My deepest appreciation to renfrew for digging out the date and information on the charter. The time fits as I was working there then. Interestingly enough, the maintenance people had to taxi the aircraft - apparently the pilots had already left for the hotel leaving the flight engineer who strangely wasn't authorized to taxi the aircraft. So he started the engines for us, did the taxi prep and set the radios and we drove it over. It was during the taxi that he told us to rev the engine a bit as the air compressor wouldn't charge the brakes at low rpm's. Seemed peculiar to me to have to rev the engines to stop!
Anyway, an interesting looking aircraft indeed - at first glance (at night on ramp) it looked like a DC-4. I was always on the lookout for different aircraft or airlines.
One other rare bird I saw (didn't work it though) later at KJFK was a Trident belonging to an Arab airline. It was taxiing on the outer perimeter taxiway and again, I did a double-take thinking it was a B727 and then seeing the offset nose gear and boom in front of the horizontal stabilizer I realized what it was. That was the only Trident I ever saw at KJFK.