Built environment
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post is a bit of an aside, placed parenthetically within the contents of a longer walk, which will continue tomorrow.
At the intersection of Chateau Street and Beaver Avenue, on Pittsburgh’s North Side, there’s a ramped structure which allows pedestrians and bicycles vertical egress from one ground level up to the next one, and it seems to be attached to a series of highway ramps that overfly a train yard.
How complicated… tell me more…
I looked around a bit, but couldn’t find a name assigned to the structure, although it obviously has one – given how overbuilt and undoubtedly expensive this whatzit was to build. You don’t spend millions of the public’s money on something and then not give it a name.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Steel, concrete, engineering, construction… all super expensive.
Pretty wide ramps are on offer, and these pathways offer sharp right angle turns at the corners where they spiral around the core structure. I’d guess that the thing climbs up about 50-80 feet in elevation. I ran a picture of the whole assembly yesterday, here it is again.
I don’t want you to imagine that I think I’ve found the lost ark of the covenant here, but this is a pretty odd thingamabob.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If you had to, you could probably drive a non SUV sized police car through here. Width wise, it would be tight but possible. That’s about how wide these ramps were. Gently graded they are, I’d mention, so people with mobility issues and bike riders were definitely a consideration when designing the thing. These are the sort of ‘people mover’ ramps you normally see at stadiums.
Above this thingie are a series of highway trestles which overfly rail tracks, with the trestles connecting southbound drivers to the approaches of the West End Bridge, or to the interplay of ramp options that are offered nearby leading to the Fort Duquesne Bridge, and Crosstown Boulevard, interchanges.
Whew, how’s that for a geography lesson?
I just had to keep on going, until this whatzit got me up to wherever it might be leading to. This is exactly how I’m going to die, I often think.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Basically… up top, there’s another street level series of ramps, and then an overhead series of highway ramps, which this massive pile of smaller pedestrian ramps leads up to. No Shake Shack up here. Now I know.
Also, man oh man, are there ever a lot of vehicle ramps flying through the sky here in Pittsburgh or what? Feck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An eye was kept on the Allegheny Valley Railroad train sitting in the yard below, all inert. This outfit does ‘switcher’ and ‘last mile’ duty for (mainly) Norfolk Southern, and I understand they have a few Pittsburgh area clients of their own which these AVRR ‘Carload Express’ engines service. I imagine the crew was taking a break, and eating lunch or something, as they were sitting static for better than half an hour.
That above, by the way, is pretty much the sum total of what I know about these cats at AVRR. If I got something wrong, or you’d like to expand the knowledge of your fellow Newtown Pentacle readers – I’d ask you to leave a comment below.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As it turned out, that conspicuous building – pictured above – was a pretty cool find for me, but all that’s for tomorrow’s post.
Back tomorrow.
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Hey Now! twice, with ramps
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Shlep, shlep, shlep.
A mile or so’s worth of scuttling brought me here, after getting dropped off by a rideshare on Pittsburgh’s North Side, to this section of ‘Beaver Avenue’ – a wide road which services an industrial zone.
The section discussed today is defined by a straight line concrete wall dominating one side of the street, part of a larger structure that carries high speed vehicle traffic upon it towards the titular center of the city, and several bridges/highway interchanges. The environment here is ‘built.’
All caught up!
Your humble narrator was soon at the border of the ‘Chateau’ neighborhood, found on Pittsburgh’s ‘North Side.’ Just to the north of this position is a smallish rail yard – the ‘Island Avenue Yard’ – which has been described in the past. I’m thinking that these tracks are a part of that complex, but that’s an assumption.
Hey Now! That’s Allegheny Valley RR’s #6004.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a number of highway interchanges and ramps which fly through here, and a pile of incredibly overbuilt pedestrian infrastructure. More on that one in a subsequent post… but… lookit that thing! Wow.
One headed towards this feat of over engineering, to hopefully gain a POV over the RR tracks, and also to find out where this design problem might lead to. First time I’ve walked through here, Y’see, and I was completely ignoring the sage advice offered by 90’s band TLC.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, these tracks and the yard surrounding them aren’t fenced off in this section and they were sort of busy, so before climbing up on ‘that thing,’ I just stood there in a sort of muddy driveway along the sidewalk, waving the camera around to capture these shots.
Hey Now! Norfolk Southern turned up next, hauling a long line of tankers.
I needed to pee, of course, so I did a little dance to kill the urge. My dance recital, enjoyed by the engineer, was to the tune of – and quite resembled – the one performed by Laura Brannigan in her classic ‘Gloria’ music video.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
#1144 lumbered past, filling the air with vibration as it did.
