Monthly Calendar-Report for October 2015

I know exactly where this is. (Photo by Don Woods.)

—The October 2015 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is phenomenal.
It’s strident fall-foliage, and I know where it is.
That’s the Jamestown Road bridge in the distance, and I’ve photographed off it.

From the Jamestown Road bridge. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

One of my BEST photos has that bridge in it, which is also used as an eastbound signal.

Eastbound on Track Two at Jamestown Road bridge. (This location is now “No Trespassing.”) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

The calendar says it’s in Portage (PA). Well, the Town of Portage, but just north (railroad east) of the village proper.
The train is on the bypass built in 1898. The bypass begins in Portage.
The original Pennsy main through Portage was kept as a branch because it passes a coal-facility north of Portage.
That branch connects to the bypass at both ends, in Portage, and also that switch visible at left, which is the north end of the branch.
The original Pennsy main crossed this area on its way to Cassandra (“Kuh-SAN-druh;” as in “Anne”) village, an old coal-town, the next town north of Portage.
The bypass ended toward Lilly, the next town after Cassandra.
It took out many torturous curves.
The locomotive is a General-Electric Dash-9-44CW, rated at 4,400 horsepower. Norfolk Southern got earlier Dash-9s downrated to 4,000 horsepower, the Dash-9-40C.
They’re now being uprated to 4,400 horsepower.
“C” is three powered axles per truck (six axles per locomotive), and “W” is wide-cab.
The train is a “stacker,” double-stacked freight-containers, and is on Track Two. The tracks are One, Two and Three left-to-right.
One is eastbound, Three is westbound, and Two can be either way.
One wonders how much longer we’ll see three tracks at this location.
It’s a busy line, and the train is climbing Allegheny Mountain. You often see two trains at once, a faster train on Two passing a plodder on One.




RoadRailer. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—The October 2015 entry of my own calendar is a Norfolk Southern RoadRailer (Train 261) westbound through Lilly (PA).
RoadRailer is a special train, an attempt to make highway trailers railroad compliant.
Highway trailers are pretty much the correct width for railroad transport, which is why you see so many trailers-on-flatcar.
Railroads have been transporting trailer-on-flatcar since at least 1950.
The RoadRailer experiment is to fit the trailer with what’s needed to install rail bogies — railroad wheels.

A rail-bogie is in position on a RoadRailer trailer.

The bogies attach to the rear of the trailer, and then the front of the following trailer.
Sling together a slew of these trailers, and you have a train.
The bogies lift the trailer high enough for its road-wheels to clear the track.
The bogies also have brakes.
My brother and I had gone to Altoona last October hoping to get fall foliage.
It can be dramatic, but I think the peak had already passed.
Trying to get fall foliage in Altoona is always a crap-shoot. We have to reserve months in advance. We can’t just drop everything and go when the webcams indicate we should.
My brother is still working, and has to get clearance to leave. I have to reserve boarding for my dog.
RoadRailer will be discontinued, although I saw one on the Station-Inn webcam Saturday, September 19th.
Station-Inn in Cresson (“KRESS-in”) is the railfan bed-and-breakfast where I often stay.
RoadRailer is too unlike regular railroad equipment. It can’t be humped or switched; the trailers aren’t sturdy enough.
It can’t even be backed, and can’t be pushed from the rear.
You can’t yard it together into a train. It has be especially assembled in a paved facility that can drive trailers.
Once assembled it can only be pulled to its disassembly location.
The weather was perfect every day, but the trees weren’t.
I did see this RoadRailer before leaving — we had chased trains the previous day.
Before leaving my brother drove out to Lilly, the next town south after Cresson.
I left, but my brother hung around to see what he could get, and that’s despite a nine-hour drive for him. The light was perfect, and here came RoadRailer; two engines pulling a long train. And one locomotive, the Union Pacific engine, is shared power.
The U.P. engine is probably returning to Union Pacific. It had probably brought a cross-country train east to Norfolk Southern. and NS just coupled one of its own engines in front of the U.P. engine.
Railroads often share power, since all the locomotives are pretty much the same. But a Norfolk Southern engine usually has to lead, since only it will correctly interface with NS’s track-control and signaling-systems. Norfolk Southern has in-the-cab signaling as well as lineside.




