Monthly Calendar-Report for January 2016

WHAT LUCK! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—Last January my brother and I went to Altoona to photograph trains in snow.
It wasn’t extreme, but it had snowed some.
Years ago my wife and I went to Altoona, and found four feet of snow in Gallitzin (“gah-LIT-zin;” as in “get”) atop Allegheny Mountain, where we were staying.
That was back when my wife was still alive, and we were chasing trains with my friend Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”) of Altoona.
I convinced my brother we should go to Tyrone (“tie-RONE;” as in “own”) north of Altoona, where the old Pennsy main turned east through a notch toward Harrisburg.
The January 2016 entry from my own calendar is what I got in Tyrone.
04T, the eastbound Amtrak Pennsylvanian, is approaching its Tyrone station-stop.
A Nittany & Bald Eagle local is in the Tyrone yard waiting for Norfolk Southern 11A to clear. Norfolk Southern has trackage-rights on Nittany & Bald Eagle, the old Pennsy Bald Eagle Branch up to Lock Haven.
Norfolk Southern 11A is heading off the N&BE toward its reconnection with Norfolk Southern’s main through Tyrone.
WHAT LUCK! I managed to snag all three trains in a single picture.
And one is Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian, state-sponsored, the only remaining passenger-train on this storied line.
The train at right is 11A, entering Tyrone from Nittany & Bald Eagle.
And there was that Nittany & Bald Eagle local waiting in the yard.
Nittany & Bald Eagle is built heavy. It can support a Norfolk Southern coal-train, which I have seen.
The coal is going to an electrical power-plant east of Williamsport. Nittany & Bald Eagle connects to Norfolk Southern’s Buffalo-line in Lock Haven.
11A is not a coal-train. It’s mixed-freight from Northumberland (PA).
We took this picture, and others, then zoomed north out of Tyrone along Nittany & Bald Eagle.
11A, and eastbound 10A, use the Nittany & Bald Eagle trackage-rights.
10A arrived after 04T, and we were hoping to snag it as it headed toward Lock Haven.
We heard a train, but it was the Nittany & Bald Eagle local, it’s second-hand Geeps in Run-8.
As we drove back toward Altoona, 10A was still down in Tyrone waiting for the local to get off the N&BE main.
We could also see the old Pennsy signal-bridge at McFarlands Curve.




First Winner. (Photo by Anthony Randall.)

—As far as I know, the January 2016 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is the first time photographer Anthony Randall won a place in the Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar.
It’s okay, but I don’t think it’s that good.
But at least it’s not only the ex-Pennsy main across PA; and many contest-winners have been along that line.
The picture was taken in Salisbury, MO; that’s a Missouri Farmers Association grain-elevator in the background.
The train is all articulated car-carriers; that is, two car-carrier bodies mounted on a single articulated underframe.
The cars use a regular freight-car truck at each end, and a single wheel-set truck under the articulation point. Such that an articulated car-carrier can carry almost twice what a regular car-carrier can carry.
The carriers were modified to carry completed Ford Transit vans.
Auto-carrier trains aren’t very heavy, not like a unit coal-train. Car-carriers aren’t carrying 120 tons per car.
Which may explain why the train is getting by with only a single EMD SD-70.
Although the train is also empty.
The SD-70, at 4,000 horsepower, was EMD’s attempt at a high-horsepower road-locomotive.
EMD was playing catchup with General-Electric, who was successfully marketing road-locomotives of 4,000 horsepower.
2512 is not wide-cab. It’s an SD-70, not SD70-M (“Modified” = “comfort-cab”)
Not too long ago a train of car-carriers derailed and piled up in Altoona. It made a mess, and a lot of valuable cargo was lost.
It’s not like derailing a unit coal-train. A finished automobile may be worth 30-60,000 dollars — or even more, and there may be 30 or more per carrier.
An articulated car can carry 60 or more cars.




A Deuce roadster. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)

—The most desirable hotrod of all time starts with a ’32 Ford roadster.
The January 2016 entry in my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is one of these results: the Rick Reed deuce roadster.
Stripped of its fenders — not even cycle-fenders.
Pretty much a “hiboy,” but the top is squashed, and it has a “dropped” front-axle — which means the axle-ends (a beam-axle) have been heated and bent to drop its center mounting-point below stock.
Dropping the front-axle is a standard hotrod procedure. It also renders a forward rake, an aggressive stance.
I call it a “hiboy” because it’s the stock body still atop its stock frame.
This gives it a nasty look with its squashed top.
Many hot-rodders lower the ’32 body down on the frame-rails. Some even take sections out of the carbody sides.
The ’32 Ford is essentially Edsel Ford, who despite his cantankerous father, Old Henry, was obsessed with making Ford cars look good.
The Model-A is also Edsel Ford. He was using styling he used on Lincoln, by then a Ford product.
That squashed top is about the only thing I find wrong with this car — and I’ve seen many deuce hotrods, many in this calendar.

Ergo, a louvered trunklid.

Deuce Three-Window. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Best of all are the open roadsters with a louvered trunklid.
I remember one being in this calendar, but that picture is long-gone from this computer.
The open-top roadsters look best without a top, a Californy hotrod. Can’t rain, or (gasp!) snow.
What I prefer is the chopped three-window deuce coupes. At left is a picture I took at a car-show. My friend Jim LePore (“luh-POOR”) did better. I would have used his picture, but it has the date in the image, and I can’t get rid of it.
This car looks great, but that top needs to be ditched.
There is NO WAY you could drive this thing with that top in place. —Unless the seats are so low to the floor you could.
(That louvered roadster looks like that.)
Even then it would be a challenge.
Which makes it a trailer-queen.
A friend of mine, since deceased, used to say “what fun is a hotrod if you can’t drive it?”



First feeble example of what later became a deluge. (Photo by Dave Ingles.)

—The January 2016 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is railroading’s first road-switcher, an Alco RS-1.
“Road-switcher” meaning a hood-unit, as opposed to a “covered wagon,” the full-width carbody units with which railroads dieselized.
Much like a yard-switcher, except a small hood is ahead of the cab, at the end opposite the prime-mover (the engine), which is the long hood.
Alco introduced the idea in 1941, a locomotive that allows better vision than a cab-unit.
I’ll let Wiki weigh in:
“In 1940, the Rock Island Railroad approached Alco about building a locomotive for both road and switching service.

Grand Santa Fe “covered-wagon” F-units, complete with the famous “war-bonnet” paint scheme. (I have a friend who wants to paint his silver Ford van with this scheme.)

