Monthly Train-Calendar Report for September 2017

Stacker 26T charges through Altoona. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—Finally!
The September 2017 entry in my own calendar is eastbound Norfolk Southern doublestack 26T passing through Altoona (PA).
I was tiring of this location. It seemed like every time I arrived my brother had already set up there.
It’s under a street overpass, one of at least four in Altoona. Trains are so frequent, road-crossings at grade would be unsafe. Plus traffic would be snarled.
The railroad divides into express tracks and drag tracks through Altoona. 26T is on the express tracks. The drag tracks are visible at left.
Heavy coal extras usually get the drag tracks.
Anything on the drag tracks is in-your-face. The express tracks are a ways away.
I’d already shot this location many times, so what to do this time?
I cranked a lotta telephoto, and aimed west down the tracks through town.
The background is always messy. Visible is the roofed pedestrian overpass from Altoona’s Amtrak station to Railroaders Memorial Museum.
Altoona was once the basis of Pennsylvania Railroad’s operations. Shops were there, plus facilities to test and build locomotives.
Altoona is at the base of Allegheny Mountain, Pennsy’s biggest challenge when it was built in the 1840s.
If I crank telephoto that pedestrian bridge is less a distraction.
“26T, 238; One; CLEAR!” on our railroad-radio scanners.
“I see lights,” my brother says. It’s 26T miles away curving onto the long straight through town.
Here it comes! Under 17th St. bridge next to venerable Alto Tower, now closed. Then the roofed pedestrian bridge, then the unroofed overpass also toward the museum.
Around the bend it charges, headed east toward Rose, probably for a crew-change.
Click-click-click-click-click! Multiple shots — one has to be right. This is probably second or third to last.
The railroad is now Norfolk Southern. But it’s still Pennsy to me. It’s Pennsy’s railroad, and I’m a Pennsy man.




Way to go Mr. Shull! (Photo by Mark Shull.)

—The September 2017 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a Norfolk Southern freight of auto-racks near Madison, NC.
Photographer Mark Shull, a Charlotte (NC) Roadway Shop supervisor, has been in this calendar before. He’s one of the regulars. Another is NS conductor Roger Durfee of Cleveland.
But what I’ve seen of Shull is not that inspiring. Shull always had the May flower-shot. Extravagant color perhaps a little over-saturated with Photoshop. (I’ve done it myself, but ya can’t push much.)
He hasn’t always been flowers. Once he shot an NS freight passing a large cornfield. That cornfield filled the foreground. He had to get the farmer’s permission.
Once he photographed a train on tracks across from a pretty bungalow. The bungalow was his background. He asked the homeowner’s permission — the owner probably got a reprint.
No way could a railfan like me live in such a house. Sleep would be impossible.
This time he snagged a really good one; the kind I encounter occasionally.
I look in my viewfinder, and why did I never see this?
The train looks like solid auto-racks. Enclosed excessive-height cars with two or three floors inside. —Two for trucks.
My brother and I see auto-racks often at Allegheny Crossing.
A solid auto-rack train is light.
100+ 120-ton coal gondolas will need help over Allegheny summit.
But not auto-racks.
The train pictured has two locomotives. I’ve seen auto-racks with only one. And that’s to take on Allegheny Mountain, although it may need help.
My guess is photographer Shull, like me, is doing multiple shots. Where would we be if not for multiple shots?
Shull has the locomotives right where they belong. I’ve done it myself. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam! One has to be right.




Can there be an All-Pennsy calendar without a GG-1? (Photo by Fred Kern.)