Winged-Warrior. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

—The October 2015 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar is a 1970 Plymouth Superbird.
The Superbird is Plymouth’s version of the Dodge Charger Daytona, the most extremely bodied muscle-car of all.
The Daytona, and Superbird, are essentially responses to Ford’s special-bodied Torino Talladega, and Mercury’s Cyclone Spoiler II, for NASCAR’s super-tracks like Daytona and Talladega Super-Speedway in Alabama.
Ford applied a more aerodynamic front-end to increase top speed, so Chrysler grafted a special nose to its racetrack Dodge Charger. They also added a rear wing, up high the clear the trunk-lid.
Race-driver Richard Petty, who raced Plymouths, wanted the same aerodynamic improvements, so viola: the Plymouth Superbird.
Chrysler had to sell 500 of each car to race them in NASCAR.
They already had the phenomenal 426 cubic-inch Hemi (“hem-eee;” not “he-mee”) engine. That motor dominated drag-racing, where you wouldn’t need those aerodynamic improvements.
Imagine showing up in such a car at the Tastee-Freez. It wasn’t designed for the stoplight drags; it was designed for top-speed on a gigantic 2.5-mile racing tri-oval like Daytona — Talladega is 2.66-miles.
Race-driver Buddy Baker averaged over 200 mph at Talladega in a Daytona.
“Ritchut” (Petty) needed such a car to be competitive. With the Superbird he was.
The Hemi motor was eventually outlawed, and now even Plymouth is gone.
“National Association of Stock-Car Auto-Racing.” They’re hardly stock any more. They weren’t back in 1970. A builder would start with a stock body, add a roll-cage which stiffened the chassis, plus other non-stock alterations.
Builders often did bodywork to enhance top-speed aerodynamics, although the cars were required to match a stock-body template.
Granny would hardly buy groceries with a Superbird.




I’ve seen scenes like this. (Photo by Don Wood ©.)

—The October 2015 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is another Don Wood photograph.
It’s a Pennsy M1b steam-engine (4-8-2) trundling a southbound freight through Sunbury, PA. The train is bound for Enola Yard near Harrisburg.
Wood’s photographs were the basis of the first Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar in 1966. Audio-Visual Designs owner railfan Carl Sturner, who founded his company in 1964, got together with Wood to display some of Wood’s fantastic photographs in a calendar.
Next year will be 50 years since that first calendar.
Both Sturner and Wood are gone, and the Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar moved beyond just Wood’s photographs.
There have been various owners, but I’ve gotten the calendar for years.
I’m a Pennsy man; my first calendar was probably 1968.
There also were a few years the calendar wasn’t published.
But some of the best photographs published in the calendar were Wood’s.
He was from north Jersey, and liked to photograph Pennsy K-4s (4-6-2) on their final stomping-ground, Jersey Central’s New York & Long Branch, where Pennsy had trackage-rights.
It was commuter-traffic toward New York City. The K-4s would bring commuters to Bay Head, where the K-4 would be replaced with usually a GG-1.
That is, electrified power for non-electrified power.
The GG-1 would take the train to New York City over Pennsy’s electrified main.
But the steam-engine Wood liked most was Pennsy’s M-1 Mountain.
And Pennsy used its Mountains in mainline freight-service until the end of steam in 1957.
Of particular interest was Pennsy’s continued use of Mountains on the “Middle Division” of its mainline, Harrisburg to Altoona.
And also the line up to Buffalo and Erie, which this train is on.
Wood would chase Mountains all over Pennsy, especially its Middle Division.
What I find most interesting about this picture is the crossing-guard watchman at left.
When I was a child — late ‘40s — we still had a crossing-guard watchman in Haddonfield (“ha-din-FIELD;” as in “at”), the town in south Jersey near where I lived.
Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines went through Haddonfield, and crossed the main drag, Kings Highway, just west of the station. When a train was coming, or about to start at the station, the watchman would come out to flag the crossing. He was also cranking down the gates.
Trains were frequent.
The railroad had to hire a watchman. He stayed in a little shanty near the crossing between trains.
I think that watchman also controlled gates at other crossings in Haddonfield. There were at least three, maybe four.
Too bad watchmen disappeared with the coming of automation. Perhaps a watchman could better stop the idiots trying to beat the train.
Our family moved out of south Jersey in 1957. And Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines became part of Conrail, and was eventually replaced by government commuter authorities.
The line through Haddonfield was converted to a rapid-transit connected to an earlier rapid-transit over Delaware River Bridge to Philadelphia, now Ben Franklin Bridge.
That rapid-transit was taken below-grade through Haddonfield. Kings Highway no longer crossed at grade. It’s on an overpass that leaps over the tracks below.
The line from Philadelphia to Atlantic City is also down there. It’s operated by Jersey Transit.