The hood unit configuration of the RS-1 pioneered the road-switcher type of diesel locomotive, beginning the move away from the carbody units used on most diesel locomotives before then.”
Most diesel locomotives didn’t last beyond 20 years, so railroads that dieselized with carbody units were soon trading their original purchases.
And when they did they moved to road-switchers.
EMD was hesitant to cop Alco’s great idea, at first introducing the BL-2, still not a road-switcher, but more crew-friendly than a covered-wagon.

A BL-2, in Monon colors (except for the grime). (Photo by Chris Edmonds©.)

The engine was the same as a “covered wagon,” except it had foot-platforms for crew to stand on while switching.
Not many BL-2s were sold — they were perceived as EMD’s “ugly duckling.”
Meanwhile Alco had run with the road-switcher concept, the RS-2 and then the RS-3.
The RS-2 had 1,500 and 1,600 horsepower, and the RS-3 was 1,600 horsepower.
EMD finally caved and brought out their GP7, with short and long hoods patterned after the Alco road-switchers.
The race began, as more-and-more locomotive manufacturers brought ever more horsepower to road-switchers, that made them more road power.
The manufacturers also began cutting down the short hood and turning around the engines, so the crew could more easily look out ahead.
EMD was loathe to increase its horsepower until it brought out its GP9 at 1,750 horsepower.
The GP9 was immensely successful. 4,112 were built, along with 165 cabless B units.
EMD also built an “SD” version with three drive axles per truck instead of two. SD stands for “Special-Duty;” GP stands for “General-Purpose.”
(Railfans called anything GP a “Geep.”)

A six-axle Alco road-switcher. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

TrainMaster. (Photo by Steve Sloan.)

A Washington Terminal RS1. (Photo by Edward Ozog.)

Alco also made a six-axle version of its road-switchers and Fairbanks-Morse brought its “TrainMaster” to market: 2,400 horsepower, six axles.
That first RS1 was only 1,000 horsepower.
By now the railroads run only road-switchers as road-power, 4,000 horsepower or more.
Alco built road-switchers until they tanked when GE split from Alco and began making road-switchers of their own. Alco’s last hurrah was its Century series, but this lowly RS1 was the start — essentially a switcher with an added hood. Later four-axle Alco road-switchers have the number “4” as a prefix; six-axle the number “6.”
Pennsy had 26 RS1s.
Alco went defunct in 1969.The most famous RS1s were those of Washington Terminal in Washington DC. Washington Terminal is the switching venue at Washington Union station.
A WT RS1 was transferred to Tioga Central, a tourist railroad on an ex-New York Central branch to Williamsport in central PA.
My wife and I rode it years ago.
Dave Ingles (J. David Ingles) was editor of Trains Magazine after David P. Morgan retired. He always impressed me as a “louver-counter” = the way to distinguish a GP7 from a GP9 was to count louvers.
To me a railfan doesn’t worry about such arcana. What I want is “assaulting the heavens.”




Mustang! (Photo by Dan Lyons©.)

—I was unable to find a Motorbooks Musclecar calendar this year, that is, one with pictures by Peter Harholdt.
Musclecar calendars galore are available from many sources, but I was tiring of musclecars anyway, so decided to try a “classic-car” calendar.
Those are available in quantity too, but I’m loathe to purchase something after a long-ago experience with an earlier “classic-car” calendar.
It was an el-cheapo print job, perhaps 75 pixels per inch. I could see the ink-dots. I had to send it back; which was when my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar began.
I’m sorry, but I have print-experience, and have seen printing at much tighter resolutions than 75 pixels per inch. My own calendar is usually over 300 pixels per inch, and my calendar-printer (Shutterfly) doesn’t allow less than 100 pixels per inch.
My guess is my other calendars are toward 200 pixels per inch, with my WWII warbirds calendars over 300 pixels per inch. I use “despeckle” in my Photoshop-Elements to soften the dots scanned from my printed calendar, but it hardly does anything — that I can see. All my calendars are pretty tight.
So I decided to try a “classic-car” calendar, with hopes I wouldn’t hafta return it.
So therefore:
The January 2016 entry in my Tidemark Classic-Car calendar is a 1967 Mustang GT/A.
I notice a current Mustang is also in the picture, probably a 2013-14 or so, since 2015-16 has been updated even more.

The first Mustang. (Photo by Jeff Koch.)

The fifth generation.

In my humble opinion......
—The first generation are the best Mustangs of the older cars, and
—The fifth generation (the first retro Mustangs) are the best-looking Mustang of all.
It’s also my opinion that most current Mustangs are getting away from what to me was the original marketing concept = a sporty appearing car that was more a plodder.
The early Mustangs are based on the American Ford Falcon, with the windshield/roof moved back so it has a long hood and a short rear-deck.
Many ferrin sportscars were built that way.
GM could have done that, but they were tied to their Corvair, an air-cooled rear-engine Volkswagen Beetle wannabee.
In fact, were it not for the strong demand for the sporting Corvair Monza variant, the Mustang might never have been made.
Even then, Ford was afraid after the Edsel catastrophe.
The Mustang was a huge gamble, and the earliest Mustangs were as much grocery-getters as sporting machinery.
Look at what it is, and a Mustang is essentially a gussied-up Falcon, different body, but same underpinnings.
It’s not a Corvette. The rear seats are tiny, but a Mustang can seat four. I remember going to some gig while in college. A friend had a garden-variety Mustang his father had bought, and there were five of us — three crammed in the rear.
So Carroll Shelby’s GT-350 is essentially NASCAR modifications with a high output engine.
Carroll Shelby was a sportscar racing-driver. He was instrumental in bringing the AC Cobra to market; originally the British AC sportscar with a high-performance American V8 engine — originally a Ford 260 cubic-inch V8.
The car pictured is a standard Ford option-package — the Mustang GT/A. It ain’t Shelby.
Ford was trying to make the Mustang look more butch, but made it look worse, in my opinion.
The roof was same as before, but the front and rear facias were more substantial.

McQueen in the “Bullitt” car

I remember Steve McQueen chasing bad-guys through San Francisco in the movie “Bullitt,” a 390-GT: a Mustang GT with a hot-rodded 390 cubic-inch V8.
Even the Bullitt Mustang is a car with which you could buy groceries.
If you could stand the gas-mileage.
In my humble opinion Ford is trying to resurrect the performance Mustangs of yore.
At long last the Mustang comes with independent-rear-suspension. Earlier Mustangs were the Model-A layout of the Falcon: engine up front, then the tranny, and then a solid rear-axle with integral differential.
The Corvette has IRS; a frame-mounted differential with individual drive-axles.
Corvette began using independent-rear-suspension in 1963.
IRS enhances cornering. A solid rear drive-axle with its heavy integral differential, likes to jump sideways through bumpy corners.
My Vega GT handled extremely well, but liked to jump sideways in bumpy corners .... due to its solid rear-axle and differential.
The newer Mustangs are no longer the garden-variety grocery-getters they once were.
They pretend to be musclecars.
And as much as automotive historians think the Mustang is watershed, to me the SmallBlock Chevys from 1955 on are more watershed.
For once Detroit was manufacturing motors as interesting as European motors, comparable to Ferrari or Jaguar.
General Motors had a really great motor — the SmallBlock — with which to start the ponycar market.
But Ford beat them to it.




