The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Shlep, shlep, shlep.

A mile or so’s worth of scuttling brought me here, after getting dropped off by a rideshare on Pittsburgh’s North Side, to this section of ‘Beaver Avenue’ – a wide road which services an industrial zone.

The section discussed today is defined by a straight line concrete wall dominating one side of the street, part of a larger structure that carries high speed vehicle traffic upon it towards the titular center of the city, and several bridges/highway interchanges. The environment here is ‘built.’

All caught up!

Your humble narrator was soon at the border of the ‘Chateau’ neighborhood, found on Pittsburgh’s ‘North Side.’ Just to the north of this position is a smallish rail yard – the ‘Island Avenue Yard’ – which has been described in the past. I’m thinking that these tracks are a part of that complex, but that’s an assumption.

Hey Now! That’s Allegheny Valley RR’s #6004.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s a number of highway interchanges and ramps which fly through here, and a pile of incredibly overbuilt pedestrian infrastructure. More on that one in a subsequent post… but… lookit that thing! Wow.

One headed towards this feat of over engineering, to hopefully gain a POV over the RR tracks, and also to find out where this design problem might lead to. First time I’ve walked through here, Y’see, and I was completely ignoring the sage advice offered by 90’s band TLC.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Luckily, these tracks and the yard surrounding them aren’t fenced off in this section and they were sort of busy, so before climbing up on ‘that thing,’ I just stood there in a sort of muddy driveway along the sidewalk, waving the camera around to capture these shots.

Hey Now! Norfolk Southern turned up next, hauling a long line of tankers.

I needed to pee, of course, so I did a little dance to kill the urge. My dance recital, enjoyed by the engineer, was to the tune of – and quite resembled – the one performed by Laura Brannigan in her classic ‘Gloria’ music video.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

#1144 lumbered past, filling the air with vibration as it did.

According to Google’s AI ‘Gemini,’ #1144 was built in 2014, and:

‘Norfolk Southern (NS) locomotive #1144 is an EMD SD70ACe diesel locomotive. Originally built with a 4,300-horsepower engine and featuring a wide-cab design, this heavy-haul freight unit operates on mainlines across the Norfolk Southern network.’

I’ve just been going crazy for trains lately, huh?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Two in one shot, yay!

Shortly after 1144 circuited through, and after having ‘watered the verge,’ your humble narrator got all curious about that other thing. The overbuilt ramp thingamabob behind me.

What can be up there? On top of this whatzit? Ramps, ramps, ramps…

I had to know.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Had to walk the entirety of this structure, and get to know it. Make a sketch. Caress its goodness. Give it a middle name. Start it a Christmas Club account at the bank…

One can imagine the governmental design process for this thing, and how it kept on getting added on to, meeting by meeting. Then – a catastrophic cut in the budget by some politician happened – and then the thing that’s pictured today became the best accommodation they could build with the resources at hand… Ahh… government…

Directly across the street is a building occupied by the people who build this sort of stuff for the County and State, and also happen to keep the mass transit systems running.

Back tomorrow, whereupon I climb this thingamabob to its titular top, and then ooze back down to the street level again – like I’m some kind of thing…

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