A brand-new Alco C-630 begins its first run. (Photo by Dave Sweetland.)

—The October 2015 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is a brand-new Alco C-630 in the lead with a westbound freight leaving Pitcairn Yard east of Pittsburgh, PA.
It’s 1966, the year I graduated college.
“C” stands for “Century,” the locomotive series, and “630” is six drive-axles, 3,000 horsepower.
Alco (American Locomotive Company) is of course long-gone. It tanked in 1969 when General-Electric started building complete diesel locomotives.
General-Electric had been supplying electrical components like traction-motors to Alco, but stopped in 1953.
Which is a shame, since American Locomotive Company, a long-time supplier of railroad steam-locomotives, had successfully made the transition to diesel locomotives. In fact, its RS-1 road-switcher of 1941 pioneered the concept, which railroads still prefer. Cab-units are no longer made.
But by the ‘60s Alco was foundering. Electromotive (EMD) had taken over the diesel-locomotive market. Other manufacturers, like Baldwin and Fairbanks-Morse had already failed.
When General-Electric started marketing locomotives, EMD had competition that imperiled it.
Even now many Alcos are still running, although mostly on smaller railroads, especially shortlines.
Alco eventually closed its plant in Schenectady, but continued production up in Canada at Montreal Locomotive Works, with whom it long-ago merged.
At least one more six-axle behemoth was fielded after the C-630, the C-636, 3,600 horsepower instead of 3,000.

Penn-Central #6320 (a C-630) used as one of two pusher-units around Horseshoe Curve. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Penn-Central 6320, pushing at Horseshoe curve about 1971, is a C-630.














The way it was in the ‘50s. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)

—The thing most wrong with this car is the color.
I prefer yellow as on the Milner coupe from American Graffiti.

The Milner coupe.

The October 2015 entry in my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a 1932 Ford five-window coupe with an early Buick V8 engine.
If it were yellow, it would have been ahead of the Winged Warrior.
I also prefer the three-window coupes, and I’ve photographed a stellar example with a SmallBlock Chevy V8.

What I desire most. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Well okay, red is not yellow, but it ain’t as bad as the color of the calendar-car.
Nevertheless, this car is pretty much what hot-rodders were doing in the ‘50s.
A ’32 Ford with a souped V8 from the junkyard.
I especially like that it’s Buick’s first V8, its “nail-valve.”

Nail-valve.

“Nail-valve” because it’s valves were tiny. They were vertical, all in-a-row on the top side of a pent-roof combustion-chamber.
What possessed Buick to do this I have no idea, since it aims the exhaust-valves far away from the cylinder-head exits, which were on the cylinder-head sides.
Yet the dude who built this car got a Buick V8, probably from a junkyard crash-victim.
No doubt the car has had several owners, but they all kept that Buick Nail-Valve.
How many were tempted to replace it with a SmallBlock?
Supposedly these motors were superior torque-generators at low revs.
Well of course, with tiny valves it’s a low-rev motor.
I also notice the motor has a lot of carburetion, six unfiltered Strombergs.
Open ‘em all at once, and you won’t get much airflow.
I put giant toilet-mouthed 40-mm carbs on my Ducati (“dew-KAH-dee,” as in “ah”) motorcycle. But an identical motorcycle with 32-mm carbs accelerated faster. 40s were okay to do 150 mph, but too much at 30-60.
So I wonder if all six carbs work? Or if it’s just a trailer-queen?
Quite often a hotrod will have triple deuces, but only the center carb works.