Ready for work in Oil City, PA. (Photo courtesy Mitchell Dakelman Collection©.)

— The January 2016 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is two Pennsy H class Consols (Consolidation; 2-8-0) ready for work in Oil City, PA.
The lead engine is an H-9.
It looks like the two locomotives will doublehead a train.
Pennsy had over 5,000 2-8-0 Consolidations.
Although that’s over a long time, but Pennsy still had many.
Consols were being used as road-power, double and triple-headed when necessary.
Lines east of Pittsburgh, like across PA, seemed to require a plodder, which Pennsy Consols were.
Plus Pennsy would retain its Consols as yard-switchers. They never really got into heavy 0-8-0 yard-switchers.
Lines west of Pittsburgh were less challenging, with locomotives like other railroads had, like 2-10-2 Santa Fe’s. In PA Pennsy replaced its Consols with larger 2-10-0 Decapods, an added driver-set.
Pennsy never really developed a Decapod replacement. They were poring investment into electrification.
So when WWII deluged Pennsy with its tsunami of added traffic, they were saddled with tired old locomotives. And the war-board wouldn’t allow development. Pennsy had to shop elsewhere, the Chesapeake & Ohio SuperPower 2-10-4 Texas, sort of a mismatch. Strong, but SuperPower was more not running out of steam at high speed.
Pennsy used Consols all over its system. The Consol was its standard peddler-freight power. The first place I saw a Pennsy Consol was in Haddonfield, NJ, where a Consol dragged out and switched the sidings.
Probably the last steam-locomotive I saw in early 1957 was a Consol on PRSL (Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines — “REDD-ing,” not “READ-ing”).
Although it might have been a 2-8-2 Mikado — I couldn’t tell. I was at 1,100 feet in a Piper Tri-Pacer, my second flight.
So here we have two Pennsy Consols firing up in Oil City, PA, center of the northwestern PA oil-boom.
Only three Pennsy Consols are left. One is H-10 #7688 stored unserviceable.
One is H6sb #2846 stored inside unserviceable.
The other is H-3 #1187, a real antique, built in 1888, stored inside over a pit so people can look at the workings. It’s even slide-valves and Stephenson valve-gear.
All are at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania outside Strasburg, PA.
The earlier Consols were Pennsy road-power; the H-10 more a plodder.
Pennsy was practicing standardization. The boiler on the H-8 through H-10, all pretty much the same, was also used on the E-6 Atlantic (4-4-2) and the G-5 Ten-Wheeler (4-6-0).
The boiler on the H-6 was also used on the E-3 Atlantic.




There will always be an England. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—Boobie-prize this month goes to my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar, an Avro 652A “Anson” Mk.1.
Never heard of it!
It’s not even on my WWII warbirds site.
I’ll let Wiki weigh in:
“The Avro Anson is a British twin-engined, multi-role aircraft that served with the Royal Air Force, Fleet Air Arm, Royal Canadian Air Force and numerous other air forces before, during, and after WWII.
Developed from the Avro 652 airliner, the Anson, named after British Admiral George Anson, was developed for maritime reconnaissance, but found to be obsolete in this role.
It was then found to be suitable as a multi-engined aircrew trainer, becoming the mainstay of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
By the end of production in 1952, a total of 8,138 had been built by Avro in nine variants, with a further 2,882 built by Federal Aircraft Ltd. in Canada from 1941.
In 1933, the British Air Ministry proposed that the Royal Air Force (RAF) acquire a relatively cheap landplane for coastal maritime reconnaissance duties, as a supplement to the more capable, but expensive flying boats that the RAF used for maritime reconnaissance.
The Air Ministry requested tenders for aircraft to meet this requirement, with Avro responding with the Avro 652A, a modified version of the Avro 652 twin-engined, six-seat monoplane airliner.
The Air Ministry placed orders with Avro and de Havilland for single examples of the Type 652A and the de Havilland DH.89 for evaluation against this requirement late in 1934, with evaluation and selection of a design for production to take place by May 1935.
The Avro 652A first flew on March 24th, 1935 at Avro’s Woodford factory, and was evaluated against the DH.89M by the RAF Coastal Defence Development Unit at Gosport from May 11th to 17th.
The Avro aircraft proved superior, and was selected as the winner of the competition on May 25th.
Air Ministry Specification 18/35 was written around the Type 652A, and an initial order for 174 aircraft, to be called “Anson,” was placed in July 1935.
The first production Anson made its maiden flight on December 31st, 1935, with changes from the prototype including an enlarged horizonal tailplane and reduced elevator span to improve stability. Deliveries to the RAF began on March 6th, 1936.
The Anson Mk I was a low-wing cantilever monoplane with retractable landing-gear.
It had a wooden wing, of plywood and spruce construction, while the fuselage was constructed of steel tubing, mainly clad in fabric, but with the aircraft’s nose clad in magnesium alloy.
It was powered by two Armstrong Siddeley Cheetah IX seven-cylinder air-cooled radial engines, rated at 350 horsepower each, driving two-bladed metal propellers.
The aircraft’s retractable tailwheel undercarriage was manually operated, requiring 144 turns of a crank handle situated by the pilot’s seat. To forgo this laborious process, early model aircraft often made short flights with the landing gear extended at the expense of 30 mph of cruising speed.
Initially, the Anson was flown with a three-man crew (pilot, navigator/bomb-aimer and radio-operator/gunner). But from 1938 on it operated with a four-man crew.
Armament consisted of a single .303 inch Vickers machine gun fixed in the forward fuselage and aimed by the pilot, with an Armstrong Whitworth manually operated dorsal gun turret fitted with a single Lewis gun.
Up to 360 pounds of bombs, consisting of two 100-pound and eight 20-pound bombs, could be carried in the aircraft’s wings.
Ansons used for training were fitted with dual controls and usually had the gun turret removed, although aircraft used for gunnery training were fitted with a Bristol hydraulically-operated gun turret similar to that used in the Bristol Blenheim.
A total of 11,020 Ansons were built by the end of production in 1952, making it the second most numerous British multi-engined aircraft of the war (after the Vickers Wellington).”
So the Anson was actually a cheap-shot. An airliner converted to a warplane, although that’s debatable.
It’s not the fabulous hotrods like the Mustang, the Corsair, or anything from Ironworks (Grumman)
Or the British Spitfire.
But I guess it was fairly important.
I look at it and think “There will always be an England.”

