Monthly Train-Calendar Report for April 2017

April showers bring May flowers! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—The April 2017 entry in my own calendar is westbound stacker 21M passing Altoona’s Amtrak station on Track Two.
It’s pouring!
Every once in a while a deluge passes through Altoona. My brother Jack and I had seen it on our Smartphone weather-radar apps.
We were in Altoona — it still wasn’t raining — but it was in Cresson (“kress-in”), up on the mountain, marching east.
So we headed to the Amtrak station, where there are walkways to the Railroaders Memorial Museum across the tracks.
A rusting yellow coach is on the museum lead.
Altoona was once the major shop-town for mighty Pennsylvania Railroad.
One of the walkways is covered, the other isn’t — it’s visible.
We went up on the covered one. No thunder-and-lightning this time, just a deluge. We were under cover.
Here it came! 21M in the downpour, wipers boogying.
As you can see, Track Two is right next to the station platform.
Both eastbound and westbound Amtrak Pennsylvanians use Track Two, to ease passenger access.
Track Two is normally westbound, but the eastbound Pennsylvanian uses it too.
Amtrak’s Pennsylvanians are the only passenger-trains left on this line. There used to be many.
On the station platform, westbound Norfolk Southern freights are right in yer face.
Directly east (right) is open right-of-way where track used to be. East of that is Track One, normally eastbound.
To the right of One is a controlled siding, meaning it’s signaled. To its right is Main-9.
Both tracks are a secondary main through Altoona, and lead toward its only remaining yard, which is at “Rose.”
The two left-most tracks are used for through trains, although those trains can stop at CP-Rose to change crews.
The secondary tracks are not used for yard-switching.
Altoona used to be a major marshaling point for Pennsy freights.
It was at the foot of Allegheny Mountain, so helper locomotives had to be added.
Pennsy also built shops in Altoona as well as yards.
They even built locomotives there, and had extensive testing facilities.
Pennsy was at the forefront of railroad technology. It used to test its locomotive designs in a test-plant.
That test-plant and Altoona-Works are gone.
Only the towering old master mechanic building remains, containing most of the museum’s artifacts.
The museum added a roundhouse to avoid storing rail equipment outside; that includes GG-1 #4913, in the red paint-scheme.
I’ve said it before: Pennsy’s GG-1 is the greatest railroad-locomotive of all time.
A large locomotive shop remains in Juniata (“june-eee-ATT-uh”) north (railroad-east) of Altoona: Pennsy’s old Juniata Shops, now an asset to Norfolk Southern Railroad.
Long story! Norfolk Southern now owns and operates the old Pennsy main across PA.
Altoona is no longer the vast facility it was.
Helpers are still added, when needed, in Altoona for Allegheny Crossing.
Those helpers can also hold back a heavy train descending.
Helpers now get added at Antis, railroad-east of Altoona/Juniata.
Those helpers can also detach on-the-fly if they have “Helper-Link.”
When we left, we had large puddles to ford, but it was only sprinkling.




If it’s Herzog, it’s probably ballast. (Photo by Lance Myers.)

—The April 2017 entry in my Norfolk Southern Employees’ Photography-Contest calendar is a Norfolk Southern ballast train crossing Mayes bridge near Lewistown, PA.
It’s probably ballast because the cars are all Herzog hoppers that automatically dump ballast.
Ballast, usually two-to-three inch rock, is deposited between the rail-ties. There may be as much a 2-3 feet of ballast under the rails, often more.
Good ballast promotes good drainage. If it starts to fill in with soil, it might not drain well, in which case the track sinks in the wet spots.
Not well tended, weeds grow in the soil (“weed-grown right-of-way”), and track can become rough.
I’ve ridden terrible track = so bad about all you could do was 5-10 mph. Speed had been limited by law.
My brother and I have occasionally photographed Herzog trains. Often the locomotive has a radio control for auto-dumping the cars.
The Illinois Terminal heritage-unit, #1072, an EMD SD70ACe (4,400 horsepower) has this.


The Illinois Terminal heritage-unit leads a Herzog ballast train up The Hill. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

The train dumps new ballast as it rolls along.
Maintainers appear afterward with ballast-tamping equipment.
Maintaining a smooth railroad is a science. Many factors apply, especially ribbon-rail in long lengths.
It’s gotten so when new track is laid, paved sub-base, just like a highway, is laid first. Ballast goes atop that, then the track.
The calendar-picture train is to a quarry.




Overreach? (Joe Suo Collection©.)

