Monthly Calendar-Report for February 2015

Eastbound mixed under the Main Street bridge in Gallitzin. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—(“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get.”)
The February 2015 entry of my own calendar is another picture by my brother.
It was taken the same time as the January picture, which means we froze.
It’s a mixed freight climbing the last of The Hill over Allegheny summit, on Track One into Gallitzin, PA. Gallitzin is atop The Hill, and has a tunnel — actually two.
The train is going under Main Street bridge on Track One.
Track One is about a half-mile separate from Tracks Two and Three.
Track One follows the alignment of the old New Portage Railroad, and goes through New Portage tunnel.
The New Portage was a railroad built by the state to circumvent the original Portage Railroad, which had inclined planes.
All were part of the state’s Public Works System. a combination canal and portage railroad meant to compete with NY’s Erie Canal.
Public Works eventually went defunct, but was bought by Pennsy for a song. It gave them a second tunnel through Allegheny summit.
Pennsy built a third tunnel, but eventually its original tunnel was enlarged and widened for two tracks by Conrail, and that third tunnel was abandoned.
Who knows what picture we took first, this one or January. —Although it was probably this one.
We knew this eastbound was coming, so went to this location.
Here my friend Phil Faudi (“FOW-deee;” as in “wow”) called and said a westbound had just started up The Hill.
Phil, from Altoona, used to lead me around, but doesn’t any more. His wife has Multiple Sclerosis, so he doesn’t like the leave her so we can chase trains.
What he does is monitor his railroad-radio scanner in his house, and call my cellphone.
We did see that westbound, but it was obscured by that eastbound coal-extra which is my January picture.
I like this Main Street bridge location. It reprises a photograph from long ago.

From long ago. (Photo by Bill Price.)

I’ve taken photos there myself, but they aren’t snow.














(Photo by Sam Wheeland.)

—I know exactly where this photo was taken.
I’ve taken pictures there myself.
The February 2015 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is shot from atop Allegheny summit, and Pennsy had two tunnels underneath us.
At right is Track One, which uses New-Portage tunnel. At left are Tracks Two and Three, which use Pennsy’s original tunnel, now widened and enlarged.
The overlook is right atop New-Portage’s eastern tunnel-mouth.
New-Portage tunnel is slightly higher than the original Pennsy tunnel. Trains using it have to ramp down to the original Pennsy alignment.
This ramp is known as “The Slide,” fairly steep, but not too steep.
New-Portage tunnel was also enlarged — to clear double-stacked containers, which need a lot of vertical clearance.
In so doing the grade on The Slide was slightly reduced, from 2.36% to 2.28%. —That’s 2.28 feet down for every 100 feet forward.
But you can see where it begins; the tracks just suddenly head down.
The photo was taken from an overlook that looks out across the valley the railroad climbs.
Across the valley are the lead-locomotives of the coal-train still partially descending The Slide (Track One).
The locomotives on The Slide are actually on the back end of the train. They’re helping hold it back as it descends The Hill.
Meanwhile another train, westbound, is climbing The Hill on Track Two of Two and Three, what remain of the original Pennsy main.
Allegheny Mountain was the main barrier to commerce across PA in the early 1800s. What’s amazing is this railroad is still using the original Pennsy line laid out in 1854, although now it’s Norfolk Southern.
It was an engineering triumph to conquer Allegheny Mountain with a workable railroad, steep enough to require helpers, but not overly difficult.

From the overlook. (Photo by Bobbalew.)

Looking at this photo, I wonder if your eye would see what the camera saw. Your brain would correct the coloration of the ridge in back. The photo has it bluish.
I color-corrected a little with my Photoshop, but I couldn’t do much. Color-correction does the entire picture. Correct that ridge to look natural, and the foreground looks unnatural.
I added a little green to make the ridge look brownish.
Snow under blue sky always reflects bluish, but your brain corrects it to white.
A camera is not your brain.




