My October obsession, part 1
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve displayed shots of the freight rail traffic moving through a trench at Allegheny Commons Park previously, and mentioned my desire to return in the late autumn when the Ginkgo Trees which overfly it turn to their autumnal coloration. The most common heraldry you see down on the tracks belong to the Norfolk Southern RR outfit.
Black trains, yellow foliage – very ‘Pittsburgh,’ no?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As it turned out, I had been quite lucky in prior outings at this location, as far as frequency of traffic goes. A couple of days before these photos were captured, I had sat here for two hours without anything interesting happening. This time around, I waited for about 45 minutes, but all the trains were going the wrong way. I wanted to capture one with the train heading towards me. I’ve come to analogize this sort of activity as being a lot like going fishing. You prepare, get there, drop a hook in the water. As far as catching a fish? Depends.
As a side note – the locomotive in the shot above and below belonged to the Allegheny Valley RR outfit. AVRR has been a bit of a ‘white whale’ for me, as I knew that they existed but hadn’t managed to witness one of their locomotives ‘in the wild.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Funnily enough, this ended up being one of those times that I was quite in tune with a large group of people. A crowd of ‘mainly old white guys with expensive cameras’ were gathered here each and every time I made the attempt to get ‘the shot.’ Pleasant conversation and a sharing of knowledge was on hand, but we were all a bit frustrated by the lack of train traffic – which is pretty uncharacteristic for Pittsburgh.
I was glad that I got these, but my desire was to capture a shot of the trains coming towards me remained. Upon returning to HQ, I informed Our Lady of the Pentacle that I’d be returning to this very spot in a couple of days, this time with a water bottle and a sandwich. My plan was to wait it out, as long as it took.
That later effort paid off, as you’ll see next week 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 
Leave a comment