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Flopped back. (Ya chopped off the tail!)

—My niece’s boyfriend bought me a calendar.
He’s a car-guy like me.
It’s a “Classic-Car” calendar, but pretty good.
The cars aren’t identified, so I hafta go on my own.
So, the January 2016 entry of my Jerry Powell Classic-Car calendar is a 1957 fuel-injection Corvette.
(His name is Jerry Powell.)
It’s a nice calendar, but it looks like it was not done by car-guys — that is, people more obsessed with profit than generating a calendar of cars they liked.
A ’57 Fuelly is worth venerating, but the calendar-production was a cheap shot.
At least the print-resolution is pretty good. I can’t see dots.
So I noticed scrip was in the side-cove. Did it say “fuel-injection?”
It did, but it was backwards.
Hmmmnnn......
So I looked up at the windshield, and the steering-wheel was indeed on the right side. The picture had been flipped.
Well, I can do that too. A simple Photoshop function.

The way it ran.

So what I ran above was flipped back. What’s at right is the picture as it ran in the calendar.
I suppose it looks better right-to-left, but to get that you re-locate the car, not use a simple Photoshop trick.
Which true car-guys notice, that the steering-wheel is on the wrong side, and “fuel-injection” is backwards.
Nevertheless, a ’57 Fuelly is extremely important.
In 1958. when I was 14, I pedaled my ratty Rollfast balloon-tire bicycle up to Fairfax Shopping Center, near where we lived in northern DE.
Three Corvettes were parked in front of the bowling-alley: two black ‘57s, and one multicolored ’56. One ’57 was fuel-injection.
Suddenly four dudes burst from the bowling-alley, and swaggered into the Corvettes.
I immediately pedaled up to where the shopping-center parking-lot emptied onto Route 202, the four-lane main drag through our town.
I knew I was about to witness AN EVENT.
Sure enough, the ‘Vettes came up to the exit, and clawed out onto Route 202, spinning tires, clouds of rubber-smoke, their motors wound to the moon!
Sounded like 8,000 rpm, although I’m probably exaggerating.
6,000-7,000 is more like it. The limit would be valve-float.
Whatever, Chevy’s SmallBlock was as much a turn-on as Ferrari or Jaguar.
With their lightweight valve-gear they would rev to the moon.
I’ll never forget it; that’s goin’ to my grave.
So Jerry’s calendar has that fuelly backwards, but it triggered a fond memory.
That incident at Fairfax Shopping Center fueled my love of Chevy’s SmallBlock the next 20-30 years.

Zora.

It also fueled hot-rodder Zora Arkus-Duntov, who hired on at General Motors, and became head-honcho at Corvette. His mission was to make Corvette as good as that motor.
That didn’t happen until 1963.

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Westbound auto-racks charge into Portage off the 1898 bypass. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—One more picture, the cover of my own calendar.
This picture was taken during our most recent trip, October of 2015.
It was taken off my tripod, with my telephoto lens.
Only my tripod pictures worked. Everything else, hand-held with my smaller lens, blurred — a function of unstableness.
I’ve since decided everything has to be shot off a tripod. That way —1) I can determine the actual picture location, and —2) I don’t end up with blurred pictures.
A tripod at Allegheny Crossing is okay, since pictures are set up in advance.
I can’t use blurred pictures in my calendar. Before my unsteadiness, what I did was crop to the final image.
In fact, this picture is cropped quite a bit, mainly the right side. The cover-picture of my calendar is square.
The original Pennsy main through Portage still exists. It’s used as a coal-branch, since it passes a loadout that was once a mine.
The mine was Sonman Shaft Mine (owned by Koppers of Pittsburgh).
63 miners lost their lives in an explosion at the mine back in 1940.
Railroad-east of the mine, the original Pennsy main had torturous curves near and through the town of Cassandra (“kuh-SANN-druh;” as in “Anne”).
The bypass was meant to get away from all that. It starts in Portage, then goes straight toward Lilly, bypassing Cassandra.
Cassandra is the location of Cassandra Railfan Overlook, an old bridge over the bypass.
The bridge was kept so miners from Cassandra could get to coal-mines across the tracks.
Cassandra Railfan Overlook is my favorite train-watching location. Trains hammering up The Hill on Track One are assaulting the heavens!
It’s even better than Horseshoe Curve, because you’re in shade.

Chopped/Pureed

What this thing needs is a 350 Chevy. (Photo by Jerry Button.)

I should explain the above picture:
Years ago, when my mother was in her 80s, she’d shop at the local grocery.
My sister, who lived nearby in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, would take her.
My mother was semi-crippled by then, so she’d take a powered cart.
With it she’d clobber fruit displays in the produce department, sending an entire display of pears or plums to the floor.
“Oh my golly!” she’d shout, then reverse her cart into another display. Or clobber a shopper.
So here I am doing the same thing; mainly clobbering shoppers.
I was lame from the following operation.
It ain’t easy driving a powered shopping cart. You have to be deft.
You don’t just back the sucker up without looking first, lest you back into some poor shopper.
I didn’t clobber any fruit displays, but many shoppers got clobbered.