A ’28 Model-A roadster on ’32 rails. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)

—The February 2015 entry of my Oxman Hotrod Calendar was quite common: a ’28 Model-A roadster on ’32 rails.
‘32 rails are the frame-rails of a ’32 Ford. They’re more substantial than a Model-A frame; substantial enough to take a hot-rodded motor — and not turn into spaghetti.
Apparently a Model-A body fit on a ’32 Ford chassis, although by now you could probably find both the body and frame-rails made by somebody more recent than Ford — in metal, even the body.
Back during the ‘60s, when I was in college, people were making bodies out of fiberglass.
Did I ever see a hotrod with a fiberglass reproduction body. Not that I can recall, except maybe T-bucket hotrods.
Fiberglass bodies were very cheaply made, and often ended up in the trash.
So I wonder how stock this car is.
Model-As are a dime-a-dozen; many are still around.
The Model-A was Old Henry’s first tentative step beyond the Model-T, and he didn’t want to do it.
The Model-T had a foot-operated band transmission. The bands were like clutches — tighten the bands to engage the gearing.
The Model-A was much like what automobiles were coming to, a motor up front, with the transmission right behind, activated by a clutch to the motor’s flywheel.
This wasn’t the layout of the Model-T. A Model-A used foot-pedals to operate the clutch and brakes — and also a gas-pedal.
Model-Ts were like farm-tractors. You set engine-speed with a lever on the steering-column. Once set, it wasn’t easily varied like a gas-pedal.
Henry claimed the Model-T was all America needed, but car-buyers were moving beyond the Model-T.
Following WWII there was a surplus of used Model-As and ‘30s Fords around. They could be hot-rodded, usually by souping the Ford Flat-head V8 introduced in 1932, an engine that was very attractive, even stock.
The Flat-head V8 rendered sprightly performance, and could be easily modified by backyard mechanics.
A surplus of bitsa remained on the west coast following the war, and could be used to build hotrods.
The weather in southern California was also favorable, plus there were vast dry-lakes available for speed-trials.
So began the hotrod movement, based on the gorgeous old Ford bodies with a souped-up Flat-head V8.
But of course this car isn’t a Flat-head. It’s a souped Chevy SmallBlock, the motor that put the old Flat-head out to pasture.
The Chevy SmallBlock was light and small, and responded well to hot-rodding. They also were cheap and available, like the Flat-head.
But I notice this car has four (count ‘em, FOUR) carburetors, plus open exhausts.
To me that says “trailer-queen.” I don’t think you could get a four-carb SmallBlock to run, and if so, that’s a race-motor, not very streetable.
A friend, since deceased, was building a Model-A roadster hotrod much like this one on a chopped-up ’46 Ford frame.
It looked great: flat-gray enamel without flames.
He had a souped ’56 Pontiac V8, and he tried to put three two-barrel carburetors on it (“triple deuces”). But it wouldn’t run properly; it liked to backfire through the carburetors.
He finally had to put a single four-barrel on it; after all, as he used to say: “what fun is a hotrod if you can’t drive it!”
(He never was able to finish that hotrod. It needed wiring, and was saddled with the 6-volt/12-volt problem; That is, the generator on his motor was 12-volt, yet all the wiring, horn, lights, etc. were 6-volt.
He died of Parkinson’s before he could finish.)
I wonder about this hotrod. I doubt it’s drivable — that motor is too extreme.
Unmuffled exhausts are also over-the-top. A local hotrod lives nearby, a chopped, channeled, sectioned ’32 Ford two-door sedan, perhaps 48 inches high. I don’t know what motor it is, but it’s open exhausts.
It’s much more pleasant than the blatting Harleys, but you can hear it coming.
I notice this car has the beer-keg gas-tank up front, a setup favored by drag-racers. The beer-keg stored enough gas to make a run, and perhaps enough to get back to the pits. But sometimes a quarter-mile race might consume all two-and-a-half gallons, and a push-truck might have to push or tow the racer back to the pits.



What I saw more than any other Pennsy freight-engine. (Photo by Mac Owen.)

