Monthly Train-Calendar Report for July 2017

Lotta planning here. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—The July 2017 entry in my own calendar is the most satisfying I’ve ever taken.
It slam-dunks the question of how can I successfully include that gorgeous old Tyrone (“tie-RONE;” as on “own”) station-building in an “Allegheny-Crossing” photo?
It’s Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian, which runs in the morning east from Pittsburgh, pulling away from its Tyrone stop.
Tyrone is where the railroad turns east toward Harrisburg, after running along Allegheny front north of Altoona.
I’m not sure the building is the old Tyrone station. I’ve seen another.
It currently houses the Tyrone Area Historical Society.
Over-and-over I’ve tried to include that gorgeous building in a train-picture.
I’ve tried various angles: none worked: —A) the tracks are too far from the building, OR —B) a train blocks it.
I needed eastbound on Track Two, the track nearest the building.
Trouble is, Track Two is normally westbound. There’s one dependable exception: Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian, which uses Track Two to safely make its Tyrone station-stop. Passengers are not required to cross tracks.
Both tracks are signaled both ways, which means dispatchers can send a train west on an eastbound track.
Similarly Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian, can run east on the westbound track.
Sometimes eastbounds get Track Two, but the only train I’m sure of is Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian.
Things are falling into place. I have my eastbound on Track Two.
Next was my location. It’s not part of the station complex.
My brother was driving — I let him drive.
Off into scattershot parking under the interstate overpass. Zagging around we got trackside. Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian, would stop at Tyrone about 9:30-10 a.m.
It was slightly overcast. Direct sunlight wouldn’t work.
Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam! Five or six multiple shots. My calendar shot is probably the last or second-to-last.
Finally got it; that gorgeous building behind the train.
Later at home I decided to boost color saturation with my Photoshop-Elements® — but not much; too much is obvious.
All to boost that yellow building with its green roof.
It was also boosting the train, the blue on that GENESIS® unit.
First time I tried it, after also boosting my October fall-foliage picture.
The main thing is I finally included that building in an Allegheny-Crossing picture.
A large amount of analysis and forethought was involved, and it worked.




Industry on parade. (Photo by Kyle Ori.)

—The July 2017 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a Norfolk Southern SD40-2 serving the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Cleveland.
The calendar says it’s moving coke cars, perhaps retrieving.
Coke is coal degassed, essentially carbon, which will burn. Coal is heated in ovens to produce coke. It’s not burned.
Railroading made the Industrial Revolution possible. This steel plant is the Industrial Revolution exemplified, although much later.
Vast quantities of iron-ore and coke (or coal) are needed to produce vast quantities of steel — stronger than iron.
Visible is the huge infrastructure needed to produce vast quantities of steel.

The Pennsylvania Railroad’s WWII poster. (Art by Dean Cornwall.)

This nation’s response to Hitler and Imperial Japan was smoke-belching plants like this. Coal-smoke and pollution be damned.
I look at this, but don’t see belching coal-smoke. I’m not savvy, but I think I see two blast-furnaces. Giant ductwork is atop each one, perhaps to draw off smoke and burn it again.
To make steel I think coke mixed with iron-ore gets burned in a blast-furnace. I think that’s what melts out the iron. Making steel is after the blast-furnace, when other molten metals and/or carbon are alloyed with the molten iron.
Whatever, the huge quantities of iron-ore and coke (or coal to make coke) are readily transported by railroad.
And they appear to be coke cars. Coal-cars are not as high-sided. Coal is heavier than coke.
Often coal-cars get converted to coke cars by adding paneling that increases side-height.
It’s nice to see something other than road engines in this calendar. It’s also nice to see “Industry on parade.”




PRR Decapod prepares to couple coal-cars for shoving up on Sodus Bay wharf (track at left). (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

—It’s July 4th 1956, and photographer Shaughnessy is at one of his favorite haunts, Sodus Bay wharf up on Lake Ontario, where coal from Pennsy trains was loaded into lake-ship for Canada.
The July 2017 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is PRR I-1 Decapod (2-10-0) #4524 preparing to couple coal-cars to shove up onto Sodus Bay wharf.
The coal will be transloaded into a lake-ship bound for Canada.
Sodus Bay became a terminus for the old Northern Central, in which Pennsy got control in 1861. Actually NC originally went from Baltimore to Sunbury (PA) via York (PA). Pennsy wanted to counter Baltimore & Ohio.
Northern Central later extended into NY.
North of Sunbury were other railroads I don’t know, but they all became Northern Central = Pennsy’s Elmira branch north from Williamsport (PA) into NY.
NC bought the Sodus Point & Southern in 1884 allowing shipment of PA coal on Lake Ontario.
A gigantic wooden trestle-wharf was built at Sodus Bay. Pennsy used it to transload coal into lake ships. The one pictured is the second wharf, which accidentally caught fire and burned in 1971 during dismantling. (The first wharf was smaller.)

