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.
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| Ergo, a louvered trunklid. |
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| Deuce Three-Window. (Photo by BobbaLew.) |
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.
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| 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.) |
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.
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| A BL-2, in Monon colors (except for the grime). (Photo by Chris Edmonds©.) |
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.”)
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| A six-axle Alco road-switcher. (Photo by BobbaLew.) |
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| TrainMaster. (Photo by Steve Sloan.) |
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| A Washington Terminal RS1. (Photo by Edward Ozog.) |
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.
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| The first Mustang. (Photo by Jeff Koch.) |
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| The fifth generation. |
—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.
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| McQueen in the “Bullitt” car |
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.”
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.
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| The way it ran. |
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.
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| Zora. |
That didn’t happen until 1963.
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.
Labels: Monthly Calendar Report
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