Monthly Train-Calendar Report for August 2017

Solid crude-oil moves toward the PBF refinery in Delaware City, DE. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—My brother Jack hung around a few hours at Allegheny Crossing before driving home to near Boston, a nine-hour trip for him.
I already left; five hours for me.
It was a beautiful morning, and 64R was headed east toward the PBF refinery in Delaware City.
The August 2017 entry in my own calendar is Norfolk Southern train 64R heading toward Lower Riggles Gap road overpass north (railroad east) of Altoona.
64R is solid crude-oil, all loaded tankcars, except for idlers at each end. The idlers supposedly supposedly protect the crew in a pile-up. Those tankcars have incredible momentum.
I avoid Lower Riggles Gap road overpass, because the railroad is long tangents on each side. I like curvature.
The railroad runs northeast to southwest from Tyrone (“tie-RONE;” as in “own”) along Allegheny front to Altoona, about 14 miles. In Altoona it turns west to cross Allegheny Mountain.
If the sun is out, it’s perfect light in the morning at the east end of the overpass.
That’s what makes this picture work — despite the long straight.
64R is loaded, so it’s heavy. It needed help over the mountain; loaded crude always get help over the mountain.

65R with only one unit, #1111, the so-called “Barcode unit.” (Same overpass looking railroad-east.) (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

64R will go down the Susquehanna River to Perryville on Chesapeake Bay. Then it will go up the Northeast Corridor toward Wilmington, DE.
Before Wilmington it will branch off toward the PBF refinery to unload. Then empty it returns as 65R for another load.
The oil fields are not Norfolk Southern. 64R began near Chicago, handed over from Burlington-Northern Santa Fe or Canadian Pacific.
Westbound may even use Norfolk Southern’s locomotives, although unloaded might have been only one.




A local! (Photo by Greg Ropp.)

—What a joy to see a local in this calendar.
The August  2017 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a local mixed freight in Norcross, GA.
Furthermore, 5080 is one of the old high-nose GP38-2s, probably built in 1973 for Southern Railway.
I wonder how old this picture is, since I don’t see 5080 in the active roster.
5080 doesn’t have the chopped nose that became popular back then. NS has since rebuilt many of its GP38-2s with chop-nose “Admiral” cabs.
Some railroads were chopping the noses of their GP-7s and GP-9s, which were well before the chop-nose phenomenon.
Yet Southern and Norfolk & Western continued ordering high-nose power.
It assumes an engineer and fireman, since the engineer can’t see left. Now that fireman may well be the train-conductor.
I think I see two locomotives, and it’s single track.
Most of Allegheny Crossing is two or three tracks. One section has five tracks = four running tracks, and one storage track.
The multiple track is across Allegheny Mountain. North (railroad-east) of Altoona, both eastbound and westbound are two running tracks, plus a third signal-controlled siding.
After Gray Interlocking, before Tyrone, it’s back to only two tracks.
Snagging a local is not that common. If I hear C42 on my railroad-radio scanner, I know that’s a local.

I think this is C42 at Gray. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Locals run fairly often out of Altoona, but mostly I see long-distance freight pulled by road power.
It’s double-stack (intermodal), trailer-on-flatcar, or unit coal or crude-oil. Grain also runs as unit-trains, as do auto-racks.
Mixed-freights are fairly common, but mostly I see double-stacks. Yard-to-yard mixed freight isn’t that common any more.




Transfer to Enola curves off mighty Rockville. (Photo courtesy Bob’s Photo©.)

