My own calendar
(I decided to cut back even further.
Not many were reading my monthly calendar-reports. Doing them took gobs of time. A HUGE stack of cardboard sits in my garage awaiting chop-up for recycling. Lawn-mowing and laundry got delayed. Blogging on insanity got reduced, which is what I enjoy.
So I will blog only my own calendar. I still have three other train calendars of varying interest. Plus three other non-train calendars occasionally worth blogging. Still seven calendars, but more wall-art that changes every month.
If another calendar is worth blogging, I’ll do it.)
Herzog! (Photo by BobbaLew.)
—The January 2018 entry in my calendar is two helper-sets (four SD40Es) pushing a heavy Herzog ballast train toward The Mighty Curve.
I.e. the train is going away. The locomotives are pushing it toward Allegheny summit.
We are at Brickyard Crossing, where the old Pennsy main crossed little-used Porta Road, the only grade-crossing left in Altoona.
A brickyard used to be adjacent, but no longer is. The railroad, and railfans, still call it “Brickyard Crossing.”
A Herzog ballast train is extremely heavy. The cars are loaded with rock ballast, the stuff a railroad lays down between ties.
The lead locomotive has radio controls to operate the ballast cars. The train can dump ballast as it proceeds.
The train is probably going somewhere the railroad needs ballast. The ballast is quarried from rock crushed into 2-3 inch chunks. It drains well. You don’t want water puddling on the railroad roadbed. Wet spots sag, making bumpy track. It may even wash out or become inoperable.
When built, Allegheny Mountain was Pennsylvania Railroad’s greatest challenge.
In the early 1800s that mountain kept Philadelphia from trading with our nation’s interior. The Appalachians didn’t reach into NY state; therefore the Erie Canal.
To compete PA built a combination canal and portage railroad to Pittsburgh. Allegheny Mountain couldn’t be canaled. Grading back then was so poor the portage railroad had to have inclined planes.
Canal-packets were transloaded onto railroad flatcars, then winched up the planes by stationary steam-engines. Transloading was so cumbersome and slow Philadelphia capitalists came together to found a private common-carrier railroad much like the original Baltimore & Ohio. By then railroading was superseding canals.
John Edgar Thomson, who had built railroads locally, was brought in from GA. His primary trick was Horseshoe Curve, looping the railroad around a valley. It eased the grade over Allegheny Mountain enough to make through railroading possible.
Helper locomotives were needed, but a train didn’t hafta be sectioned to get over Allegheny Mountain. There also were no switchbacks. With switchbacks a train climbs into a switchback-tail, then reverses up to the next switchback-tail before continuing forward.
One wonders why Allegheny Mountain couldn’t be tunneled. That’s a four-to-seven mile tunnel. By now it could be done; but not back in 1840.
I overheard a tourist at the Mighty Curve ask why the railroad didn’t just trestle across the valley. “Because it would be too steep,” I responded. “Do that and ya gotta break the train.”
I also heard a lady ask “where’s The Hill?” 1.75% doesn’t look like much, but it’s a railroad. A heavy coal-train might be over 100 120-ton cars. 4% (four feet up for every 100 feet forward) would be near impossible. 6 or 8% highway grading would be impossible.
There are railroad grades exceeding 5%, but to climb them ya gotta break the train into multiple sections. Exceed 5% or 6% and adhesion railroading no longer holds the rail. Ya gotta cog it.
Steeper highway grading may seem advantageous, except trucking uses much more fuel. And those trucks aren’t moving over 12,000 tons. Every one of those trucks needs a driver. A 12,000-ton coal-train may only need two crewmen — additional on helpers over the mountain.
Railroading is so much more efficient, truckers hate it. But railroading is no good carrying and delivering small lots of freight, like a single trailer-load.
So double helper-sets shove the heavy Herzog train up Allegheny Mountain. Those helpers will probably stay on to hold back the train as it descends. Dynamic braking, dudes. (That’s a Wiki link.)
I could add here I try to run snow-pictures for January, February, and December. Melting snow if possible for March, and rain for April — although it may just be cloudy.
