Monthly Train-Calendar Report for November 2017

BAM! Got it! (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—“Hey man! Where we goin’?” I asked my brother.
“Main Street Bridge,” he answered.
“You are not!” I said. “Yer headed for Jackson Street.”
“Nope. Tunnel Inn on Main Street.”
“720 Jackson Street. You are WRONG, dude.”
The November 2017 entry in my own calendar is eastbound 18N, Norfolk Southern auto-racks approaching Jackson Street Bridge atop The Hill in Gallitzin (PA).
This picture goes back a couple years. My brother was still on crutches. He fell off a ladder and broke his leg.
This train was climbing the west slope of Allegheny Mountain, so we set out to beat it to Gallitzin.
It’s on Track Two: signaled both directions. Two and Three use the original Pennsy tunnel. One, nearby, uses New Portage Tunnel. One is eastbound, Three is westbound, and Two can be either way.
Often heavy eastbound coal-trains use Two to avoid One and its “Slide:” at 2.28% slightly steeper than the original Pennsy at 1.75-1.8% average. New Portage is slightly higher than Pennsy’s original tunnel, so incorporates a ramp down to the original Pennsy grade.
Usually come November Yrs Trly starts using snow pictures in my calendar. Like other landscape calendar producers, I began using snow pictures in Winter: December, January, and February, melting snow in March, and maybe a light dusting for November.
It often snows atop Allegheny Mountain in November — even October.
This picture is an exception. Fall foliage is about over — we came too late. But it’s still around somewhat.
I’ve wanted to use this picture for years. But for October it’s late.
We slammed into adjacent Gallitzin Tunnel-Park, and both leaped out. The train was coming around the curve.
My brother tossed his crutches, and hobbled across the street. BAM! Got it! Would it be okay?
Later that night we looked at what he photographed, and his crutchless potshot was excellent.




A “double.” (Photo by Tim Calvin.)

—The November 2017 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar looks like something my brother and I might shoot.
Or rather what I might do, since my brother is more into “in-yer-face” three-quarter locomotive shots. Which is fine, since I use plenty of his photographs in my calendar.
I’m more into “artsy” stuff = scenic views.
What’s pictured is what my brother and I call a “double;” two trains in one picture. I got that terminology from Phil Faudi, my railfan friend in Altoona, PA. Doubles are infrequent, although near Altoona we’re more likely to see one.
The double pictured is in Kendallville, Indiana. Two trains in one picture is luck. Photographer Calvin happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Trains around Altoona are frequent enough my brother and I have snagged quite a few.
Phil Faudi conducted railfan “tours” as a business a few years ago. Many of my photo locations are Phil.
My first “tour” we stood on the overpass in Lilly, PA. A coal-extra was slowly hammering up the west slope of Allegheny Mountain on Track One. On his railroad-radio scanner Phil could hear a double-stack approaching on Track Two.
“We’re gonna get a double, Bob.”
BAM! Got it!
I was thrilled. Never before had I got two trains in one picture.


My first double! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

I ran that picture years ago in my first calendar.
My brother and I snagged many since, plus me alone. Train frequency around Altoona is like that.
The railroad is a main artery of trade between the northeast and the rest of the nation. It used to be the Pennsylvania Railroad, but is now Norfolk Southern. The other main artery is what used to be New York Central across NY state. That railroad is now CSX.
I searched Kendallville in my Google-Maps. It looks like the railroad pictured is Norfolk Southern’s line to Chicago, ex NYC, I think.




You better not have yer laundry out! (Photo by John Dziobko.)

—The November 2017 entries in my All-Pennsy color calendar and my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar are equally uninspiring.
My All-Pennsy color calendar is M-1 (4-8-2) #6967 leading eastbound freight past “Lewis” Tower in Lewistown, PA.
Looking at this picture I see how filthy railroading was back then.
“Dirty old steam-engines,” my mother used to say.
Soot covers everything, tracks, the locomotive, especially the tower building.
Lewistown is on Pennsy’s famous “Middle Division,” Harrisburg to Altoona. The Middle Division was a final stomping-ground for Pennsy steam, especially the M-1 Mountains.
It’s slightly upgrade, following the Juniata river, then the Little Juniata. Not difficult, a river grade.
The M-1s were perfect, although they had to be coaled halfway to Altoona. Denholm had a giant coaling facility.
Upgrade on the Middle Division an M-1 could maintain 40-50 mph, sometimes faster. Better to not scrap the M-1s in favor of diesels when the M-1s were so perfect.
The picture is 1956. Use of steam on Pennsy ended in late ’57. Pennsy, being a coal-road, favored coal-fired steam locomotion.
Pennsy used to think its M-1 Mountains were the best steamers they had. The M-1s are 1923 on, not a 4-8-4, and only 70 square feet grate-area.
But they had a long combustion-chamber that enhanced coal burning. The M-1 is the boiler and firebox of the I-1 Decapod (2-10-0), but with that added combustion-chamber.
The M-1 was not a high-stepper like Pennsy’s K-4 Pacific.
It’s drivers were only 72-inch diameter, not the 80-inchers of a K-4.
(Still, 72 inches is six feet.)
It’s an “all-purpose” engine, not a boomer-and-zoomer. It hauled freight at a pretty good clip.
But, yer laundry better not be trackside. Everything will load up with soot.
As far as I can deduce, Lewis Tower is no more. The railroad is dispatched from Pittsburgh.




BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM! (Photo by George E. Votova©.)

—The November 2017 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a K-4 Pacific (4-6-2) stomping out of Long Branch on New York & Long Branch Railroad with a commuter-train toward New York City.
NY&LB connected to Central of New Jersey, and eventually became owned by it.
NY&LB became a commuter feeder toward New York City, and Pennsy wanted in. They threatened to build a competing railroad. A competing PRR railroad would have ended CNJ’s NY&LB.
Interestingly, all of that became Jersey Transit. Commuter railroading became too expensive for private enterprise. Commuter railroading toward New York City was turned over to gumint.
The other interesting point is the smoke a steam-locomotive generates. That much smoke would no longer be tolerated. What’s seen here would dissipate, but all one had to do was visit Altoona (PA) in steam-days. It was socked in with smoke = chuffing steam-engines burning coal.
Same thing in China. Power-plants burn coal, and cities sock in. People have to wear masks.
Railfans like to see similar pillars of smoke belching from restored steam locomotives. Crews have to over-stoke, or sand flues. Years ago railroad management poo-pooed smoke. It indicated the fire wasn’t burning well; that the fireman be called on-the-carpet.
Note the heavyweight parlor-car ahead of the combine. Mega-rich separated from the worker-bees.
The picture is 1934. By then Pennsy more-or-less ruled NY&LB.
Ten years later this is the world I was born into. When I started seeing railroading in 1946-’47, Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines (PRSL) was still using steam-locomotives, although usually leased from its predecessors. What made me a railfan were Pennsy K-4s and Reading G-3s in regular revenue service. (Although I preferred Pennsy — that red keystone number-plate.)


Where it all began, EXACTLY. (Photo by Robert Long©.)

The above picture is 1956, about the end of steam on PRSL. Diesels were already in use.
“Where it all began” is another Pennsy K-4, in this case just leaving Haddonfield station, not far from where we lived. I was only age-2 or so when “it all began,” but have been a railfan since.