—The February 2015 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is a Pennsy H-class Consolidation (2-8-0) smoking it up at the Northumberland PA roundhouse in 1952.
This locomotive is about, or older than, 40 years old. Try to get that much out of a current diesel locomotive. You might get 20 years if you’re lucky.
The Consolidation was pretty much Pennsy’s standard locomotive. In the mid-‘20s they had around 3,300.
They were replaced by bigger and more powerful locomotives for road use. But were kept around as light freight-locomotives, read local-freight.
They were even used as switchers. Pennsy had small 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 switchers. They developed a large 0-8-0 switcher, but never built it in quantity. Consolidations were drafted into heavy yard-switching.
What I saw pulling freight as a child were Consols. A local might chuff out to Haddonfield (“HAH-din-field”) near where I lived in south Jersey, where I first watched trains, to switch local trackside businesses.
For example, a Consol might shove a loaded coal-hopper up onto a trestle to unload into trucks below.
That was back when there were still houses heating with coal.
You don’t see that any more.
That coal-yard in Haddonfield is long-gone.
And local-freight was pretty much taken over by trucks.
Pennsy had three versions of this Consol: H-8, H-9, and H-10.
All were based on the same boiler and firebox.
The H-9 and H-10 had slightly larger cylinder diameters, and the H-10 had coal-boards atop the tender so it could carry more coal.

Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania’s H-10.

Only one Consol is left, H-10 #7688 at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, a Consol Pennsy kept for posterity.
I did some research trying to find what version 7799 was, but couldn’t find anything. —The calendar-guys probably couldn’t either.
7799 is firing up probably to switch, or shunt a local-freight.
Note the number-plate on the front smokebox door. It isn’t the red Pennsy keystone.
Before WWII Pennsy freight-engines had a black-painted circular number-plate. Go back far enough, and passenger-engine number-plates were circular too, but red.
Pennsy freight-engines had a single-tone banshee whistle; passenger engines had a multi-toned whistle.
What I preferred was seeing that red keystone coming — it meant I was gonna see a good-looking locomotive.
But Pennsy freighters looked pretty-good too; just not the red keystone number-plate.
After the ‘30s, Pennsy freight-engines gravitated to the keystone number-plate. The Mountains (4-8-2) were first, and were developed as a dual-purpose locomotive, both passenger and freight.
But they mainly were used as freight-locomotives.
Pennsy’s J-1 (2-10-4) war-baby during WWII was a freight-locomotive, but had the red keystone number-plate.
Pennsy freight locomotives developed after WWII had the red keystone number-plate.




The backbone of WWII bombing-runs over Europe, but also a sitting duck. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The February 2015 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Boeing B-17G, the backbone of heavy bombing against Germany in WWII.
And that was despite they’re being turkeys, slow compared to Hitler’s fighter-planes.
In fact, that front chin-turret was a response to Hitler’s fighters.
Hitler’s fighters would attack the B-17s from the front, strafing with machine-gun fire.
Until that chin-turret a B-17 was defenseless from the front.
I’ve been through a B-17 myself. 1941 Historical-Aircraft Group (HAG) in nearby Geneseo (“jen-uh-SEE-oh”) had one named “Fuddy-Duddy.” It’s gone now. They don’t have much any more — just a C-47 transport, the “Whiskey-Seven,” and a few other planes. They used to have quite a bit.

Fuddy-Duddy.

Whiskey-Seven.

I saw “Fuddy-Duddy” flying once. My reaction was “no wonder so many got shot down.” It was slow, a sitting-duck.
I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“The B-17, arguably WWII’s most famous heavy bomber, first flew on July 28th, 1935, before a crowd of reporters eager to see Boeing’s new bomber take wing. It was dubbed the “Flying Fortress” by the members of the press in attendance, because of its (at least for the time) heavy defensive armament.
The prototype crashed in October, but because of its impressive speed and handling the U.S. Army Air Corps (USAAC) decided to continue testing anyway. They ordered 13 YB-17s for further evaluation, a decision that would prove momentous in years to come.
The YB-17 had five machine guns, room for 4,800 pounds of bombs, and a crew of nine. It had electrically retractable landing gear.
After testing the YB-17, an improved prototype, the Y1B-17, was built with Wright Cyclone radial engines. Twelve were delivered to the USAAC’s 2nd Bombardment Group for trials.
One of these was soon equipped with new Moss/General Electric turbochargers that became standard on all future Flying Fortresses. The first production order was for 39 B-17Bs with turbocharged engines, and as soon as these were under production another order for the B-17C was placed, with seven machine guns instead of the original five.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) received their first B-17Cs in 1941, and were soon conducting daylight raids over Germany.
The defensive armament soon proved inadequate, and the B-17’s altitude was little defense against the German fighters.
Orders for the B-17D were soon placed with self-sealing fuel tanks and more armor because of lessons learned in bombing missions over Europe.
The B-17E and B-17F soon followed with a larger tail. The B-17F was the first to serve with our nation’s 8th Air Force.
After suffering staggering losses in late 1943, analysis proved head-on attacks by enemy fighters were a distinct problem. The final major version, the B-17G, added a chin turret with dual machine guns. This gave the B-17 a defensive armament of 13 guns.”
Makanna’s picture is a B-17G. “Fuddy-Duddy” is a B-17G.
So by WWII the B-17 was kind of out-of-date.
But many were used for bombing-runs over the Axis.
They were flying out of England, and at first had to go unaccompanied over Germany. There were no Allied fighter-planes that had the range of a B-17 out of England.
So they were sitting-ducks for Hitler’s fighters until an Allied fighter with the range needed could be developed. That was the P-51 North-American Mustang.
The B-17 is a good-looking airplane, a siren-song for this would-be adventurer. Dodging flak and barrage-balloons we’d bounce over Germany to unleash our heavy load of destruction on Hitler’s rail-yards  and oil-refineries below.
But that was a youthful dream. After seeing “Fuddy-Duddy,” both inside and flying, I decided they were an easy target.
Inside the bulkheads were aluminum, but looked like swiss-cheese.
53 B-17s are left; 13 airworthy.
I remember seeing one shot out of the sky by a Nike missile back in the late ‘50s.
It would have been an easy target, ponderously slow. Yet very dramatic as it exploded in flames.
My reaction was like in “American Graffiti” when the Harrison Ford character rolls his ’55 Chevy. What a tragedy! Another B-17 lost!