“I can still see that oily, black pillar of smoke TOWERING above the Arizona.” (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The October 2015 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is a Japanese Zero.
Putting the Zero last in this calendar-report seems unfair, since it was a surprisingly good airplane.
An excellent dogfighter, though short on armor. The Japanese seemed to think their pilots expendable.
Shoot up a well-armored Navy fighter, and its pilot was more likely to survive.
As per usual, I’ll let my WWII warbirds site weigh in:
“Fast, maneuverable and flown by highly-skilled pilots, the Mitsubishi Zero-Sen was the most famous Japanese plane of WWII, and a big surprise to American forces.
Ignored by British and American intelligence (who had access to design plans for the aircraft years before the war) the ‘Zero’ (it was the Navy Type O carrier-based fighter) was armed with two 20-mm cannon, two 7.7mm machine guns, and possessed the incredible range of 1,930 miles using a centerline drop tank.
Though outclassed by more powerful U.S. fighters after late 1943, the Zero remained a tough opponent throughout the war.
First flown on April 1st, 1939, the A6M1 prototype was powered by a 780-horsepower Mitsubishi Zuisei radial engine which gave it excellent performance except for its maximum speed, which was below specifications.
A second prototype, the A6M2, was powered by a 925-horsepower Nakajima Sakae engine, which was so successful that in July 1940, the type was ordered into production as the Navy Type ‘O’ Carrier Fighter Model 11.
Pre-production Zeros were used in China from August 1940. This outstanding aircraft could travel at speeds up to 350 mph in level flight (the A6M5 version, 1,130 horsepower) and reach 15,000 feet in five minutes.
Contrast this with America’s front line fighter, the Grumman F4F Wildcat, which had a top speed of 325 mph, was not as maneuverable, and which had four .50-inch machine guns. No wonder the few Wildcat pilots rising up to defend Pearl Harbor in December, 1941 were surprised!
By late 1944, with most of its aircraft carriers sunk (and its most highly-trained aircrews gone), Japan resorted to desperate measures. These included ‘Kamikaze’ (divine wind) suicide raids, wherein green pilots would turn their early-model Zeros into aerial bombs for attacks on Allied ships. Truly an ignominious end for one of history’s great warbirds.”
So I wonder if this Zero has its original Nakajima Sakae 12 motor.
Only two Zeros are airworthy, and the one pictured in my WWII Warbirds site has a Pratt & Whitney.
It’s easier to get Pratt & Whitney parts.
The Zero was made by Mitsubishi.
When I worked at the Messenger newspaper years ago, I mentioned buying a Mitsubishi SUV. Mitsubishi had allied with Chrysler.
“Mitsubishi?” a friend screamed. “Weren’t they the manufacturers of the Japanese Zero?
I can still see that oily, black pillar of smoke towering above the Arizona.”

---

This is my kind of car.

—The October 2015 entry of my Jim LePore muscle-car calendar is a 1966 Chevy-II Nova two-door hardtop.
“Zippity-do,” I thought. “What’s so special about this thing?”
It’s the type of car I would buy. It has the top-of-the-line 327 cubic-inch SmallBlock with four-on-the-floor.
It’s the Chevy version of Ford’s Falcon Futura “Sprint,” except a 327 SmallBlock is more desirable.
The calendar calls it a musclecar.
Well, sorta.
350 horsepower!
Not a Big-Block Chevelle, but the sort of car I’d want to replace the car-of-my-dreams, a SmallBlock ’55, if I’d ever had one.

The car-of-my-dreams, a six-inline Two-Ten hardtop converted to a 283 four-speed. —All through high-school, college, and even after. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Unlike the Big-Block Chevelle, or a G-T-O, this car makes sense. Practicality hadn’t been sacrificed to produce the fastest car.
As the late ‘60s progressed into the early ‘70s, musclecars became more-and-more extreme = impractical.
I probably would have hung onto a 327 Chevy-II a long time.

