Monthly Train-Calendar Report for December 2017

Going away, Dudes. (SD40Es push 10G up The Hill.) (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—The December 2017 entry in my own calendar is eastbound train 10G pushing through Portage (PA) toward the summit of Allegheny Mountain.
The two SD40Es are going away. They’re pushing the back of 10G, helping it up The Hill.
Over the top, the pushers stay on, and engage dynamic-braking. Their traction-motors are converted into generators that help hold back the train.
Prior to diesel-electric locomotives there was no “dynamic-braking” equivalent. The train had to depend on car-brakes to prevent a runaway down a hill.
A descending train was usually swathed in brake-shoe smoke. Other tricks were employed to enhance freightcar brake performance.
Thanks to dynamic-braking all that is history. And helper locomotives no longer turn at the summit to return downhill for another push. They stay on to help the train descend.
Visible is 6304. Anything 6300 on Norfolk Southern is SD40E. They were converted by the railroad from an EMD SD-50, a locomotive that wasn’t very reliable.
SD-50s were 3,500-3,600 horsepower, asking a lot from EMD’s 645 V16 prime-mover. (That’s 645 cubic-inches per cylinder.)
Norfolk Southern, and Conrail before it, were using SD40-2s as helpers on Allegheny Mountain.
They were worn out. So rebuild and downrate an SD-50, 3,500 horsepower to 3,000 = the SD40E.
SD40Es aren’t just helper-service. I’ve seen ‘em in other applications. But many are Allegheny Mountain helper-service.
“And here I thought locomotives on the back end of a train were just the railroad transferring power,” my hairdresser says. “They were pushing = helpers.”
A helper-set is two locomotives. Sometimes the helper-set goes up front. Occasionally a train is so heavy it gets multiple helper-sets; e.g. a helper-set up front, plus two helper-sets pushing. That’s six additional locomotives.
And the crews hafta be extremely savvy.
As a long train crests a summit it wants to break apart. Up front is pulling downhill, and the back end is still pushing uphill. Engage “seat-of-pants!”
“I need ya to lean on me,” I’ll hear on my scanner = the train engineer radioing the rear helper crew.
Or “Full dynamic, guys. This thing is gettin’ loose.”




HERE IT COMES! (Photo by Robert Malinoski.)

—So here’s Malinoski out taking color photographs in 1954.
The December 2017 entry in my Tide-Mark All-Pennsy color calendar is an I-1 Decapod (2-10-0) near Snydertown, PA.
Malinoski was a premier railfan photographer. Not Shaughnessy or Don Wood, but pretty good.
He also shot a lotta black-and-white.
Would that photography back then was as good as it is now.
Steam-locomotives are much more dramatic than diesel-electrics. Steam locomotion is gone.
What steamers I photograph are restored. The best I’ve seen is Nickel Plate 765, a restored 2-8-4 Berkshire.


Nickel Plate 765. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

(“Berkshire” is the mountains of western MA, where the 2-8-4 wheel arrangement was first tried.)
765 is a thrill, but the good stuff was 70-80 years ago when steam was in regular revenue service.
By 1940 the massive switch to diesel-electric locomotion began.
Pennsy hung on to steam longer than most. They were a coal-road, so wanted to stay with coal-fired steam locomotion.
Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines (PRSL) in south Jersey was still using steamers when I was born — usually locomotives from Pennsy and Reading, its cofounders.
Those PRSL steamers are what made me a railfan. That was 1946 or ’47. My father took me trackside — free entertainment.
I’ve been a railfan ever since. Back then I was terrified of thunderstorms, but could stand right next to a panting steamer.
In 1954 Pennsy had both diesel and steam — too many diesels were needed. Some steamers were well-suited for certain applications; like a Decapod on mountainous railroading.
I had to look up Snydertown in my GoogleMaps. It appears to be Pennsy’s Mt. Carmel branch. Deks led heavy ore-drags up to Mt. Carmel for interchange with Lehigh Valley Railroad — iron-ore for Bethlehem steel.
Pennsy probably received the ore at its massive dock in Philadelphia.
What’s pictured looks like it’s not the famous Mt. Carmel ore-train, which usually had two Deks up front, plus two more pushing.