I-1 shuffles cars. (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

—The February 2015 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a Pennsy I-1 Decapod (2-10-0) shifting cars next to the Sodus Point wharf.
I don’t think the engine is on the wharf; that’s the track up at right.

The Sodus-Point coal-wharf. (Photo by Bobbalew.)

The coal-wharf was built by a railroad that connected to Northern Central, and Northern Central control was taken over by Pennsy in 1861.
Sodus Point is a spit of land that extends eastward north of a bay that could be used as a harbor to Lake Ontario.
The wharf could transload Pennsylvania coal to lake ships.
Pennsy fell to doing this at Sodus Point. Heavy trainloads of Pennsylvania coal would go up to be transloaded into Lake Ontario coal ships.
The wharf pictured is trestle number-two, and number-two was built in 1927. There was a number-one, but ship capacity outgrew it.
The trestle was wood, and eventually burned in 1971 while being taken down.
The railroad to Sodus Point was difficult — which explains why Decapods were used. It was hilly.
A heavy coal-train would get dispatched north out of Williamsport (PA) to travel the old Northern Central line toward Sodus Point.
Northern Central merged the railroad to Sodus Point coal-wharf in 1884.
The line was heavily graded and curvaceous. I’m thinking of the section toward Penn Yan in central New York.
The line to Sodus Point is pretty much abandoned, although sections are operated as shortlines. Finger-Lakes Railway operates from Watkins Glen north to Penn Yan. Ontario Midland Railroad operates south from Sodus to Newark (NY).
Sodus is not actually Sodus Point. It’s south of where the wharf was, and is a larger town.
The Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad, what later became known as the “Hojack,” went through Sodus.
The Hojack wanted to compete with New York Central, and was eventually merged by it.
Ontario Midland operates a segment of the old Hojack, but west of Webster (NY) the line is gone.




