The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Win, win, win. Finally, CSX played ball with my aspirations and sent a train over that rail bridge visible from the Homestead Pump House. It’s called the Pinkerton’s Landing Bridge, by the way, it’s aka the ‘Pemickey’ bridge.

The Pittsburgh Subdivision of CSX, which I often photograph further down the river, nearby the Sly Fox Brewery in the South Side Flats section of Pittsburgh’s inner core, crosses the Monongahela River here. It used to spur off to the Homestead Plant and to Carrie Furnace, but today its tracks lead to the massive Edgar Thomson U.S. Steel plant a few miles east.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I was listening to the radio chatter on my scanner radio, and this was a 260 axle train according to the automated defect detector. That’s a mechanical circuit checker which lets the engine at the front of the train know that they haven’t lost any cars along their path, the defect detector is. Multiple units along the route will report how many axles are present at each way station.

Hey, I learn things.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This was a fairly rare dusk/evening (these days) photo session for me. My old ‘night owl’ habits in NYC have been completely reversed here in Pittsburgh. It’s been a minute since I shot in low light around dusk and evenings. I get up really early these days.

Pittsburgh is very much an ‘early to bed, early to rise’ sort of place.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I’m planning on returning here about this time of day to see if lightning strikes twice. If it does, and this is more or less when CSX schedules a run across the Pinkerton’s Landing Bridge, there will be a spectacular ‘night shot’ to be captured here in the fullness of time.

It’s right about at this point that Our Lady texted me saying that the event she was participating in was winding up. I fired up the Mobile Oppression Platform, a Toyota, and then hurtled towards Carrie Furnace.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The train was mostly hauling shipping containers.

It’s about a 15 minute drive from ‘a’ to ‘b’ but most of that time is spent sitting at traffic lights. On my way over to Carrie, a bit of news filtered in. It seems that some group of lefties decided to decry a ‘fascist, genocidal, zionist’ politician. This time around, it was Bernie Sanders. Bernie. Sanders. Sigh…

Y’know, we have a fairly shallow bench sitting in the dugout on the left side of the field, these days. Maybe two or three of them are ‘stars’ hidden amongst the entire crew of loathsome sentience. Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s not a good idea to chip away at these stars, right about now.

As always, however, the American left is compelled to start to eating its own arm in order to guarantee the right its victory. I still think that the Republicans should send Tiffany Caban a thank you note for her introduction of the phrase ‘defund the police’ to the national conversation.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Another CSX train appeared – heading in the opposite direction and back towards the Pinkerton’s Landing Bridge – just as I arrived at Carrie Furnace for my reunion with Our Lady.

8 to 8:30 p.m., that’s my new deal here. Should be a pretty cool sight as the days grow shorter during the approach of Autumn. On it.

Back tomorrow with something different.

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