MY calendar for August 2019

Shaddup-and-shoot! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—The August 2019 entry of MY calendar is an extraordinary potshot.
I was in Altoona alone chasing trains, and heard one on my scanner climbing the mountain.
So up Sugar-Run road I charged. It falls parallel to the railroad near the top.
I turned into the access road to the old New Portage right-of-way, then toward New Portage tunnel.
Right off the right-of-way onto a dirt-track that parallels the railroad. My scanner barked the detector at 245. I still had a ways to go, splashing through puddles and parting shrubbery.
I drove perhaps a mile to an overlook I wanted. All tracks are visible below this overlook, but here it comes.
Out of the car! It was passing as I got out. Studied set-up was impossible. I ran a little ways, then hoisted my camera.
Shaddup-and-shoot!
The lighting was all wrong; into the sun no less.
Sheer desperation. There it goes; a potshot. One shot and it’s gone. And of course it wasn’t where intended.
It was the Slabber, extremely heavy. Double helper-sets were pushing. It was westbound on Track Three.
The Slabber is all open gondola cars loaded with two thick steel slabs.
The slabs were made at a steel-mill, and were destined for a rolling-mill to be rolled into thin sheet-metal for cars or appliances. The fenders for your Chevrolet may have once been in the Slabber.
“Slabber” is a term my brother and I made up. Double-stacked containers are a “stacker.” Steel slabs are the “Slabber.”
The Slabber is extra, not regularly scheduled.
#7248 is a Norfolk Southern SD70ACU, 4,500 horsepower, rebuilt from NS SD90MAC #7248, which was originally Union Pacific 3493/8019.
#7517, the lead unit, is a General Electric ES44DC, 4,400 horsepower.
I made the mistake of captioning both locomotives as alternating current. 7517 is direct current.
AC traction-motors are recent technology. Previous diesel locomotives were DC. AC works better at dragging heavy trains.
Pennsy’s GG-1, the greatest locomotive ever built, was AC. Pennsy’s electrification was AC.
Down to 15 mph toward the summit. A train slows as it goes up the mountain. The climb up Allegheny Mountain is 12 miles, 1,016 feet. The grade is 1.75-1.8 percent; not too bad, but fairly steep for a railroad.
Horseshoe Curve made that possible. Without Horseshoe the grade woulda been nearly impossible.
This photograph proves what **** **** told me. ****, who lives in Denver, photographs Colorado landscape. My artistic input is to pore through 89 bazilyun photographs to pick out what’s best.
This photograph is a potshot; the lighting is wrong. But it’s extraordinary.