The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As you might recall from recent folderol, your humble narrator was hiding away from the tumult of the NFL Draft, during the last week of April, by hunting around Pittsburgh’s Bethel Park area.

I was looking for remnants of the massive footprint that a series of coal mines once enjoyed in this area. After visiting the grave of Andy Warhol, one’s feet were again pointed at Route 88/Library Road.

This coal thing with me kind of started while driving along this route. ‘It’s a modern road, set up in the 1930’s and 40’s, why is it serpentine?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The answer was – of course – railroading.

Significant trackage used to exist here (beyond the elevated tracks of Wheeling & Lake Erie, pictured above), servicing a series of coal mines found along the Saw Mill Run waterway, which is a quick flowing urban stream. Said waterway should be regarded as a bit more of a ‘watershed,’ if you wanted to get a bit more ‘nitty gritty’ about it.

Saw Mill Run is fed by hundreds of smaller springs and streams, which trickle down out of the steep hills surrounding it. A primary arterial street called ‘Saw Mill Run Blvd.’ more or less shadows its path.

Saw Mill Run has been mentioned here quite a few times.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My rather hazy and still forming picture of things hereabouts suggests that the right of way used by the T light rail runs more or less in the footprint of the defunct Saw Mill Run RR, which carried mined coal to the Ohio River waterfront via a tunnel punched through Mount Washington.

Library Road narrows suddenly, and of course the thing that they didn’t have any room for anymore was sidewalk pavement. One was thereby forced to divert.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Nearly every stage of life is covered by that shot up there – the school’s playground is childhood, handicap parking is for the middle aged, and there’s a cemetery up on the hill. Neat, and very efficient. That’s ‘thinking ahead,’ right there.

Truly, the lengths I went to in the name of avoiding the NFL Draft, held in Pittsburgh in the last week of April, were ‘outré.’

To maintain my pedestrian access to sidewalk pavement, and not get squished by a pickup truck on Library Road, where the sidewalk just disappears I diverted to a small bridge, carrying an intersecting local road over the Saw Mill Run waterway.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Coincidentally, this adjusted path just happened to follow the tracks of the T Light Rail service. Fancy that.

There are three lines currently; Blue, Silver, and Red.

Red is the one which flows through Dormont, where HQ is found. All three terminate to the southeast behind a shopping mall, and the antipode of that spot is found on Pittsburgh’s North Shore, nearby Acrisure Stadium. They’ve got some sort of ‘hop on-hop off’ dealie going on with the fares, which I’m kind of hazy about the rules for, but it seems that when you pay a fare there’s a grace period during which you can transfer onto another T, or a bus, or one of the inclines.

It’s all very confusing. Nobody in Pittsburgh fully explains things. You’re just expected to ‘know.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One was scuttling towards a nearby T station called ‘Overbrook,’ where I’d be able to catch one of the ‘Red’ line rail units back to HQ.

This is a pretty little section of Bethel Park, have to say. There’s quite a few local shops, and I often see people actually walking around here, while I’m driving through. It’s a dichotomy.

I generally end up driving through this section a few times a week during my daily rounds. There’s quite a few interesting spots here, beyond the whole coal angle which I’m currently fascinated by.

Back next week with more, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.

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