—The April 2017 entry of my Audio-Visual Designs black-and-white All-Pennsy Calendar is a gigantic Q-2 duplex (4-4-6-4), probably the most powerful steam-locomotive Pennsy had, 115,800 pounds of tractive-effort.
After WWII Pennsy went hog-wild developing the steamers it hadn’t developed in the ‘30s. They were pouring investment into electrification in the ‘30s.
So when WWII began, Pennsy was ill-prepared. It had to move mountains of burgeoning war-traffic with tired old locomotives.
The War-Board didn’t allow Pennsy to develop a new steamer. Pennsy had to shop around. They tried Norfolk & Western’s “A” articulated (2-6-6-4), and Chesapeake & Ohio’s T-1 2-10-4, a Lima (“lye-MUH;” not “lee-MUH”) Locomotive SuperPower design.
Pennsy chose the T-1 — they loathed articulation.
C&O’s T-1 became Pennsy’s J. It had appearance modifications, but was pretty much the T-1. That is, it lacked Pennsy’s trademark slab-sided Belpaire (“bell-PEAR”) firebox.
One could say the J brought Pennsy up-to-speed regarding “appliances,” which it previously abhorred.
Like feedwater heat, boosters, front-end throttles, etc; stuff that enhanced steam-usage and generation.
Pennsy wouldn’t use ‘em, fearing they might need a lotta maintenance.
The Qs had the Belpaire firebox, plus appliances.
The worst problem was they were duplex, Baldwin Locomotive Works’ trick to reduce heavy side-rod weight that pounded the rail. This was especially true in 10-drivered steamers.
So reduce the number of side-rods by adding drive pistons.
Trouble is, on a single non-articulated frame you hafta provide space for those extra cylinders.
Add 10-20 feet to driver wheelbase. Do that and you run into the track-curvature problem.
Bend that around a curve, or through a switch, and drivers splay off the rail.
Some drivers are blind (flangeless). Much smaller steamers e.g. Consolidations (2-8-0) and even K4 Pacifics (4-6-2) have blind drivers.
You didn’t see Qs in PA. Even a Decapod encountered the curvature problem.
I’ve never seen Qs on Horseshoe Curve.
Across Indiana and Ohio were long tangents that could run a Q. That was west of the Appalachians.
The Pennsy I grew up with was east of the Appalachians. If I’d encountered a Q in south Jersey I’d be stunned, and probably crestfallen. Compared to an E6 or K4 the Q was too big.
The other problem with duplex was uneven weight on each driver-set. With less weight a driver-set is more likely to break traction.
Pennsy’s T1 passenger locomotive did that. A driver-set might start spinning wildly at 100 mph. That can damage valve-gear.
As I understand it, the only way to stop slippage was to cut throttle to the entire engine. You weren’t cutting throttle to just the spinning driver-set — you’re cutting both.
I don’t think operation had advanced to separate throttles for each driver-set.
I suppose that mighta happened eventually, but dieselization was coming.
Articulated locomotives could have the same problem.
The biggest problem with a duplex was its long driver wheelbase.
Turnouts and switches had to be reconfigured to accommodate a Q.
No Qs were saved. The only engines Pennsy saved were its classic steamers: engines they actually owned. The Js and Qs and T1s were owned by equipment trusts. Not even a J was saved.
The only engines saved were through the ‘20s; and that was extraordinary. Railroads scrapped their retired steamers.
(No New York Central Hudsons [4-6-4] or Niagaras [4-8-4].)
The collection of saved Pennsy steamers is now at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania near Strasburg, PA.
(I’m pretty sure there’s a preserved NYC Mohawk [4-8-2].)




Steam was doomed. (Collection of Frank and Todd Novak.)

—The April 2017 entry in my All-Pennsy color calendar is two Pennsy EMD E8-As, 2,250 horsepower each, leading a combined westbound passenger-train, including the Allegheny, toward St. Louis, making a station-stop at Dennison, OH on April 13th, 1954.
Yrs Trly was age-10.
By 1954, railroading had begun its slow decline.
Train travel was falling to auto-travel and airplane travel.
Auto-travel can be point-to-point. Train-travel and air travel require renting a car, or being picked up.
Moving freight by rail was also faltering.
Freight in large quantities is still best moved by rail.
Rail is still the most efficient mode, even compared to water-travel (barging, etc.)
I read a comparison lately. Water requires 1.53 times more BTUs per ton-mile than railroading. And trucking requires over 8 times more energy.
And never in a million years are ya gonna get trucking to move what’s carried by a mile-long train of loaded 120-ton coal cars; or 250+ doublestacked loaded containers. All with a crew of only one or two or three, not 250+ truck-drivers.
No wonder the Teamsters hate the railroads.
Freight service by rail also became difficult.
To ship or receive freight a company had to have rail service.
The rail network couldn’t be as extensive as highways. Railroads have to be located where grades aren’t impossible. Highways can have steeper grades.
And highway construction and maintenance is paid by government.
Railroads are privately owned, a vestige of their 19th century heritage.
So the passenger-train pictured is a final siren-song of private rail passenger service.
And diesels aren’t as dramatic as steam-locomotives.


Nickel Plate 765, the BEST restored steam-locomotive on the entire planet. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

NKP 765.
(Be sure to click that link, readers. It’s a YouTube video.)
The magazine article also noted how quickly dieselization replaced steam locomotion. Diesels were stingier with fuel, and easier to maintain and fuel.
That fuel, being liquid, was easier to move and store than coal.
Diesels operated better on railroads, since drive-torque was constant instead of side-rod thrusts.
And diesels didn’t hammer the rail like side-rod steamers.
There were holdouts, and Pennsy was one. As a coal-road, it wanted to continue using coal-fired steam-locomotion.
(It was Pennsy that long ago began fueling its steamers with coal instead of wood.)
Diesels were that much better. Even coal-based Norfolk & Western capitulated; the final holdout for railroad steam locomotion. Norfolk & Western served the Pocahontas coal-region.
N&W gave up steam in 1960; Pennsy in late 1957.
Private railroading gave up passenger service in 1971 when nationally-founded Amtrak began running the nation’s railroad passenger service.
By then railroad passenger service was no longer an attractive choice. Railroad passenger service had become miserable.
Those E-units have the cat-whisker paint-scheme designed by Raymond Loewy (“LOW-eee”) for Pennsy’s GG-1 electric.
They’re also Tuscan-Red (“TUSS-kin;” not “Tucson, AZ”), the color of Pennsy passenger equipment and coaches.
Many houses in Altoona were Tuscan-Red.