Monthly Calendar-Report for September 2015

(This here calendar-report woulda flown earlier, except I had an operation, and have been zonked out at least two weeks.)


21J westbound through Altoona. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—In my humble opinion, this is the best photo my brother ever took.
The September 2015 entry of my own calendar is westbound Norfolk Southern train 21J threading downtown Altoona.
It’s not exactly what he wanted. That giant warehouse at right, with the vertically corrugated steel siding panels, is “Altoona Pipe and Steel.” “Altoona Pipe and Steel” is atop the siding panels. He got one photo with “Altoona Pipe and Steel” in it, but cut off the locomotive pilot.
This photo was not long after my brother broke his leg. He was on crutches, and had to sit in a folding-chair while waiting.
He broke his leg getting off the bottom rung of his ladder. He was trying to dislodge a hornets’ nest.
He hobbled up two flights of stairs to this footbridge over the old Pennsy main through Altoona.
Altoona has a long and storied past for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
It’s at the base of Allegheny Mountain, once a barrier to trade across PA.
Helpers get added to help trains over the mountain.
Altoona is half-way across PA, half-way between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh.
Pennsy built shops to build and service locomotives.
Vast marshaling yards were also installed.
Locomotives specific to duty were assigned. Faster locomotives ran to Harrisburg, since it wasn’t so challenging.
Powerful plodders were assigned to get trains over Allegheny Mountain (“The Hill”). —Plus the additional helpers.
Things are slightly different with dieselization.
But “The Hill” still intimidates.
Often a lighter train can conquer The Hill without helpers. But if the train is heavy, helpers are needed.
The helpers are serviced at Cresson (“KRESS-in”), just west of the summit, but get dispatched down to Altoona.
And helpers often run all the way to Pittsburgh. They provide extra braking (dynamic-braking) for a train going downhill.
With dynamic-braking, the locomotive’s traction-motors are switched to generators.
So now Altoona is a city out in the rural outback.
Beyond Altoona civilization gravitated near the railroad. Many of the towns are old coal-mining towns, and coal would get shipped on the railroad.
The towns heave this-way-and-that over mountainous terrain.
And most still have streets only 19th-century wide.
South Fork is a prime example; South Fork being south (railroad-west) of the summit, and also the junction of a coal spur.
South Fork is the south fork of the Conemaugh River, which Pennsy followed to Pittsburgh. South Fork was the starting-point of the Johnstown Flood.
Through Altoona the railroad splits into express-tracks and drag-tracks, the drag-tracks being for slow heavy trains.
21J is on the express-tracks.
Altoona is no longer what it was with Pennsy. —And of course Pennsy is long-gone, owned and operated by Norfolk Southern Railroad.
But Altoona still has a large shop in adjacent Juniata (“june-eee-AT-uh”), to maintain and rebuild Norfolk Southern locomotives.
And that second unit is not a wide-cab.




I’ve been here, but things are much different now. (Photo courtesy Joe Suo Collection ©.)

—This picture is not dramatic, but I know exactly where it is.
The September 2015 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a train not far from the summit tunnels of The Hill in Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get”), PA.
Next to the tracks is the dirt road my brother and I call “Cemetery Road.”
It goes to a rural cemetery called “Bennington Cemetery.” —Google calls it “Bird Eye Road,” and it goes past the cemetery. I’ve never been to the cemetery.
But I’ve driven the road to get pictures for my calendar.
To the left of the train is The Slide, the ramp Pennsy built to get up to Portage Tunnel.
The New Portage Railroad was part of railroad the state built for its Public Works System. As first built the Public Works crossed Allegheny Mountain with a difficult inclined-plane railroad. Stationary steam-engines would winch cars up the planes.
Public Works was a combination canal and railroad. Canal packets would get put on railroad flatcars.
New Portage Tunnel was part of the New Portage Railroad. Pennsy got it when PA’s Public Works System failed. Pennsy had put it out of business.
Private capital triumphed over public capital — plus newer technology.
A railroad could run any time in any season. Canals froze in Winter, and Public Works did not operate at night.
Pennsy decided New Portage Tunnel would give them a second summit tunnel.
But they had to ramp up to it, since New Portage Tunnel was higher than Pennsy’s original tunnel.
“The Slide” (the ramp) is 2.36% — or was. Now it’s 2.28 %. the grade was decreased slightly when the floor of the tunnel was lowered to clear doublestacks. That’s 2.28 feet down for every 100 feet forward, fairly steep, but not extremely.
The Slide and New Portage Tunnel are eastbound. The train pictured is westbound, approaching the original Pennsy tunnel at Gallitzin.
A third tunnel was also built. So much traffic was on Pennsy the original tunnel became a bottleneck. Only one track could be in it. —It was originally two tracks, but railroad equipment became large.
Recently that third tunnel was abandoned and closed, and the original Pennsy tunnel was enlarged and widened to clear doublestacks and two tracks.