The Sodus Bay wharf. (Long ago photo by BobbaLew.)

The line to Sodus Bay was a branch off a line to Canandaigua (NY), or vice-versa. Pennsy ran passenger-trains to Canandaigua, and coal to Sodus Bay.
Most of the Elmira branch was abandoned, although portions remain operated by Finger-Lakes Railway and Ontario Midland.
Finger Lakes operates a segment from Penn Yan to Watkins Glen, junctioning at Himrod to an old New York Central line to Williamsport (PA) south.
Finger Lakes also operates some of that old Central line with trackage-rights, although Norfolk Southern owns it as its Corning-Secondary.
Ontario Midland operates from east of Webster (NY) to a junction with the old NYC Hojack. (That portion of the Hojack is also OMID.)
That junction was the NC’s (Pennsy) Sodus Point & Southern. OMID operates from that junction south to Newark (NY) where the railroad bridged the CSX main and OMID now interchanges.
Both Ontario Midland and Finger Lakes are shortlines.
Shaughnessy took a lot of photographs of Pennsy’s Elmira branch. It was a final stomping-ground for Pennsy steam.
The picture is 1956; Pennsy ended steam in 1957.
From Watkins Glen to Penn Yan was difficult, uphill and torturous with many curves. I’ve driven along it.
As such it was well-suited for Pennsy Decapods = powerful plodders slamming heavy coal-trains to Sodus Bay wharf.


(Photo by Jim Shaughnessy.)

Shaughnessy snagged one of his best-ever photographs there: a Dek up on the wharf. Sodus Point still uses it on its website.

(From the April 2016 Audio-Visual calendar.) (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

This calendar has used this location before. It even looks like 4524. Shaughnessy snags this month’s picture, than jumps across the wharf tracks to snag the April picture in Audio-Visual’s 2016 calendar.





Grunge city. (Photo by Robert Malinoski.)

—Allow the Industrial Revolution, as symbolized by the Pennsylvania Railroad, to take over the bucolic PA countryside, and this is what you get.
Seedy industrial buildings covered with soot.
The July 2017 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is a passenger-train in Altoona (PA) waiting for helpers to get it up Allegheny Mountain.
9838 is an FP-7, four feet longer than an F-7 to accommodate a steam-generator for train heat.
Altoona is east of Allegheny Mountain. It was Pennsy’s base of operations to climb the mountain — its greatest challenge.
Helper locomotives have to be added to make the climb. At least it’s not so steep a train has to be broken up.
Altoona became Pennsy’s shop town. The railroad even built locomotives there.
It became “grunge-city.” The air would be so loaded with coal-smoke it was just about unbreathable. That’s railroad steam-locomotives burning coal.
Altoona is no longer railroad-city, although it still has a giant locomotive shop to the north, Juniata (“june-eee-AT-uh;” not “Juanita,” as my mother used to say) Shops.
The railroad is no longer Pennsy; it’s now Norfolk Southern. And NS still uses Juniata Shops. They were a prime selling-point when NS purchased the old Pennsy line from Conrail.
Most of the old railroad facilities in Altoona are gone, which means the sooty buildings pictured here are probably gone. Gone too are the many railroad yards Pennsy had.
The buildings were called “Altoona Works.” Pennsy even had a testing facility for its locomotives.
Even Pennsy switched to buying its locomotives from outside suppliers when it dieselized.
Works still exists as a control-point on the railroad. It’s next to where Altoona Works was.
The light in this picture is familiar: direct afternoon sunlight exaggerating soot on the buildings.
A mountain to the east is visible; it’s not Allegheny Mountain. The train is headed railroad-west (compass southwest), and will turn right to climb Allegheny Mountain.
That mountain to the east has a notch in it at Tyrone. Little Juniata River goes through, as does the railroad toward Harrisburg.
Allegheny Mountain has no breach.