Run Eight

Assaulting the heavens! (Photo courtesy of Joe Suo Collection©.)

—“Run Eight” is “pedal-to-the-metal” in diesel locomotive parlance. Diesel locomotives have eight fuel-delivery positions. “Run Eight” is maximum.
Six diesel locomotives are climbing Allegheny Mountain. Their train, visible in the distance, in wrapped around world-famous Horseshoe Curve.
I have been to Horseshoe Curve hundreds of times. I consider it the premier railfan pilgrimage spot. Trains galore! It’s how Pennsylvania Railroad breached the Allegheny barrier in the late 1840s.
“How come the railroad didn’t just trestle this valley?” a tourist asked.
“Because that woulda been too steep,” I exclaimed. “Looping the railroad around this valley made the grade manageable. You didn’t hafta section the train. With helpers you could run a complete train over this mountain.”
“Vacation, huh? Where to this time?”
“Mighty Curve, of course.”
“What is it about that place? Yer always goin’ there.”
“Trains, man. Yer smack in the apex, and they’re always assaulting the heavens.”
The May 2018 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is six diesels climbing Allegheny Mountain. Five are EMD, and one appears to be a GE U-boat.
Years ago the engines were steamers. Diesel locomotives have got powerful enough to climb the mountain unassisted if their train is light. 15,000 tons of coal — 125 120-ton coal gondolas — need helper locomotives. One or two helper-sets up front = two or four additional 3,000 horsepower locomotives. Plus two more sets pushing, four more locomotives. The train will already have two or more 4,000 horsepower road-locomotives.
That’s 10-11 locomotives in total for a single train. Railfan Valhalla!
I’ve seen trains stall on the Mighty Curve. Track-curvature adds resistance. “Too many cars,” the engineer said.
A train could also break apart crossing that mountain. The part over the top is already pulling the train downgrade. The part still coming up The Hill has to be carefully pushed to avoid breaking the train apart. Divergent forces break couplers.
The cars also have brakes, so crews operate per “seat-of-the-pants.”
The lead locomotives in this lashup are EMD’s GP-30s, the only EMD locomotive where GM styling was involved. (ElectroMotive Division [EMD] was a GM subsidiary at that time.)
The cab-roof is rounded to the cab-sides instead of chamfered. Metalwork was added atop the hood to fair back into the fresh air intake and dynamic-brake blister.

7048 is at left. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Railfans love the GP-30s. Only a few are left. Some were converted, but most were scrapped.
7048 in the Curve viewing-area is only a GP-9. But it should probably be a GP-30. 7048 replaced a K-4s Pacific (4-6-2) steamer.
The picture is 1966. The Curve is now three tracks instead of four. And the railroad is now Norfolk Southern.
But Allegheny Mountain still challenges; and the Mighty Curve is still in use. To get trains over that mountain without serious delay, like switchbacks or sectioning trains, is one of America’s greatest engineering triumphs.

• The first General Electric road locomotives in the ‘60s were the U series. Railfans called ‘em “U-boats.”