An eastbound descends The Slide. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

Shrubbery has grown in around everything, and almost obliterates The Slide. But if a train is descending The Slide it’s obvious.
That swale beside the road is grown over.
The locomotives are Baldwin’s distinctive Sharknose cab-units.
The Sharknose is industrial designer Raymond Loewy (“low-eee”) from 1949 on.
They’re attractive, but even the Sharknose couldn’t save Baldwin.
Baldwin diesel locomotives were too unreliable. And when a locomotive cripples, its train blocks the railroad. You can’t just go around the cripple.
Not on a railroad, where everything is using the same track.




Ram-Air. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

—The September 2015 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar is a 1970&1/2 Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am Ram-Air IV.
That’s the incredibly powerful, and heavy, 455 cubic-inch Ram-Air motor. A scoop is on the hood to ram cold-air into the gigantic four-barrel carburetor. Cold air is denser and renders more horsepower.
You could watch the scoop vibrate as you revved the engine. It was on the carb, independent of the hood.
I used to think the Endura-bumpered 1970&1/2 Camaro was one of the best-looking cars ever made.

An Endura-bumpered Z-28.

But then I remembered this Firebird, that it doesn’t resort to a Ferrari egg-crate grille.
And the best-looking car ever is the early Jaguar XK-E.

An early Jaguar XK-E. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Both the Camaro and Firebird are a little too big. They also have gigantic sedan doors.
That heavy 455 cubic-inch engine is a bit much. Too much weight on the front-end. A humble two-liter BMW 2002 could out-corner it.
Sadly, the Firebird got worse-looking as the decade progressed. So too did the Camaro. The 5-mph bumper-requirement ruined both.



A Pennsy 0-4-0 switcher in Atlantic City. (Photo by Charles Houser, Sr.)

—The September 2015 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is a tiny Pennsy 0-4-0 switcher in Atlantic City yard.
Pennsy never got into heavy 0-8-0 switchers like other railroads.
They developed one but only built just a few.
What they’d do is reassign Consolidations (2-8-0) retired from road-duty.
Ya might find an H-6 teakettle yarding cars.
Pennsy did build quite a few smaller switchers, particularly 0-6-0.
Usually when I saw a switcher they were 0-6-0. They had slope-back tenders to improve rearward engineer vision.

A Pennsy 0-6-0.

But there was one application where a smaller driver wheelbase was required, an 0-4-0.
That was the docks and piers in Philadelphia. Curves were so tight only an 0-4-0 would do ‘em. An 0-6-0, even with flangeless center drivers, might derail.
So Pennsy developed 0-4-0s instead of giving up on the dock-tracks.
Reading (“REDDing;” not ”READing”) had ‘em too. Reading also served the Philadelphia waterfront.
And Pennsy’s 0-4-0 was fairly modern. They’re piston-valve, not ancient slide-valve, and have the same locomotive-cab as Pennsy’s K-4 Pacific (4-6-2).
Of course this locomotive is in Atlantic City, NJ, not the Philadelphia waterfront. Atlantic City isn’t major yard, so switching cars could be done by an 0-4-0.




