The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday 19

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Another one of my ‘short walk’ days occurred, and one soon found himself shambling up the hill and towards the T light rail station in Pittsburgh’s Dormont. The transit service soon deposited my pre-corpse onto a platform at its terminal stop, nearby Acrisure Stadium, on the city’s north side.

Your humble narrator slopped out onto the platform, in the style of a bucket of guts being poured into a pig’s pen. After gathering myself together and arranging the various bag and camera straps about my fecund torso, one scuttled forth – a localized condition of entropy autonomously moving about on a sunny day, while wrapped in a filthy black raincoat. Don’t look, you won’t like what you see. I don’t.

It had warmed up in Pittsburgh, finally, which saw those omnipresent occlusions of ice and snow which had been annoying me finally dissolve away and go down the drain. Bah!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My first instinct was to follow the river path, and cross one of the bridges over the Allegheny, but instead I headed north. Have to follow your nose sometimes. As it would turn out, this ended up being a pretty lucky outing for a creature as malefic and horrible to behold as myself. I caught my reflection in a car window, and then that pane of safety glass cracked as the gustation and sensory stalk jutting out of my T-Shirt was turned towards it. ‘Hissss,’ I said, and moved on.

My toes were pointed northwards, and then I suddenly had to urinate.

Such is life, huh? In between seasons for the sports enthusiasts, Pittsburgh does not stock the streets hereabout with Port-a-Potties, as they do during the months when the athletes gambol and toss balls to each other.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I headed off to a spot where I might find the 90 seconds of privacy required to ‘water the plants.’ Luckily, that was in a parking lot nearby the Clark Building, which has been mentioned here before, along with the neighboring Merchant Street Rail Bridge. A few very frustrating attempts to roam around this ‘zone’ in prior weeks were blocked by ice conditions on the pavement.

One leaned into it and soon found himself looking at the Merchant Street Rail Bridge, and that’s when I heard that particular diesel ‘thrumming’ sound which indicates a freight train is getting close.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Hey Now!

Norfolk Southern #7001 appeared, with somebody inside the operator’s cabin was keeping an eye on something external to the train. Any ideas, railfan types? The train was moving extremely slowly, if that means anything. I’m told that it’s a rebuilt EMD SD60E model locomotive, one which is a combination of two older models. Neat!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This was the first of several times I’d get lucky with trains on this particular scuttle. I’d like to think that I’ve finally figured something out regarding the subject and its habits, but the reality is that I just got lucky with my timing. Serendipity, as I often say.

Saying that, I often lose when playing Solitaire.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The train was heading more or less eastwards, towards Etna or one of the multiple rail bridge interchanges which the rail company maintains along those tracks which provide egress to the central peninsular section of Pittsburgh.

After #7001 passed through, I spun on my heels and decided to be all greedy. I wanted more.

One headed over to the rail trench in Allegheny Commons Park, which is where 7001 had just came from, and sat down to wait and see if anything else was going to happen. It did.

More on all that tomorrow.

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