According to Google’s AI ‘Gemini,’ #1144 was built in 2014, and:
‘Norfolk Southern (NS) locomotive #1144 is an EMD SD70ACe diesel locomotive. Originally built with a 4,300-horsepower engine and featuring a wide-cab design, this heavy-haul freight unit operates on mainlines across the Norfolk Southern network.’
I’ve just been going crazy for trains lately, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Two in one shot, yay!
Shortly after 1144 circuited through, and after having ‘watered the verge,’ your humble narrator got all curious about that other thing. The overbuilt ramp thingamabob behind me.
What can be up there? On top of this whatzit? Ramps, ramps, ramps…
I had to know.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Had to walk the entirety of this structure, and get to know it. Make a sketch. Caress its goodness. Give it a middle name. Start it a Christmas Club account at the bank…
One can imagine the governmental design process for this thing, and how it kept on getting added on to, meeting by meeting. Then – a catastrophic cut in the budget by some politician happened – and then the thing that’s pictured today became the best accommodation they could build with the resources at hand… Ahh… government…
Directly across the street is a building occupied by the people who build this sort of stuff for the County and State, and also happen to keep the mass transit systems running.
Back tomorrow, whereupon I climb this thingamabob to its titular top, and then ooze back down to the street level again – like I’m some kind of thing…
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Back, to the North Side of Pittsburgh
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To start – the Newtown Pentacle time warp is still in effect. These shots were gathered during the last week of May, whereas the words you’re reading were written in middle June, and if my scheduling is correct you’re reading this in the third week of July. Whew.
For this scuttle, which ended up being a pretty long walk, during which I decided that I categorically needed to upgrade a part of my camera kit, a rideshare was utilized to drop me at the intersection of Eckert Street and McClure Avenue on Pittsburgh’s north side.
This is in the Marshall-Shadeland section, underneath the rusted and literally falling apart California Avenue Bridge, which is right about where Don’s Diner is found. What? You don’t cite landmarks?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is an heavy industrial area, with an enormous sewer plant found just a few blocks away. Lots of heavy truck based businesses, warehouses, and quite a few people who work with machines that could go ‘bang’ in ferocious ways – electrical, steam, that sort of thing.
This is also one of the spots in Pittsburgh which I find quite photogenic, but about which the locals say ‘you’re crazy, don’t go there, they’ll kill you.’
If I had a dollar for everytime someone has told me that about Newtown Creek, most of North Brooklyn, all of Western Queens, The Bronx, or every majority African American neighborhood in Pittsburgh… well… I’d have a lot of dollars, I tell’s ya.
Who might kill me? Do they have names? Can we call them? Can I pay them some agreed upon toll for the privilege of passage, rather than just having them kill me on sight? Sheesh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Beaver Avenue, that’s what this Pittsburgh street is called.
The rail trestle connects to the Ohio Connecting Rail Bridge, which I’ve mentioned before. The tracks belong to the Norfolk Southern outfit.
It was an absolutely perfect day for a long walk, weather wise. High 70’s and breezy. Overcast, but with occasional floods of sunlight.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another view of the rail bridge, as I crossed beneath the trestle.
On this leg of the scuttle, I kept on missing shots of the locomotives at the front of these trains, but this ended up being a very, very productive day as far as the subject of photographing trains goes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator is so far ahead of the schedule here that at this writing, I can’t remember which post it was that I mentioned turning a corner towards a waterway one day and observing some guy dancing around with a kitchen knife in each hand, behind a building.
I’m pretty sure he was playing the Grateful Dead on his boombox, if you want to picture what the dance vibe was like.
Protocol, since he didn’t notice me, was to just quietly back away and get back to a nice safe patch of pavement where he wasn’t.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned above, I kept on missing the head of the RR snake during this section of the walk. No worries, I had a cool set of captures coming my way shortly, on this fairly long walk in the Paris of Appalachia.
Back tomorrow with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Cooler if spelled ‘Eerie,’ instead of ‘Erie’
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long story short, I somehow found myself standing on the shoreline of Lake Erie, in the recent past. Never laid eyes on this Great Lake before, so yay.
Turns out that Lake Erie is about a two hour drive north of HQ, basically in Pittsburgh. Didn’t have time to linger, so this was a ‘run and gun’ and all shots are from a singular perspective. Plan on me coming back this way again in the not too distant future, but with a whole lot of preparation – a shot list, Google maps of possible ‘POV’s’ – all that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That thingie seems to be an observation tower of some kind.