Yr Fthful Srvnt began an incredible adventure Monday, December 7th — “A date that will live in infamy” per President Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941.
On December 7th, 2015, my left knee was changed out, replaced with a new bionic knee.
This was done by Canandaigua Orthopaedic. (Woops! my spellcheck is going ballistic because the old spelling [including the “a”] is apparently of-the-Devil.)
The surgeon was Dr. Bruce Klein, a partner in Canandaigua Orthopaedic, and a really swell guy.
I say that because over 71 years I’ve had my share of jerks practicing medicine.
One I called “the pusher,” because he was always prescribing pills — as if pills solved every ailment.
I think he was taking kickbacks from the pharmaceuticals. He was eventually fired by his health-group employer. —That was back when we had to join a health-group for medical care.
My current “medical-provider” (we called ‘em “Doctors” years ago) is also pretty groovy. We trade wisecracks and snide remarks; e.g. “in case of death, please get medical help immediately.”
I been tryin’ to get this knee changed for some time. Klein diagnosed I was bone-on-bone almost a year ago.
It was probably all the running and foot-racing I did years ago, plus my dog slamming me to the ground on ice almost three years ago.
The results of that slam seemed to heal at first, but then returned about two years ago.
My current medical-provider also prescribed X-rays, and diagnosed there was little cartilage left.
So he referred me to Canandaigua Orthopaedic.
We tried physical therapy, but I was still bone-on-bone. I was hobbling, and could no longer walk my dog any distance.
I was still able to walk my dog around my property, but it was slow and painful.
There were various hoops to negotiate. It seems everyone has to collect their fee — not from me, my health-insurance. Urologist, heart-doctor, dentist.
You don’t change out a knee willy-nilly.
Everything has to be hunky-dory to avoid infection.
My biggest log-jam at first was my urologist. Urology Associates of Rochester, where I’ve gone for years, was vague. Klein was justifiably concerned my prostate might not pass urine when he removed the catheter post-operation.
But then Urology Associates of Rochester diagnosed I had the beginnings of prostate cancer so my prostate was removed.
Suddenly the logjam was gone. Urology Associates of Rochester cleared me for surgery, and wheels began turning.
My left knee would get changed out December 7th.
For 71 years I’ve used that knee; it’s been slammed and abused many times. Knees weren’t designed to last 71 years under such abuse. The life-expectancy for humans used to be 40-50 years. That knee had been pressed beyond normal limits — particularly a crazy bouncing dog.
—So began my great adventure.
I was carted to the hospital by my friend who daycares my dog, or did when I worked out at the YMCA. This friend and I used to work at Canandaigua’s Messenger newspaper. He, like me, is a dreaded Liberal (gasp). We laugh at Donald Trump, with hopes the NSA isn’t listening on what appear to be his shop’s sprinkler system.
“Please take off all your clothes, on put on this attractive flowered hospital gown.”
“Oh yeah,” I thought. “This is the hospital. I’m on display for all and sundry.”
Klein appeared, marked my left knee, then lights out.
Klein apparently did his job.
I awoke in the post-op recovery room, oxygen in my nose.
—Now would begin recovery from a complete knee-change.
As I recall, I was in the hospital two days, and was then transferred to MM Ewing Continuing Care Center (“you-wing”), a nursing-home next to the hospital.
For rehab, monitoring, pills, hospital-food, etc.
(MM’s husband George Sr. was head-honcho of the Messenger newspaper when I began.)
I was deduced as a “character,” continually bombarding them with questions, sick jokes, etc.
“WHOA! What do you mean by that?”
And “Does this apply to me?”
They told me I was doing wonderful, to which I kept saying “if you say so.”
I was there over a week. When I was told I’d be discharged my second Friday, I said “You gotta be kidding!”
But I thought about it, decided I was improving, and wasn’t that bad.
I would be going home to my brother-in-law, who had flown up from FL to help me. I was fairly stable with a wheeled-walker.
In-home outpatient physical-therapy would visit twice a week, and physical-therapy would continue elsewhere when I was cleared to drive.
—So I’ve been home a couple days with a bionic knee.
Brother-in-law and I visited Mighty Weggers in Canandaigua to get sustenance. My niece and her boyfriend did this too.
They got me a powered cart — “bumpa-cars,” I call ‘em. Then I’d drive it into the store.
“I got this thing floored!” I yelled at patrons walking past. Hilarious, not some stodgy old geezer quietly buying groceries.
“What this thing needs is a 350 Chevy!”
So here I am amazed. Two major operations down, and still one to go — I have a torn rotator cuff.
My beloved wife is gone, and I had a stroke 22 years ago.
Yet I’ve done all this.
Like it or not, I’m still here, ornery as ever.
I think they really enjoyed me at that nursing-home.
A character determined to get well, who made them laugh.

• “Jerry Button” is my brother-in-law.
• My friend and his wife own a pet-grooming shop. His wife is president.
• “Mighty Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester where I often buy groceries. They have a store in Canandaigua.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered.

The fastest sled in northern Delaware

A Flexible-Flyer. (Compliments of the Museum of Toys.)

Back about 1960-’61, when I was 16/17, I owned the fastest sled in northern DE.
It was my father’s Flexible-Flyer.
It was much more flexible than originally designed, since my father had broken both siderails, and repaired them by wrapping them in string.
A Flexible-Flyer is steerable. A bar in front bent the runners to turn. But my father’s repair meant the runners could bend much more than originally designed.
And apparently he used it enough to make it extremely fast.
My sister’s boyfriend, who later became her first husband, whom she later divorced, bought a sled that would supposedly skonk mine.
But if we started together, I was usually 30 yards ahead of him over 100 yards; and usually finished about 50 yards farther than him when we finally coasted to a stop.
He was crestfallen. He tried everything to make his sled faster than mine, but nothing worked.
He waxed the runners. I didn’t hafta do that.
We sledded various locations. Best was a golf-coarse near where I lived.
The hill was terraced. We did jumps.
We also had to watch out for sand-traps — difficult to see in the dark.
It was brutally cold. We came in a friend’s old ’48 Chevy fastback. We had to scrape the frost off the inside of the windshield.
Nothing beat my father’s old Flexible-Flyer. It was indeed the fastest sled in northern DE.
Our most dangerous adventure was sledding in Brandywine Park in central Wilmington, DE.
Again it was brutally cold.
It was dangerous because our sledding-hill, the path down to the Brandywine River, crossed the road down into the park twice.
That road was little traveled, especially when icy in Winter, but sometimes we had to divert = crash into the snow-berm to stop.
Not much sledding took place in Brandywine Park. That sledding trail was a concrete walkway, and patches of bare concrete could stop our sledding.
The other guy was also more interested in submarine races with a pretty blond named Sandy.
Not me, of course, since I am a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of Sexual Relations, such that I was totally unworthy of female attention.
My father’s Flexible-Flyer was triumphant a while, but finally one night I crashed a terrace at that golf-coarse.
I pulled out the runner on one whole side of the sled. My sled could no longer be the fastest sled in northern DE.

• From age-13 on I was a resident of a suburb north of Wilmington, DE.

What today?