—When the Pennsylvania Railroad was proposed back in the 1840s, Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, there were two major natural barriers, Susquehanna River and Allegheny Mountain.
The August 2017 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a long transfer snaking off Rockville Bridge across the Susquehanna.
The Susquehanna wasn’t too difficult. Pictured is bridge number-three.
The first bridge was wood, and I think only one track.
The second was iron, and two tracks.
Still a bottleneck for what mighty Pennsy became.
Pictured is its replacement, four tracks wide, built entirely of stone, opened in 1902.
I used to say “it would take a direct hit from a thermonuclear warhead to take it out, but a washout occurred not long ago. Putting paid to the rumor the bridge had a concrete core. It was stone through-and-through.
Rockville is 3,820 feet long, forty-eight 70-foot arches, almost three-quarters of a mile. The Susquehanna isn’t deep; it can’t accommodate deep-draft shipping.
As such the footiings don’t go deep.
When Interstate-81 encountered the Susquehanna, building atop Rockville was considered. Thankfully it wasn’t done. I-81 crosses downriver on its own bridge.
Rockville is wide enough for four tracks, as originally used. But was cut back to two and three when Pennsy modernized its cross-state mainline.
More trackage was removed by Norfolk Southern after an intermodal container blew into the river. NS now owns Rockville; it purchased the old Pennsy main from Conrail in 1999.
Conrail succeeded Penn-Central after it went bankrupt. Conrail operated both the old Pennsy main, and also the old New York Central main across NY. (That line is now CSX.)
Rockville is no longer the linchpin it was.
Even Harrisburg became a bottleneck = no room to expand.
Enola yard (“aye-NOLE-uh;” as in “hay”) opened in 1905 on the west bank of the Susquehanna across from Harrisburg. Pennsy could thereby avoid Harrisburg.
Pennsy redirected its torrent of freight through Enola, then east on additional lines back to its main.
Enola was also where electrification began. Freight got switched to electric power for lines east of Enola.
Harrisburg still saw plenty of freight, and here we see a single Alco RS-11 transferring a long drag from Harrisburg to Enola.
The RS-11 was fairly successful, Alco built 425, 38 for Pennsy.
1,800 horsepower on two four-wheel trucks. I’m sure RS-11s were also used as road power. They were intended to counter EMD’s GP-9.
The RS-11 is not the so-called “alligator;” that’s the RSD-15. Railfans called ‘em alligators because of their long short-hood — which could be high or chopped.
The RSD-15 was on six-wheel trucks, 2,400 horsepower.
Both are the road-switcher format, initiated by Alco in 1941 with its RS-1.
Dieselization was by cab-units first, but road-switchers were easier to operate, especially backing.
Operation was easier still when the short hood started being chopped. It allowed a full cab-width windshield; the engineer could thereafter see left.




Rare birds. (Photo by Jim Buckley.)

—The August 2017 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is a Pennsy freight toward Enola pulled by two Westinghouse E-3b locomotives. 4996 and 4995 were the only two locomotives in the class, purchased in 1951. Westinghouse built four experimental locomotives, promoted by the desire of electrified railroading to use direct-current (DC) traction-motors, as in diesel-electric locomotives.
The overhead wire on Pennsy was alternating-current (AC). GG-1s were AC, as were most Pennsy electric locomotives. Only the third-rail DD-1s were direct-current.
Alternating-current didn’t degrade over distance as much as direct-current.
Yet the traction-motors in diesel-electrics were direct-current. In order to use overhead wire current with DC traction-motors, it had to be rectified from AC to DC.
Westinghouse’s experimentals used on-board ignitron rectification.
It wasn’t until much later, the ‘60s, that railroading began to use dependable rectification, silicon rectifiers in the E-44.

E-44s. (Photo by Dave Sweetland.)

The E-44 was ignitron rectification at first, but switched to silicon rectification.
“44” stood for 4,400 horsepower, but some E-44s were uprated to 5,000 horsepower.
Pennsy also wanted to replace its aging P-5 freighter fleet. The P-5s were originally passenger engines, but the GG-1s were so successful Pennsy regeared the P-5s  for freight service.
Westinghouse’s experimentals were an effort to replace the P-5, as well as use direct-current traction motors.
The experimentals didn’t work very well. Pennsy put up with ‘em, but they were scrapped in 1964.

An E-2b in Wilmington Shops. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)

Other experimentals were the E-2bs, but they were alternating-current. Only six were built. General Electric built ‘em in 1952, and they were also scrapped in 1964.
There were both box-cab and steeple-cab versions of the P-5. The steeple-cab resulted from a grade-crossing accident that killed the crew in a box-cab. GG-1s are steeple-cab too = not Raymond Loewy (“LOW-eee”); all he did was restyle ‘em.

Both the DD-2 and an E-3c are visible. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the experimentals at PRR’s Wilmington Shops.
I was completely clueless.
It wasn’t until my “Pennsy Power” book by Al Staufer that I knew what I saw. I also saw the one-and-only DD-2.
I still have my “Pennsy Power” books, both I and II — there was a third, but I don’t have it.
Those books are as long as I live, and go to my railfan nephew when I’m gone. —Now even mighty Pennsy is gone.
—The Staufer books identify 4996 and 4995 as E-3bs; the calendar misidentifies ‘em as E-3c; the E-3cs are two six-axle trucks. (The E-3bs have the three four-axle trucks pictured.)
The calendar also misidentifies the actual E-3cs as E-2bs.
I trust Staufer; that calendar has mucked up before.
Also, the calendar says the train is eastbound — the light tells me it’s westbound. (Although I may have Enola’s track layout wrong. As I recall, electrification is into the east side of the yard — like the train is approaching Enola from the east.)