The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Railfanning has never been my ‘thing.’ I certainly like taking pictures of trains, but the whole hobby of driving off at 5 in the morning to some remote trackway in order to see a train roll through is just counter to my whole dealie.

Keep moving. That’s my thing. If there isn’t a train going through between when you arrive and depart, it isn’t ‘meant to be.’ Standing around with a camera dangling off of you makes you ostentatious, and the meaner elements of street life will become attracted to you. Crooks or cops, who needs the trouble.

Tsuris, amirite?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It is surprisingly difficult to get a decent photo of a moving train. It’s moving faster than the human eye would suggest, the machine itself is huge and literally bigger than a house, and there’s a ton of fiddly details which are vibrating about and also moving independently as the thing rolls by you. You have to set up the shot in advance; get the exposure right, figure out a composition, aperture and ISO. Even then…

I have a trick for vehicles of any type, which is to focus in on the strut at the edge of the windshield closest to you, which the intersecting plane of the driver’s side window trails away from. Learned that one when shooting the long running ‘cool cars’ series of posts I had going back in Queens.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

All of the train shots in this post were gathered over something like 30-40 seconds, which speaks to how fast these things are actually moving. Each exposure is in the neighborhood of 1/1000th of a second, at ISO 800 and F8. That’s when the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself is floating directly overhead in late afternoon/early evening, and light is bouncing around everywhere. Like I said – ain’t that simple shooting trains.

Back to railfanning, that’s not what I’m doing with this latest fascination of mine. Instead, I’m trying to conquer a difficult subject and develop a muscle memory for the act so that when I encounter it happening in the future, an understanding of the settings are intuitive. Like I said, these trains really are moving quick. Additionally, Pittsburgh sits squarely in a nest of rail tracks.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

CSX 968 (an ES44AC-H, I’m told), wasn’t carrying anything too exciting, mainly cargo boxes and tanker cars. One is still working out when the most frequent activity takes place along this Pittsburgh Subdivision of theirs, but limited experience suggests that it’s early mornings and evenings. There’s traffic all day, of course, but in terms of frequency I’ve observed a lot more activity at the edges of the day.

For a few years before COVID, I’d developed an acumen for what times of day the NY&Atlantic outfit in Long Island City were most likely going to be doing something along Newtown Creek.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The head of the snake, as mentioned, is the singularly interesting section of the train for me. I’ve seen shots of these trains moving military equipment around – tanks and the like – and that’s a sight I’d like to record, so I do pay attention. Mostly normal cargo, followed by a coal or coke train, rinse/repeat, that’s what you mostly get here.

As the title would suggest, I keep on having the sensation you get when fishing a waterway for the first time. You drop a hook, dangle the bait, and hope for the best. Sometimes you get one train over the course of a couple of beers worth of time (I’m a nurser, drives my friends crazy. They’re starting their third and I’m finishing my first) and sometimes you get five. Seriously, I don’t know how the foamers do it, I don’t have the patience.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

All fixed up after a couple of belts, and with several photos on my camera card, I gathered myself together and headed off for the T light rail and a ride back home. That’s a blue line one crossing the Panhandle Bridge, I live along the Red Line.

Back tomorrow with something somewhat different.

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“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.