for the full-size Impala.
To me, “SS” connotes a hot-rodded Big-Block with four-speed floorshift.
But who knows what this car is? It may be local; I see a NY tag.
It isn’t something I’d want.
But I appreciate the calendar — it’s on a cabinet. As always, it’s the thought that counts.
And some of the cars look pretty good.
I wonder if they’re local?