The weather has not accommodated, and both my brother and I are getting older. I’m soon to be 74, and he’s 60. When it’s frigid we dress for it. Four-five layers and long underwear for me. What we do is wait inside the car, out of the icy blast, monitoring our railroad-radio scanners. As a train passes a signal its engineer calls the signal-aspect on railroad-radio, and we’ll hear it.
“591 west on Two, 225; CLEAR!” Out of the car! Here it comes! Often I already have my camera outside on tripod.
Winter last year was lousy. Not much snow at all. I’ve seen better. Drifts blow and switches freeze. Water dripping in tunnels becomes icicles. The railroad has to knock ‘em down lest they shatter windshields.
Years ago my wife and I went to Gallitzin atop Allegheny Mountain. At least three-four feet of snow had fallen. Gallitzin was clogged. Front-end loaders were clearing the main drag.
That was after we started chasing trains with Phil Faudi, my expert railfan friend from Altoona. I wondered how we’d ever do it, but we did — and got some fabulous snow-photographs.
This Herzog picture is two-or-three years ago, long after that Gallitzin trip. (RoadRailer is along side on Track One, and the ‘Railer is no longer running.)
And now the picture I woulda liked to use:
Missing original. (Westbound stacker on Four.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)
What you see here is the blog-pik: 72 pixels-per-inch (screen-resolution), 5.597 inches wide (blog column width). What the calendar needs is far tighter resolution — my camera shoots at 300 pixels-per-inch. Crop the original and I usually get more than 300 ppi.
Shutterfly wants over 100 ppi, and justifiably. Enlarge a 72 ppi to calendar size, and one gets jagginess. The picture pixelates.
So do the original for the calendar. I can’t find it. Memory-chips are missing.
Oh well.... Such is life. Now everything I shoot goes camera-file on my computer. It seems able to swallow. 500-gig hard-drive, and I’m only 25% full. Hundreds of pictures are on it.
Not many were reading my monthly calendar-reports. Doing them took gobs of time. A HUGE stack of cardboard sits in my garage awaiting chop-up for recycling. Lawn-mowing and laundry got delayed. Blogging on insanity got reduced, which is what I enjoy.
So I will blog only my own calendar. I still have three other train calendars of varying interest. Plus three other non-train calendars occasionally worth blogging. Still seven calendars, but more wall-art that changes every month.
If another calendar is worth blogging, I’ll do it.)
Herzog! (Photo by BobbaLew.)
—The January 2018 entry in my calendar is two helper-sets (four SD40Es) pushing a heavy Herzog ballast train toward The Mighty Curve.
I.e. the train is going away. The locomotives are pushing it toward Allegheny summit.
We are at Brickyard Crossing, where the old Pennsy main crossed little-used Porta Road, the only grade-crossing left in Altoona.
A brickyard used to be adjacent, but no longer is. The railroad, and railfans, still call it “Brickyard Crossing.”
A Herzog ballast train is extremely heavy. The cars are loaded with rock ballast, the stuff a railroad lays down between ties.
The lead locomotive has radio controls to operate the ballast cars. The train can dump ballast as it proceeds.
The train is probably going somewhere the railroad needs ballast. The ballast is quarried from rock crushed into 2-3 inch chunks. It drains well. You don’t want water puddling on the railroad roadbed. Wet spots sag, making bumpy track. It may even wash out or become inoperable.
When built, Allegheny Mountain was Pennsylvania Railroad’s greatest challenge.
In the early 1800s that mountain kept Philadelphia from trading with our nation’s interior. The Appalachians didn’t reach into NY state; therefore the Erie Canal.
To compete PA built a combination canal and portage railroad to Pittsburgh. Allegheny Mountain couldn’t be canaled. Grading back then was so poor the portage railroad had to have inclined planes.
Canal-packets were transloaded onto railroad flatcars, then winched up the planes by stationary steam-engines. Transloading was so cumbersome and slow Philadelphia capitalists came together to found a private common-carrier railroad much like the original Baltimore & Ohio. By then railroading was superseding canals.