Big tourist zone, this section of Pennsylvania’s Erie shoreline is. It seems that ‘waterfront vacation’ in this section of the country (Northwestern New York, Western PA., eastern Ohio) takes the form of either visiting one of the Great Lakes, or driving all the way to the coast at Ocean City in Maryland.
Funny thing is, having grown up on Brooklyn’s southern shore, which faces out to Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic, when my parents wanted to do a ‘vacation getaway,’ they always talked about heading to the Catskills or some other mountainous area of the sort where the very people who like to come to Erie or Ocean City for vacation live.
Dichotomy, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Have to imagine that I landed in exactly the wrong spot for my particular interests, given that this was a quite modern real estate developmental area which was entirely tourism focused. Big hotels, docks, convention center type buildings. Lots and lots of what looked like time share apartments looking out on the lake too.
Research, have to do some of that before returning.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator generally doesn’t like photo destinations which he can’t just walk up to. It annoys me to have to drive places, in the Mobile Oppression Platform – a Toyota, but.. as the saying goes – the mountain ain’t coming to Mohammed.
Recent endeavors have seen me driving eastwards for rail action; in Cassandra and Cresson. South towards Maryland’s Cumberland, west towards West Virginia’s Weirton and Ohio’s Steubenville.
The photos in today’s post are from the northern edge of what could be described as the ‘Pittsburgh Metro Area,’ a roughly 100 mile circle (or rounded rhombus) with Pittsburgh’s Golden Triangle and Acrisure Stadium at the economic and cultural center.
I’ve mentioned the ideation that Pittsburgh is at the center of an Appalachian Megalopolis, locally overshadowed by the Chicagoan, and especially the East Coast seaboard’s setup with NYC, and Washington DC, as the pole stars of a continuous urbanized area that runs from Boston all the way to the south.
North American megalopolis zones (or at least the ones centered in the USA) include the southern one around Houston, the entire west coast from Tijuana to Vancouver, the Atlantic coast from Boston to Atlanta with the NYC to DC zone forming its dense core, there’s also ‘Chicagoland,’ and there’s a few smaller entities like the Appalachian one, or the Mormon one out west. Up north, there’s Toronto, and then… you get the concept.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That is one heck of an enigmatic church which caught my eye. It appears to be ‘Orthodox,’ although I couldn’t guess what version of orthodoxy they employ within. Next time, I’ll be prepared…
My time in Erie was short, as I still had to drive roughly two hours to get back home. This one wasn’t a photo trip, I had something else to do up here that was utterly banal, and really not worth discussing.
Erie is roughly 120 miles north of Pittsburgh, and the drive back is all on one road and its various extensions – I-79.
Most of that drive hurtles through quite rural areas, with limited stops on the highway. Speed limits are high, up in the 65-70 mph zone depending on where you are in the drive.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The next morning, well, there I was… standing alongside a set of railroad tracks in Pittsburgh’s Bridegville, waiting to photograph a Wheeling & Lake Erie RR train which never arrived. C’est la vie.
Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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End of scuttle, and Hey Now!
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A fairly long walk through Pittsburgh found a humble narrator in need of a quick meal, and while sitting in front of a pizzeria on Pittsburgh’s East Carson Street while eating a slice and drinking a Gatorade, a Pittsburgh Fire Department’s fire engine hurtled past.
Can’t resist.
My plan for the remainder of the day involved that slice of pizza forming a late lunch/early dinner, and then I’d down a pint or two of beer at that brewery I often visit, alongside the CSX train tracks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the way, I found myself admiring the simplicity of some of the older residential structures nearby. The people who originally inhabited this area were mill workers, and suffice to say that the built environment is quite ‘humble’ around this zone.
That pizza got me moving again. Amazing what a bit of fat and carbohydrate does for a wandering narrator’s flagging energy level.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You just can’t ignore it when a composition like the one above appears in front of you, you just cannot.
I arrived at the brewery, ‘inspected the porcelain,’ and then bought myself a beer. One had been in constant movement for about six hours, with an hour of sitting down at the library lecture right in the middle of that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX #990 appeared, which rounded out my scuttle, and offered a logical juncture wherein I could ‘hang my hat’ and say ‘that was a day.’
I was actually on my second beer when they showed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I slurped down the last of my glass of suds, and paid the tab within.
Another inspection of the porcelain, and then I was back in motion. One was physically tired in a muscular rather than psychological sense, and it felt like my back and legs definitely had a decent workout. The meal and the drinks had filled me with carbohydrates so I was ready to roll again.
The camera straps were arranged, the heavy backpack slung across my horrific frame, and then things were leaned into for the final movement.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Within a few minutes of walking, I was soon at a T light rail station called ‘Station Square,’ whereupon my chariot arrived.
Back next week with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 