1970 Dodge Hemi Challenger. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

—(“HEM-eee;” not “HE-mee”)
The February 2015 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar is a 1970 Hemi Challenger.
That means it has the gigantic Hemi torque-generator, 426 cubic-inches, the so-called “elephant-motor.”
The Hemi was incredibly strong. The cylinder-head was special, unique among car-motors.
The typical Detroit V8 had all its valves in a row, parallel to the crankshaft. This somewhat restricted breathing. The intake-valves were usually canted toward the intake manifold, but if all the valves were in a row, that canted the exhaust-valves away from the exhaust manifold, unless the exhaust manifolding was atop the motor, which it usually wasn’t in a typical ‘50s Detroit V8. The exhaust headers were on the motor sides.
In a Hemi the valves were 90 degrees from the crankshaft, intakes aimed at the intake manifold, exhausts aimed at the exhaust headers — at each side of a hemispherical combustion-chamber, source of the name “Hemi.”
Which made for an extremely heavy cylinder-head casting, especially if it was cast-iron. But it could breathe extremely well.
The Hemi came in three iterations: -1) 1951-’58; -2) Hemi-heads on Chrysler’s B-motor; and -3) the current “Hemi,” which I’m not sure is hemispherical combustion-chamber.
The hemispherical combustion-chamber required domed pistons to adequately compress the combustion mixture. Domed pistons don’t work that well; they can develop hot-spots that promote preignition (knock).
More recent high-performance engine development, particularly motorcycle engines, stay with individually canted valves, but the combustion-chamber is so flat it’s no longer hemispherical.
Usually double overhead-camshafts activate the valves, but Chrysler’s Hemi wasn’t overhead-cam.
The camshaft was down in the block under the intake manifold, the usual place in a typical V8.
Pushrods activated rocker-arms on two rocker-shafts, one for the intake-valves, and one for exhaust.
The exhaust rockers worked one way, and the intake rockers the opposite way.
This Challenger has Chrysler’s hemi-head B-motor.
Before hemi-heads, the B-motor was a typical Detroit V8, all the valves in a row. The B-motor could be made quite strong. It was large, and could be souped-up. But drag-racers and NASCAR-racers wanted to put Chrysler’s Hemi heads on it.
So Chrysler did.
The Hemi B-motor became dominant; so dominant in NASCAR it was outlawed.

200.447 mph!

Buddy Baker ran one at Talladega Superspeedway at 200 mph.
Like Granny’s gonna buy groceries in a car like that.
A Hemi Challenger is not that unique. But this one is, primarily because it has a Trans-Am hood — that big scoop.
Supposedly only two Hemi Challengers with the Trans-Am hood were made, and this is the only one left — or so they say.
This car has a unique history. Its first owner was a guy who returned from the military, and began selling cars at a Dodge-dealer in Indiana.
The dealer’s owner let him order the car if he’d buy it within a year.
To me, putting that heavy Hemi motor in a ponycar is a mistake. It would do better with a lighter engine, especially in corners.
But a lighter engine wouldn’t be as powerful as the elephant-motor. In a straight line there was no catching a Hemi, except if you couldn’t get those rear tires to hook up.
Goose a Hemi at low speed, and those tires went up in smoke.

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’67 Pontiac G-T-O.
—The February 2015 entry of my Jim LePore muscle-car calendar is a 1967 Pontiac G-T-O.
LePore (“luh-POOR”), bereaved like me, is the guy I eat dinner with every Wednesday night.

LePore and his Camaro. (Photo by Bobbalew.)

Like me he’s a car-guy. He bought a 2010 SS Camaro to show, and we go to various shows.
He got the calendar from the dealer where he bought his car.
The Pontiac G-T-O is an interesting concept. Crank a hot-rodded motor from a full-sized car into a smaller and lighter intermediate-size car.

1964; the first G-T-O. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

A 1970 G-T-O, otherwise known as “the Judge.”

But this model G-T-O isn’t the one I prefer, which is 1964, or about 1970.
But many of this version were sold. I remember the dean’s son at my college got one (a ’65), and I almost got canned because I scrawled “cheap American trash” in big letters in the salt-encrusted flanks of his car.
The Pontiac G-T-O is controversial. G-T-O is also the Ferrari G-T-O, Gran-Turismo-Omologato, meaning it was homologated for racing.
Pontiac also homologated its G-T-O for racing.

Ferrari G-T-O.

Purists were upset Pontiac stole the G-T-O name. Then Car & Driver magazine stoked the controversy by saying the Pontiac G-T-O was faster.
Apples to oranges! A Pontiac G-T-O might be faster in a straight line, but a Ferrari G-T-O would be all over the Pontiac on a race-course.
The Ferrari G-T-O would also be entirely out of its element on public highways. The Ferrari G-T-O is essentially a racecar. A Pontiac G-T-O had to pillar-to-post and commute. Try that in a Ferrari and you’d soot the plugs.
But for fun the Pontiac G-T-O was a ball. Floor the accelerator and hang on for dear life.
It’s often said the G-T-O is the first American musclecar. That’s debatable. Chrysler’s 300-series could be called a musclecar, and they are late ‘50s.
Go back far enough, and Buick’s first Century could be called a musclecar, “Century” standing for 100 mph. —You might get 80 out of a ’39 Chevy.