File this in my “What fantastical new iPhone trick am I gonna learn today” box.
Similar to grocery-store visits: “Who am I gonna see today?”
The other day (Sunday, November 29th, 2015) I ate out with my niece, her young daughter, and my niece’s mother, my sister-in-law.
My sister-in-law is my wife’s brother’s first wife, and my niece is their only child.
My niece was born in 1969, which makes her 46. Her daughter just turned 21.
Her daughter and I have iPhones, and she is much more tech-savvy than me.
Back-and-forth with wisecracks, snide remarks, putdowns, verbal potshots.
I drove city bus, so parried much worse. Fortunately my potshots make her laugh.
“Okay, what do I do here?” I asked.
Not too long ago I clicked my iTunes music-icon, and it locked up my Apple music page.
I was expecting that to still happen, at which point I would have said “now what?”
But the Apple music-page displayed a previously unseen radio-button that accessed my iTunes files.
So of course young Miss Tech-Savvy clicked it in a nanosecond, implying I was stupid for not seeing it.
Well, no radio-button before.
Apple’s iPhone operating-system instituted a password feature a few years ago. The phone won’t work unless the password in entered — a feature the NSA hates; they can’t load up your phone with porn, and arrest you as a prevert.
So every time I use my iPhone I hafta get past that password lock, which only I know.
“What about your thumb?” niece’s daughter asked.
iPhone has some trick to recognize your thumbprint to unlock your phone.
“So show me,” I said.
Niece’s daughter already uses that on her iPhone. She no longer enters her password.
We fired up my settings, and went about setting up my thumbprint to unlock my phone.
After maybe three minutes, well beyond the attention-span of my niece’s daughter, I had it recognizing my thumbprint.
This takes place under the “home” button.
But all it is is a quicker way to unlock your phone; the thumbprint function doesn’t disable the password function.
Which means the NSA could still unlock my phone after 89 bazilyun tries on their super-computer.
So how does Apple do that? Read my thumbprint on top of the “home” button?
Willikers! I learn some fancy-dan iPhone trick every day.
No wonder the Windoze guys think Jobs was the Devil personified.
They copy some Apple-trick, then advertise the Hell out of it, as if they invented it.
Like Apple’s “Siri” (“sear-eee”), for example, or cloud storage. Siri was such a whiz-bang idea, Microsoft copied it, then rolled it out while still wonky, so it embarrassed the Microsoft head-honcho when it muffed a command.
(Although Apple’s Siri was merged from an outside company.)
Microsoft advertises cloud-storage like they invented it. Apple had it first, but didn’t trumpet it.
This has happened with my iPhone before.
Not long after I got it, I wanted to put my own MP3 of a steam-locomotive whistle — I’m a railfan, and have been all my life — on my phone as its ringtone.
Back in 1993 my brother-and recorded a video of a restored steam-locomotive down in WV.
I had the same ringtone on a earlier Android phone.
I did this because years ago I took a railfan trip down into PA, and all the others on the trip had a diesel-locomotive horn as their ringtone.
They all had the same ringtone. A phone would ring and “Whose phone is that?”
A “Ringtone-Maker” app made that MP3 my ringtone.
So now if someone calls I know it’s my phone.
You can also individualize ringtones for a specific caller, but I haven’t done that.
Then I discovered “Siri.” Now just about all my phonecalls are by Siri, although sometimes Siri doesn’t work.
I guess Siri is over the Internet, so doesn’t work if I’m not connected.
My car has Microsoft “Sync” with a Siri equivalent. But it’s much less reliable.
Siri works.
Not too long ago I was shown how to reboot my phone, and how to move app icons on my “home” screen.
So now it’s recognizing my thumbprint. What next?
Thumbprint function established, my niece’s daughter observed she could never teach old people.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m 71 years old and had a stroke. I ain’t supposed to be able to do this.
I do it by asking questions” (gasp).
“How did you get there?” I ask. “Fat lotta help you are. You’re not showing me anything. You’re just doing it yourself.
Well sorry, I ain’t tuning out! I’m gonna drive you nuts with questions.”
At the Messenger newspaper, where I began as an unpaid intern after my stroke, I fell into the habit of developing computer tricks to reduce our production time.
“I don’t know what he’s doing, or how he does it. All I know is producing that stockbox went from three hours to five minutes.
“Stockbox in five minutes? That’s not possible! Page 2A was always the last page filed. We were waiting for that stockbox.”
“Can too,” I said.
I showed him the trick.
“You had a stroke? You’re not supposed to be able to develop stuff like this.”
“Grady, if I have Meg doing the Post websites, I need your magic macro on her computer.”
“Beep-beep-beep-beep.” I heard her working it; it triggered her computer’s alert-sound.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• “NSA” is National Security Agency.
• “Jobs” is Steve Jobs, deceased, founder of Apple Computer.
• “Grady” is the nickname I was given at the Messenger; see info at right. We also had an employee named “Meg Lund.” —The Messenger was also the Post suburban newspapers beside the Canandaigua Messenger = Messenger-Post Media.

Monthly Calendar-Report for December 2015

Four Norfolk Southern pushers shove a heavy coal-extra into the tunnel atop Allegheny Mountain. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—The December 2015 entry of my own calendar is what my brother and I call a “cheat-shot.”
It looks like four Norfolk Southern locomotives are pulling a heavy westbound out of the tunnel atop Allegheny Mountain in Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get”), PA.
But actually it’s four Norfolk Southern helper locomotives pushing a heavy eastbound coal-train into the tunnel.
I wonder how many know this? I had it captioned as “pushers.”
It helps to know the 6300-series are helper locomotives.
So I wonder if whoever ripped this picture out of my calendar at my veterinarian knew?

The January picture. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

Obviously that person loved this picture, but it’s helpers pushing the tail end of the train that’s my January picture — which was taken by my brother.
A pot-shot, sorta. I don’t usually photograph helper locomotives. But sometimes I do. Shut up and shoot! —You never know what you’ll get.
6303 is an SD40-E, an EMD SD-50 the railroad modified and downrated for helper service. The SD-50 was 3,500 horsepower, and somewhat overstressed. The SD40-E is 3,000 horsepower.
Norfolk Southern had been using double-sets of 3,000 horsepower SD40-2s as helpers on Allegheny Mountain for years. The SD40-2s were finally replaced with these SD40-Es.
It was brutally cold when we shot this picture. Gallitzin and its tunnel are atop Allegheny Mountain. It can be windy, and is usually 10-15 degrees colder than down in Altoona.
That’s enough for it to be raining in Altoona, yet snowing up in Gallitzin.
My wife and I came to Gallitzin once years ago, and the snow was 4-5 feet deep. The main drag had been closed so it could be cleared with front-end loaders.




A replica of one of the most famous hotrods of all time. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)

—The December 2015 entry in my Oxman Hotrod Calendar is a replica of one of the most famous hotrods of all time, the “Bell Auto Parts” track-T raced by Grant Lambert.
The car was featured on the cover of one of the first HotRod Magazines in 1948. I have reprints of some of those magazines, but I can’t find the car. I have to go by what the calendar says.
The car is a 1925 Model-T Ford modified for racing; essentially just the T-bucket roadster body, tail-end (turtle-deck), and frame-rails.
It has the classic hot-rodded Ford FlatHead V8, souped up with triple carbs and open exhaust.
The cylinder-heads look like high-compression aluminum.

Note Quick-Change diff under turtle-deck. (Photo by Scott Williamson.)