John Edgar Thomson, who had built railroads locally, was brought in from GA. His primary trick was Horseshoe Curve, looping the railroad around a valley. It eased the grade over Allegheny Mountain enough to make through railroading possible.
Helper locomotives were needed, but a train didn’t hafta be sectioned to get over Allegheny Mountain. There also were no switchbacks. With switchbacks a train climbs into a switchback-tail, then reverses up to the next switchback-tail before continuing forward.
One wonders why Allegheny Mountain couldn’t be tunneled. That’s a four-to-seven mile tunnel. By now it could be done; but not back in 1840.
I overheard a tourist at the Mighty Curve ask why the railroad didn’t just trestle across the valley. “Because it would be too steep,” I responded. “Do that and ya gotta break the train.”
I also heard a lady ask “where’s The Hill?” 1.75% doesn’t look like much, but it’s a railroad. A heavy coal-train might be over 100 120-ton cars. 4% (four feet up for every 100 feet forward) would be near impossible. 6 or 8% highway grading would be impossible.
There are railroad grades exceeding 5%, but to climb them ya gotta break the train into multiple sections. Exceed 5% or 6% and adhesion railroading no longer holds the rail. Ya gotta cog it.
Steeper highway grading may seem advantageous, except trucking uses much more fuel. And those trucks aren’t moving over 12,000 tons. Every one of those trucks needs a driver. A 12,000-ton coal-train may only need two crewmen — additional on helpers over the mountain.
Railroading is so much more efficient, truckers hate it. But railroading is no good carrying and delivering small lots of freight, like a single trailer-load.
So double helper-sets shove the heavy Herzog train up Allegheny Mountain. Those helpers will probably stay on to hold back the train as it descends. Dynamic braking, dudes. (That’s a Wiki link.)
I could add here I try to run snow-pictures for January, February, and December. Melting snow if possible for March, and rain for April — although it may just be cloudy.
The weather has not accommodated, and both my brother and I are getting older. I’m soon to be 74, and he’s 60. When it’s frigid we dress for it. Four-five layers and long underwear for me. What we do is wait inside the car, out of the icy blast, monitoring our railroad-radio scanners. As a train passes a signal its engineer calls the signal-aspect on railroad-radio, and we’ll hear it.
“591 west on Two, 225; CLEAR!” Out of the car! Here it comes! Often I already have my camera outside on tripod.
Winter last year was lousy. Not much snow at all. I’ve seen better. Drifts blow and switches freeze. Water dripping in tunnels becomes icicles. The railroad has to knock ‘em down lest they shatter windshields.
Years ago my wife and I went to Gallitzin atop Allegheny Mountain. At least three-four feet of snow had fallen. Gallitzin was clogged. Front-end loaders were clearing the main drag.
That was after we started chasing trains with Phil Faudi, my expert railfan friend from Altoona. I wondered how we’d ever do it, but we did — and got some fabulous snow-photographs.
This Herzog picture is two-or-three years ago, long after that Gallitzin trip. (RoadRailer is along side on Track One, and the ‘Railer is no longer running.)
And now the picture I woulda liked to use:
Missing original. (Westbound stacker on Four.) (Photo by BobbaLew.)
What you see here is the blog-pik: 72 pixels-per-inch (screen-resolution), 5.597 inches wide (blog column width). What the calendar needs is far tighter resolution — my camera shoots at 300 pixels-per-inch. Crop the original and I usually get more than 300 ppi.
Shutterfly wants over 100 ppi, and justifiably. Enlarge a 72 ppi to calendar size, and one gets jagginess. The picture pixelates.
So do the original for the calendar. I can’t find it. Memory-chips are missing.
Oh well.... Such is life. Now everything I shoot goes camera-file on my computer. It seems able to swallow. 500-gig hard-drive, and I’m only 25% full. Hundreds of pictures are on it.
Labels: My own calendar
posted by BobbaLew at 7:14 PM
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