1950 Merc lead-sled custom. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)

—The September 2015 entry in my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a modified 1950 Mercury custom.
Such customs were called “lead-sleds,” because so much molten lead was paddled to smooth body-welds.
The ’49-’51 Mercs are perhaps the most desirable custom-car of all time.
Ford Motor Company, without a styling-section, produced some of the greatest looking cars ever; e.g. the Model-A Ford, the ’32 Ford, the ’34, the ’39/’40 five-window coupe, and these Mercuries.
Customizers loved to exercise their craft on these Mercuries, although in my humble opinion they don’t need much.

A Jimmy-Dean Merc. Just nosed-and-decked and skirts; and lowered a bit.

This car looks only chopped and lowered.
I’ve seen these things with perhaps  a four-inch section taken out of the doors and side-sections.
I saw one as a high-school teenager. It was flat-black primer, yet very well done.
But it was so low it scraped the ground just leaving the burger-joint.
Plus it’s driver had to sit on the floor in the back.
Imagine getting it into a driveway, or into a parking-lot. So goes your 89-bazilyun dollar paint-job — the bottom will scrape the pavement.
This car has air-suspension, which supposedly raises the car enough to not scrape.
If I am correct, these Mercuries were supposed to be Ford’s 1949 Ford.

A 1949 Shoebox Ford.

Except Henry Ford II, “The Deuce,” shoved through Ford’s revolutionary Shoebox Ford.
As far as I know, these ’49-’51 Mercuries also use pretty much the same chassis as the Shoebox — no more buggy-springs.




Dawn over Bellevue Yard in Ohio. (Photo by Jermaine Ashby.)

—Another Jermaine Ashby picture, which I don’t think is that good.
It seems all this picture displays is Ashby’s proficiency with Photoshop©.
The September 2015 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is dawn at the yard in Bellevue, OH.
Ashby aimed his camera into the dawning sun.
Then he dodged the front of the train so it would render not as dark as other locomotives in the picture.
“Dodge” is an old darkroom term. It refers to limiting the amount of enlarger light through a negative so the area “dodged” is exposed less than the surrounding area, and therefore renders lighter.
In that case the “dodging” tool was something to block out the enlarger light, like a piece of cardboard.
Photoshop has the computer equivalent of a “dodge” tool. You mouse the area you want lighter with the tool.
I imagine my Photoshop-Elements-10, a cheaper and less powerful Photoshop, has some version of the “dodge” tool, something to lighten the area selected.
I don’t use it. I’m one of these fustian old users who think a photo shouldn’t be heavily treated.
I use my Photoshop-Elements to do a little, mainly to crop and resize. My PE-10 also has an “enhance” function to lighten shadows. I use it, if it looks better.
But I don’t do what Ashby did, to lighten just an area of the picture: namely the front of the central locomotive. If I can “lighten shadows” in an entire picture, I might.
But with this picture only the front of the central locomotive is lightened. Other locomotives off to the left are dark-city.
Plus Ashby couldn’t be too precise about selecting out just the central locomotive — which he probably tried. Instead, it looks like he only used the dodge-tool, and had to be careful with the locomotive number-boards atop the cab.
He couldn’t get too close to the top edge lest he start lightening the sky.
To me all this horsing around is only photography because that’s what you started with.
At the Canandaigua Daily Messenger newspaper, from where I retired, Ashby’s photograph would be called a “photo-illustration.” It looks pretty good, but only because Ashby horsed around with the file.