Note red paint in the dropped front-axle beam, and the foundation of hot-rodding. (Photo by Scott Williamson)

The Ford FlatHead was the foundation of hot-rodding, cheap, available, and easy to soup up.
An entire industry sprang up providing high-compression aluminum cylinder-heads, radically reground camshafts, and multi-carb intake manifolds.
It’s interesting to page through my 1948 HotRod reprints and see all the ads for ways to soup up the FlatHead.
The FlatHead isn’t very sophisticated, a joke compared to now, but many were souped up, most by amateurs in the backyard.
The “Bell Auto Parts” racer was more professional. That front radiator shroud is hand-formed aluminum. As were the belly-pans this car also has.
This replica has a T-10 four-speed transmission, and I wonder about that. The original was built in 1946, and the T-10 wasn’t available then. —The original probably had an “in-and-out” gearbox, a racing application.
The car also appears to have a Quick-Change differential. And note the red detailing in the dropped front axle-beam.
The car is gorgeous enough to run all the calendar-pictures. Like the back and the motor.
I subscribed to HotRod a few years, mainly my final year at high-school and my freshman year of college.
But I discovered an issue of Car & Driver Magazine at the campus laundromat, and decided it was much more interesting = it had writing that was much better.
I still subscribe to Car & Driver. I also subscribed to Road & Track, but gave that up years ago.
Car & Driver is since sometime in 1964.




Yet again, but looks pretty nice. (Photo by Willie Brown.)

—The December 2015 entry of my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is another Powhatan mine-run shot by Willie Brown.
Brown is a train-engineer, and works this line.
It’s a coal-train from the mine going down to the Ohio River so the coal can be loaded onto barges.
Just about every picture Brown has had in this calendar, and there are quite a few, has been this mine-run.
It’s hard to resist a snowfall. Already my brother is suggesting we go to Altoona in January, since snow pictures can be extraordinary, even if it’s brutally cold.
With any luck we’ll get what Brown got here; wind hasn’t blown the snow off the trees yet.
So hillsides look like a scene from “Doctor Zhivago,” crystalline.
Recently my brother and I were in Gallitzin, and some would-be photographers strayed into our picture. They eventually walked away.
One came back to talk to us.
“How come you guys are way back here?” he asked.
“So that hillside can be our background,” we said.
“Oh yeah,” said the guy, as he set up beside us.
“This is a really great photograph.”
HELLO; surrounding scenery is what makes a great photograph; not just the subject.
6352 is another SD40-E rebuilt and modified by the railroad from an SD-50. At 3,500 horsepower, the SD-50 was overstressed. The SD40-E rebuilds are downrated to 3,000 horsepower.
The mine-run is probably downhill. It could be done with only a single unit.
Getting that heavy train back up the hill would probably take three or four 4,000 horsepower road-units, plus pushers.




IN YER FACE! (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

—The December 2015 entry of my Ghosts WWII warbirds calendar is the front-end of a P-40 WarHawk.

Tiger-Shark and non Tiger-Shark. (Photo by Philip Makanna©.)

It’s not painted the famous “Tiger-Shark” scheme, although it seems a variation.
The Flying Tigers were a volunteer force of American pilots that fought the Japanese early in the war as part of the Chinese Air Force.
The Tiger-Shark scheme was later applied to many military planes. I’ve even seen it applied to a lowly Piper-Cub.
Many of these later applications look ridiculous.
But it looked perfect on the P-40 with its giant scoop-mouth radiator-intake.
The P-40 is powered by a water-cooled Allison V12. It needed a radiator-intake.
Later airplanes put that radiator someplace else, but the P-40 and P-38 had it right up front.
The plane pictured has another paint-scheme I’ve never seen. It uses that radiator-scoop for inspiration.
I’ve seen P-40s without teeth. The Tiger-shark scheme is excessive, but looks great — much better than later applications.
A Piper-Cub? Fer cryin’ out loud!
No doubt photographer Makanna had a lot of telephoto on this picture.
Yet it looks derring-do.
Makanna is probably in the open back seat of a Texan trainer.
“Now buzz me,” Makanna radios the P-40 pilot.
WHOA! Look out! My take is they almost collided.
Yet out of that Makanna got this dramatic picture.




Westbound on the “Broad Way.” (Photo by Robert F. Collins©.)

—I don’t think this picture is that good, but it’s the cover-shot for my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar.
The December 2015 entry of this calendar is Pennsy Mountain (4-8-2) #4872, pulling a 122-car westbound past Bailey, PA along the Juniata (“June-eee-AT-uh”) River on the Middle Division.
My mother pronounced it “Juanita.”
This was the Pennsy that was. Long freights across PA serving the east-coast megalopolis.
The original Pennsy from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh became a cash-cow.
The Allegheny barrier had been breached at Altoona, opening up the midwest and west.
New York was first with its Erie Canal, and later the New York Central Railroad.
Pennsylvania had Allegheny Mountain blocking trade with the nation’s interior, but Pennsy breached it just west of Altoona. Part was Horseshoe Curve, a long circumnavigation of a valley that made climbing Allegheny Mountain possible without steep grades or switchbacks.
The state tried earlier with an inclined-plane portage railroad tied to its cross-state canal system.
But it was difficult and slow. Plus canals froze in Winter.
Pennsy was private enterprise, not state-sponsored.
It was mainly a response to the fact the state’s combined canal and railroad was cumbersome.
Pennsy was rewarded mightily. It merged feeders to its main at Pittsburgh, and also New York City, Baltimore, and Washington DC.
It became the largest and most powerful railroad on the planet.
Pennsy, of course, is gone. It merged in 1968 with New York Central, and New York, New Haven & Hartford, and quickly went bankrupt.
Other east-coast railroads also became bankrupt. The east-coast railroads had heavy taxes and expensive transit districts. They also had highway competition. and could not do flexible pricing.
That was a reflection to when railroad freight-transit was a monopoly.
Trucking didn’t have that, and furthermore governments were funding and maintaining trucking’s right-of-way, which also made it untaxable.
The Penn-Central bankruptcy precipitated Conrail, at first a government attempt to straighten out the east-coast railroad mess.
Conrail became successful and privatized, and considered selling to CSX Transportation. But Norfolk Southern wanted part, and got it when CSX and NS struck a deal. Conrail broke up and sold in 1999, most of its ex-New York Central lines going to CSX, and the ex-Pennsy line across PA going to Norfolk Southern.
Even now the ex-Pennsy line across PA is quite busy.
I listen to an an Altoona-area railroad-radio feed over the Internet and trains are continuous.
I bet you could shoot this same picture today. Two or three GE diesels would be on the point moving those 122 cars west toward Altoona at 40 mph or more.
And look at that first car. It looks like a wooden hopper-car, probably good for 30-50 tons. The coal-cars in the train look like 70-tonners.
Coal-cars now carry 120 tons; and I remember when 100 tons was revolutionary.
I don’t know as railroads back then would support 120 tons, particularly with jointed-rail. —The rail in that picture is jointed.




Hemi RoadRunner. (Photo by Peter Harholdt©.)