4483, shorn of its drive-rods, boiler-cladding, and most of its valve-gear.

The calendar also makes a grievous error.
It says only one Pennsy Dek remains, #4483, that it’s on display at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg.
Wrong! 4483 is stored inactive near Buffalo, NY.
Anyone fact-check their calendars? Not their first mistake.




Engine change at Harrisburg. (Photo courtesy Joe Suo Collection©.)

—“Can there be a Pennsy calendar without a GG1 in it?”
I’ve said it hundreds of times. I’ve also said the GG1 was the greatest railroad locomotive ever built. Great to look at, and incredibly powerful.
The December 2017 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is GG1 #4901 next to E8s in Pennsy’s Harrisburg station.
My guess is 4901 brought a passenger-express from Philadelphia, and now the train is being switched to diesels to continue west.
Harrisburg is where Pennsy’s electrification ended, although they considered electrifying all the way to Pittsburgh.
As a teenager in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s in northern DE I saw many GG1s. And it seemed every time I did they were boomin’-and-zoomin’.
Train-engineers said the GG1 utterly trumped diesel-electric locomotives. It took three or four E-units to pull what a single GG1 could pull.
“Why bother with diesels when they got such a great locomotive in the GG1?” they’d say.
Unfortunately a GG1 needs overhead wire to operate — the electrification around Philadelphia, plus what is now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor from Washington DC to New York City.
The old Pennsy main from Philadelphia to Harrisburg is now also Amtrak, and remains electrified.
Diesel-electric locomotives also have electric traction-motors. But their current is generated on board by the diesel prime-mover. Electrification by overhead wire is a nice idea, but requires a lotta maintenance. Some of Pennsy’s electrification was taken down by Conrail. On balance I guess diesel-electric locomotion does better economically than overhead catenary.
Those diesels had to have steam-generators. Steam from the steam-engine got piped back through the train to heat it. To continue using such passenger equipment diesels needed steam-generators. GG1s also had steam-generators.
Now Amtrak’s passenger cars are heated electrically, sometimes by running the locomotive at high idle, but also occasionally a separate generator.
So west out of Harrisburg can’t be the GG1. Go back far enough and it woulda been steam locomotives. The picture is 1954. By then Pennsy passenger service was no longer steam. Although a few might be if diesels weren’t available and steam was.
Pennsy wouldn’t end steam until 1957, and was using steam to haul freight from Harrisburg west until the end.
Electrification was better-suited to railroading than side-rod steam locomotion. Traction-motors deliver constant torque, whereas side-rod steam locomotives render pulses.
But overhead wire was costly. Diesel-electric locomotion solves that, continuing electric traction. But diesels weren’t the GG1.
The calendar makes note of that lady checking her purse on the GG1’s track. Tempest-in-a-teapot! That GG1 isn’t going anywhere yet. When it did its engineer would blast the horn.
But I understand. My limit is 10 feet from the outside rail, and not on the track at all. I won’t even step across the track.
Even 10 feet can be frightening. 20-40 mph I can stand; 80-90 mph NO WAY. There is a photo-location in Summerhill PA I can’t do. It’s too close to Track One, and there’s no leeway.




FAKE! (Photo by Roger Durfee.)

—The December 2017 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is another by Roger Durfee, an NS conductor from Cleveland, who’s had many entries in this calendar.
It’s a Norfolk Southern double-stack passing frozen Sandusky Bay in OH. I don’t think much of it.
It’s that pink palm-tree; I suspect it’s fake. No way could a real palm-tree survive in such weather. The tree at right seems more like it.
Durfee is following a rule of photography: namely, every picture needs a foreground. Include pink palm-tree in foreground.
No-no-no-no-no!
That silly palm-tree looks utterly out-of-it in frozen snow.
Near my house a guy planted actual palm-trees. They lasted maybe a year-or-two. No way could an actual palm-tree exist here in the frozen tundra.
Durfee has done better. He has an eye for scenery.
This is a joke!