—As I’ve said many times, can there be an All-Pennsy calendar without a GG-1?
The September 2017 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is Tuscan-red GG-1 #4912, pulling the Congressional Limited through Frankford Junction in north Philadelphia in 1952.
P-5 freighter #4788, followed by 4792, passes going the other way.
Pennsy’s GG-1 was the best locomotive they ever had. To me the GG-1 is the greatest locomotive of all time.
My family moved to northern DE in 1957. I began seeing GG-1s often, and most times they were doing 80-90 mph!
Pennsy’s New York City to Washington DC electrified line, now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, went through northern DE.
It was still stick-rail, 33 feet per section, but 143 pounds per yard, and maintained to the hilt. A GG-1 could put the pedal-to-the-metal.
A GG-1 could crank 9,000 horsepower to railhead. That’s incredible! Current diesel locomotives are good for 4,400 horsepower,
9,000 horsepower was temporary. At that rate traction-motors overheat.
But it could be applied long enough to rocket a train out of a station.
In 1959, at age 15, a neighbor and I travelled to Philadelphia to pursue railfaning.
We returned via Pennsy’s Congressional, which by then had coaches.


(Please disregard the switcher.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Pictured is our train, the “Congo,” approaching Philadelphia’s 30th Street station.
26 cars pulled by a single GG-1.
We quickly boarded the last car, then left.
Once on the main, the engineer put the hammer down!
Within minutes we hit 80 mph, then 90.
No wonder my grandfather was impressed.
He rode the Congo, and it blew him away.
From then on, every time he saw a GG-1 express on that electrified line: “must be the Congressional,” awe in his voice.
Quite a few GG-1s were saved. Best is #4935 at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.


#4935. (Photo by Tom Hughes.)

It was repainted the cat-whisker scheme, five gold pin stripes, as first applied by industrial-designer Raymond Loewy at the behest of Pennsy.
4935 is Brunswick-green, how most GG-1s were painted.
4912 is one of the few Tuscan-red GG-1s, and it’s still cat-whiskers.
By the time I arrived in DE, most GG-1s were no longer cat-whiskers. A wide single yellow stripe replaced the pin stripes.
But it still looked pretty good — it followed the original striping. I only saw one cat-whiskers.
4896, long ago scrapped, is the picture on this computer’s desktop.


#4896. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

4896 is the only GG-1 I went through, at Washington Union Terminal in early 1966.
That desktop picture is the only photograph I got of 4896. I saw it many times, but only snagged one photograph.
Those steeple-cab P-5a’s (there were both steeple-cab and box-cab versions — all GG-1s are steeple-cab) were supposed to become Pennsy’s electrified engines.
Electrification on PRR predates the GG-1.
But the GG-1 was so successful the P-5s were regeared for slower freight-service.
I didn’t even know they existed until I started seeing them.
The GG-1s lasted many years. —I used to say to an old high-school railfan “When the last GG-1 is retired, we’ll know we’re getting old.”
They were developed in the ‘30s, yet a few lasted until 1983 assigned to New Jersey Transit. Steam locomotives might last 30 years; diesels maybe 20.
No GG-1s are operable. They had transformers filled with PCB-based fluid, found to be cancerous.
Those transformer casings were drained and filled with sand or concrete.




2-8-2 L-1 Mikado maneuvers Freight Advance S-81 north of Catawissa, PA, in 1946. (Photo by Robert Malinoski©.)

—In 1946 I was two years old. Pennsy was dieselizing, but steam-locomotives were still in use. Which means I was lucky enough to see ‘em in actual revenue service.
The September 2017 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a 2-8-2 L-1 Mikado maneuvering cars of an Advance Freight in 1946.
In 1946 our family lived in a small Philadelphia suburb in south Jersey, just north of Haddonfield, an old Revolutionary War town. —I remember a cemetery with headstones dating back to the 1700s.
Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines, a 1933 merger of Pennsy and Reading lines to counter too much parallel track toward south Jersey’s seashore, went through Haddonfield.
PRSL was still using steam locomotives, usually Pennsy or Reading, although PRSL had a few of its own.
PRSL was why I became a railfan, and “dirty old steam-engines” (my mother) were the reason.
My father would take me by bicycle trackside in Haddonfield to watch the PRSL steamers.
I was thrilled!
Free entertainment! (My cheapskate father loved it.)
The locomotive engineers were whistling for grade-crossings in Haddonfield, but my father claimed they were whistling at me!
I’ve been a railfan ever since.