“Peashooter.” (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The September 2015 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is Boeing P-26A “Peashooter.”
I’ll let Wikipedia weigh in, since my WWII warbirds site rightly doesn’t think the Peashooter is a WWII warbird:
“The Boeing P-26 Peashooter was the first American all-metal production fighter aircraft and the first pursuit monoplane used by the United States Army Air Corps. Designed and built by Boeing; the prototype first flew in 1932, and the type was still in use with the U.S. Army Air Corps as late as 1941 in the Philippines.
The project, funded by Boeing, began in September 1931, with the Army Air Corps supplying the engines and instruments. The design, which included an open cockpit, fixed landing gear and externally braced wings, was the last such design procured by the USAAC as a fighter aircraft.
The diminutive ‘Peashooter,’ as it became affectionately known by service pilots, was faster than previous American combat aircraft. Nonetheless, due to the rapid progress in aviation design in the 1930s, its design quickly became an anachronism, with its wire-braced wings, fixed landing gear and open cockpit. The Curtiss P-36, Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Hawker Hurricane, with enclosed cockpits, retractable landing gear and cantilever wings, all flew for the first time in 1935, just three years later than the P-26.
However, the P-26 was easy to fly, and it remained in service until the U.S. entered World War II.
Deliveries to USAAC pursuit squadrons began in December 1933 with the last production aircraft in the series coming off the assembly line in 1936, designated the P-26C. Ultimately, 22 squadrons flew the Peashooter, with peak service being six squadrons in 1936. P-26s were the frontline fighters of the USAAC until 1938, when Seversky P-35s and Curtiss P-36s began to replace the P-26.
The first Boeing P-26 to experience major combat operation was a Chinese Model 281. On August 15th,1937, eight P-26/281s from the Chinese Nationalist Air Force 3rd Pursuit Group, 17th Squadron, based at Chuyung airfield, engaged eight out of 20 Mitsubishi G3M ‘Nell’ medium bombers from the Kisarazu Air Group sent to attack Nanking.
The Chinese Boeing fighters helped shoot down two of the four Japanese bombers destroyed that day without suffering any losses. Subsequent engagements between the Chinese Peashooter pilots and pilots of the Imperial Japanese Navy flying the Mitsubishi A5M ‘Claudes’ were the first aerial dogfights and kills between all-metal monoplane fighter aircraft.”
I’m only vaguely familiar with the Peashooter.
It looks like a turkey, hardly the fabulous airplane a Mustang or Lightning is. Or even a P-40 Warhawk. How far aviation advanced in just a decade.
It’s hard to think of the Peashooter as a fighter-plane compared to what came later.
But after the biplanes of WWI, the Peashooter was an advance.

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1970 455 Buick GS.

—The September 2015 entry of my Jim LePore muscle-car calendar is a 1970 GS (Grand Sport) Buick, 455 cubic-inches.
I had to call my brother-in-Boston. He’s an authority on GS Buicks, since they’re from his time as a teenager, and after my time.
Plus the musclecar he likes most is a GS Buick, the GSX, which is the most extreme GS.
Years ago I took a photo of a GS Buick at an antique car-show, but it’s the small motor.

350 GS Buick. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I didn’t realize at that time you could get a GS Buick with their small V8, 350 cubic-inches.
Apparently there were four versions of the 455 cubic-inch GS Buick, up to and including the “Stage-IV,” the GSX.
The car pictured is a Stage-I, only 370 horsepower, but still a lotta torque.
It’s only a single four-barrel carburetor. A Stage-IV had two four-barrel carbs, cold-air induction, etc.
GS Buicks generated the highest torque-rating of any musclecar, although not by much. The car pictured is 510 foot-pounds.
And the drag-guys know, torque is what matters, especially at the start, and halfway through the quarter-mile.
For those not hip to drag-racing, it’s start to the end of a flat quarter-mile drag-strip, side-by-side, two cars.The first to finish is the winner, which means a lot of factors are at play. A car might be faster, but might have started shortly after the winning car.
If you jump the start (start early), you’ve “red-lighted,” and your run doesn’t count.
Winning drag-racers were usually consistent starting, and could get a jump on their competitor.
Once the cars get rolling, perhaps half-way through the quarter-mile, horsepower becomes pre-emanate, except that’s just maintaining a heavy torque-input at higher engine-speeds.
In which case how well an engine can breathe may limit the horsepower generated. Chrysler’s “Hemi” (“hem-ee;” not “he-mee”) was an excellent breather.
A 455 GS-Buick had big valves, helping it breathe well at high revs.
My guess is this car local, as are all cars in the calendar.
Its license-plate is New York, obliterated with Photoshop.
Well, it ain’t the hyper-extreme GSX, but it is a 455 GS Buick.
And convertible GS Buicks are rare.
In fact, I wonder if it’s actually the 350 GS Buick I photographed long ago, and the calendar is claiming it’s a 455. It’s the same color.
But the side-medallion on the car says “GS 455.”