—The December 2015 entry in my Motorbooks Musclecar calendar is a 1971 Hemi RoadRunner (“hem-EEE;” not “he-MEE”).
The Plymouth RoadRunner, introduced in 1968, was one of the most successful marketing-ploys of all time: performance on-the-cheap.
As introduced, RoadRunner wasn’t maximum performance. Money was in the engine and transmission; everything else was dirt-cheap. RoadRunners had bench-seats, essentially the el-cheapo taxicab body with a performance motor and transmission.
The motor wasn’t the expensive maximum motor. It was a 383 four-barrel, strong enough to skonk SmallBlock Chevys in street-races.
The ploy was to market good performance without the expensive trim and bucket-seats of the GTX.
In other words, you didn’t have to get a GTX to skonk early G-T-Os and hot-rodded SmallBlocks.
Plus you weren’t tuning for speed. All you were doing was buying the car.
By 1972 the GTX became a RoadRunner option. A RoadRunner could be fleshed out, and this RoadRunner has the Hemi mega-motor.
The RoadRunner concept was faltering, as was the whole idea of musclecars, pilloried by emission regulations and heavy gas consumption.
But you could still get performance on-the-cheap: a 383 four-barrel with four-on-the-floor.

First generation — a ’69.

Personally, I prefer the early RoadRunners, the el-cheapo taxicabs. It’s still a big car, but early RoadRunners looked pretty good.
I wonder if my friend at college ever had a RoadRunner?
His name was Karl Kuntz, and his last car I remember was a red ’64 Plymouth two-door coupe with 383 four-speed.
It replaced his earlier 413 Chrysler 300 he beat the daylights out of.
He even got it in a ditch once, and tore off the entire exhaust system trying to back it out.
I’ll never forget his flying back into our college unmuffled at 130 mph! What a sound!
He let me drive his ’64 once, and I quickly had it up to 120 on the clock.
It was fun, but it was big.
I bet he follows NASCAR.



Take down your laundry! Call the EPA! (Photo by John Dziobko, Jr.)

—The December 2015 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar would make a steam-locomotive fireman wince.
It’s a Pennsy Mikado (2-8-2) smoking up Harrisburg’s yard.
Steam-locomotives generally burned soft-coal, which could be sooty.
In northeastern PA, steam-locomotives burned anthracite, a rocky hard coal in the area.
Having few impurities, it burned cleaner than soft-coal, and had a higher carbon content. But it needed a bigger firebox grate, since it didn’t have the heat-content of soft coal.
Such locomotives had “Wooten” fireboxes, much wider and larger than usual.
The Wootens were so large, the locomotive cab had to be put ahead of the firebox, a so-called “Camelback.”

Central of New Jersey Camelback Atlantic (4-4-2) #592. The gigantic Wooten firebox is visible, with the engineer’s cab up ahead. (This locomotive is on display in Baltimore, inoperable.) (Photo by Mitch Goldman©.)

The Fireman was still behind the firebox, shoveling anthracite coal into it, but the engineer was up ahead.
So a soft-coal fired steam-locomotive spewed smoke and soot out the stack — sometimes even burning embers, which could start a fire.
Firemen were on notice to make their fire burn clean = a clean stack. Railfans love billowing smoke, but not railroad management.
And Maudy had a fit if she had her laundry out next to the railroad, and passing trains showered her sheets with soot.
She’d call the railroad, and the suspect fireman got called on-the-carpet.
This was years ago before laundry-dryers. Maudy hung out her laundry to dry.
And supposedly a relative’s roof caught fire next to the railroad.
I’ve ridden behind restored coal-burning steam-locomotives, and I had to wear swim-goggles to keep the cinders out of my eyes.
I rode behind Nickel Plate 765 years ago, and came home looking like a coal-miner.
The Mikado in this picture is the same boiler/firebox used on Pennsy’s famous K-4 Pacific. Pennsy did that: standardization. Both the K-4 and the L-1 Mikado shared the same boiler/firebox.
Pennsy had other examples of standardization. The H-8 through H-10 Consolidations (2-8-0) all use the same firebox/boiler as the E-6 Atlantic (4-4-2) and the G-5 Ten-Wheeler (4-6-0).
The I-1 Decapods (2-10-0) and the K-5 Pacific (4-6-2) have the same boiler/firebox, but only two K-5s were built. There were 598 I-1s.
Not enough weight on the drivers for the K-5; too powerful = too slippery.
The entire Altoona area would fill up with smoke. I’ve seen pictures.
There were so many steam-locomotives chuffing about, the area would fill up with smoke. It was between mountains that acted like a bowl.
I doubt steam-locomotives could exist in times like now. They belch too much visible smoke.
Not too long ago I chased Nickel Plate 765 on excursions from Buffalo to Corning (NY) and back on the old Erie Railroad main.
I could tell where it was due to smoke and the smell of burning coal. And it was burning clean.

---

Are they kidding?

—WHAT?
The December 2015 entry of my Jim LePore muscle-car calendar is just a garden-variety ’61 Chevy Bel Air hardtop.
Well, it is the bubble-top, which looks much better than a sedan.

The most beautiful Detroit car ever made.

But in my humble opinion the best-looking bubble-tops were the ’61 Pontiacs.
I was 17 when the 409 Chevy debuted.
I was smitten. A Detroit car-manufacturer had broken the 400 cubic-inch barrier.
The 409 was the 348 truck-engine bored, stroked, and hot-rodded .
They had to be hand-inspected, since casting-porosity made them leaky, and bored cylinder-walls were thin.
Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins of Jenkins Competition in southeastern PA (I think it was “Grumpy” — it may have been Dave Strickler), raced a ’62 at Cecil County Drag o way, where I hung out summer-nights in 1965.
(Does Cecil County still exist? It’s got a website.)
They nicknamed him “Grumpy” because he was very untalkative, and sullen when talked to.

The actual car.

That 409 was unbeatable until Dodge and Plymouth Hemis started showing up. Jenkins later went on to become a premier drag-racer racing tuned SmallBlock Chevys.
But he had to buy a Hemi of his own to remain competitive at that time.
So it’s impossible for me to think of this plain-jane Bel Air as a musclecar. It needs to be a 409.

---

Proof of my rule. (Photo by Fred Kurtz.)

—My 2015 Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar arrived recently, and it has a December 2015 entry, the above picture.
I include it because it’s an example of my “scenery makes the picture” dictum. The locomotive is not in your face. It’s quite a ways back, so the scenery can be prominent.
The locomotive is the Central of Georgia Heritage-unit, CofG being one of Norfolk Southern’s predecessors.
The unit is one of 20 brand-new road-diesels painted the colors of predecessor railroads. They are in regular service.