The Newtown Pentacle

Tuesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As described yesterday, during a lament about a Shell Plant found further north/west along the Ohio River, I had some rather mundane stuff to take care of ‘up here’ – about 25 miles north of Pittsburgh ‘proper.’

I had planned a couple of hours of ‘me time’ into the obligation, and spent about an hour of it lurking on a street called ‘Fourth Avenue’ in Freedom, PA., while staring at the Norfolk Southern Conway Yard.

Positively, there are better angles to see this gargantua of a rail yard from, but killing time is killing time, even if it only offers ‘profile’ shots.

from Wikipedia:

• Freedom is a borough in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, along the Ohio River. The population was 1,496 at the 2020 census.[3] It is 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Pittsburgh and is part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Originally founded as a steamboat-building town, it later became known for producing oil and caskets in the 20th century.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One was sitting in the car, fairly obviously, and for some reason I love this shot from within the Mobile Oppression Platform’s cabin, accidentally captured while pulling my camera out of its bag.

I’m going to have to do a bunch of research on Conway Yard, and figure out locations for better points of view. Also, have to make sure that the camera is shut off while within its bag.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One set of switcher locomotives caught my eye, as they shuttled lines of train cars from one track to the next. They had an atypical paint job for Norfolk Southern, which usually means that it’s got some ‘one off’ pollution control or fuel saving gizmo at its heart. Something they’ll roll out for politicians or investors to see at press events.

Notably, Conway Yard was once a prized property of the Pennsylvania Rail Road company.

from Wikipedia:

• Conway Yard (also known as Conway Terminal) is a major rail yard located in the boroughs of Conway, Pennsylvania, and Freedom, Pennsylvania, 22 miles (35 km) northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, along the Ohio River. It was the largest freight yard in the world from 1956 until 1980. It is currently owned by Norfolk Southern (NS) and is one of the largest yards in the United States and on the east coast.
• Conway is the only remaining large operation of the four early-20th century PRR yards. NS processes 90,000 to 100,000 cars per month (as of 2003). The site occupies 568 acres, with 181 miles (291 km) of track and a storage capacity of over 11,000 cars and is a hump yard.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I must’ve been hanging around Freedom for about an hour, waiting for something interesting to happen. As I often say, my kind of photography is a whole lot like fishing. You can’t make a fish bite a hook.

So – That’s what Freedom, PA.’s Fourth Avenue looks like, incidentally, directly paralleling the rail yard. These shots were gathered right about here. Nice residential homes, most likely built under the ‘mill town’ model.

All the reading I’ve been doing about coal has kind of bled into me recognizing the sorts of homes which would be offered to miners. I’ve come to be able to recognize these ‘miner houses,’ but there seems to be several prevalent styles of residence which can fit into either description. The ones above are a few notches higher on my ‘size, livability, and quality’ meter than miner houses are.

The latter form are essentially brick boxes with as few a number of windows as the bosses could get away with installing. You’ll see some of those in the near future.

Coal is a fascinating subject, but this post is about Conway, the existence of which is – tangentially speaking – consequential of coal, but there we are. It’s all connected.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A Towboat was navigating down the Ohio River, which was visually interesting, but these shots really disappoint me and I actually considered not running them. It’s that patchwork of horizontal lines. There’s nothing technically wrong with them, it’s just… I dunno.

I’ll definitely be back to this ‘zone’ sometime this summer, but I have a bunch of googling to do first. ‘Rail fanning locations near Conway Yard’ is likely going to be one of my first queries to the Googleplex before I do. I also imagine YouTube is going to come in handy here.

I had to get on with the utter mundanity which had brought me up north, so a last shot or two of those long horizontal lines, with trains in them, were cracked out before firing up the MOP’s engine and hurtling off into space again.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Neat, huh? Good thing I had that green swoosh to frame around. Bah!

Mitch’s rules of composition include: ‘triangles!,’ ‘Z’ shapes, and that whereas one thing in a shot is best, three is cool too, but there should no more than five. Odd is better than even. Establishing shot, medium, up, down, all around, close up. Pay no attention to the man behind the camera, folks, he’s busy.

Back tomorrow with something different.

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