Where it all began — the EXACT location. (Photo by Robert Long©.)

We’d go back to Haddonfield’s passenger station where the trains stopped. I was terrified of thunderstorms, but could stand right next to a panting steamer.
Notable is the L-1 Mikado is the same boiler and firebox as Pennsy’s famous K-4 Pacific (4-6-2) passenger engine. It’s the K-4 boiler/firebox on 2-8-2 underpinnings.
Both the K-4 and the L-1 were developed at the same time, 1914.
Pennsy was hot for standardization.
Many earlier Consolidations (2-8-0) were also built as Atlantics (4-4-2). Later Consols (H-8 through H-10) are also the G-5 4-6-0 commuter engine, and also the E-6 Atlantic (4-4-2).
The K-5 4-6-2 Pacific (not successful — only two were built) was the gigantic boiler/firebox of the I-1 Decapod (2-10-0). Plus the M-1 4-8-2 Mountains were also the boiler/firebox of the Decapod, although with an added combustion-chamber.
I don’t think I ever saw anything other than Consols on PRSL. South Jersey railroading wasn’t very successful. About the only freight-traffic was around Camden across from Philadelphia.
East of Camden was nothing. Except for shipping produce, and serving small farm-supply outfits. There was sand-mining, but that’s not coal or heavy industry.
Haddonfield did have a small coal-supply for residential heating. The only freights I saw were Consolidations delivering loaded hoppers to that coal-supply. The hoppers got shoved on a trestle to dump into trucks below. And by the late ‘40s coal-heat was withering away.
The main traffic was only in Summer: Philadelphians to the Jersey seashore to escape city heat.
Peak traffic in summer meant south Jersey’s railroads often had to use rented power and equipment, plus pay heavy overtime. Pennsy and competing Reading used to race to the seashore, sometimes exceeding 100 mph through south Jersey’s Pine-Barrens.
PRSL came about because Pennsy’s line and Reading’s Atlantic City Railroad served many south Jersey seashore points, and also had parallel lines to Atlantic City.
Auto-travel was also replacing train travel, and distances in south Jersey were short. To the seashore from our house was about 50 miles = fire up the Chevrolet.
At the turn-of-the-century train travel to “da showah” was a viable option. By the ‘50s, as roads were improved — and the state was doing it — train travel to “da showah” fizzled.
PRSL was response to the failure of south Jersey railroading.
But I did see steam locomotives in actual revenue service. I remember a rusty K-4 pulling a horse-track race excursion in 1956.
The last steam-powered train I saw was in 1957: a Consol powered peddler-freight heading east out the railroad toward Atlantic City. I saw it from a Piper Tri-Pacer at maybe 1,000 feet; first time flying.
Pennsy quit using steam in late 1957. Here we see a 31 year-old L-1 Mikado still in revenue service in 1946.
It’s more than I saw. PRSL wasn’t serious. Railroading in south Jersey filled the need before auto-travel and trucking.
The old Pennsy (PRSL) line to Atlantic City remains, now operated by Jersey Transit. Although I think Conrail Shared Assets delivers coal to Atlantic City’s power-plant, and may own the railroad.
Shortlines own some of the other ex-PRSL railroads.
Into Camden through Haddonfield is now the extremely successful PATCO rapid-transit. It’s below grade through Haddonfield, so my beginning vantage-point can’t be repeated.
PATCO goes into Philadelphia over a much earlier rapid-transit that used what is now called “Ben Franklin Bridge.” When built it was called “Delaware River Bridge.”
My uncle claimed he built that entire bridge single-handed with only a toothpick (“Marcy, it’s everywhere”).
My paternal grandfather claimed he was first across that bridge in his ’34 Packard when it opened in 1926. (Ditto).
The caption is unclear. It says “maneuvers” instead “leads.” —#1799 may be a yard shifter.