The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This post is a bit of an aside, placed parenthetically within the contents of a longer walk, which will continue tomorrow.

At the intersection of Chateau Street and Beaver Avenue, on Pittsburgh’s North Side, there’s a ramped structure which allows pedestrians and bicycles vertical egress from one ground level up to the next one, and it seems to be attached to a series of highway ramps that overfly a train yard.

How complicated… tell me more…

I looked around a bit, but couldn’t find a name assigned to the structure, although it obviously has one – given how overbuilt and undoubtedly expensive this whatzit was to build. You don’t spend millions of the public’s money on something and then not give it a name.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Steel, concrete, engineering, construction… all super expensive.

Pretty wide ramps are on offer, and these pathways offer sharp right angle turns at the corners where they spiral around the core structure. I’d guess that the thing climbs up about 50-80 feet in elevation. I ran a picture of the whole assembly yesterday, here it is again.

I don’t want you to imagine that I think I’ve found the lost ark of the covenant here, but this is a pretty odd thingamabob.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

If you had to, you could probably drive a non SUV sized police car through here. Width wise, it would be tight but possible. That’s about how wide these ramps were. Gently graded they are, I’d mention, so people with mobility issues and bike riders were definitely a consideration when designing the thing. These are the sort of ‘people mover’ ramps you normally see at stadiums.

Above this thingie are a series of highway trestles which overfly rail tracks, with the trestles connecting southbound drivers to the approaches of the West End Bridge, or to the interplay of ramp options that are offered nearby leading to the Fort Duquesne Bridge, and Crosstown Boulevard, interchanges.

Whew, how’s that for a geography lesson?

I just had to keep on going, until this whatzit got me up to wherever it might be leading to. This is exactly how I’m going to die, I often think.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Basically… up top, there’s another street level series of ramps, and then an overhead series of highway ramps, which this massive pile of smaller pedestrian ramps leads up to. No Shake Shack up here. Now I know.

Also, man oh man, are there ever a lot of vehicle ramps flying through the sky here in Pittsburgh or what? Feck.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

An eye was kept on the Allegheny Valley Railroad train sitting in the yard below, all inert. This outfit does ‘switcher’ and ‘last mile’ duty for (mainly) Norfolk Southern, and I understand they have a few Pittsburgh area clients of their own which these AVRR ‘Carload Express’ engines service. I imagine the crew was taking a break, and eating lunch or something, as they were sitting static for better than half an hour.

That above, by the way, is pretty much the sum total of what I know about these cats at AVRR. If I got something wrong, or you’d like to expand the knowledge of your fellow Newtown Pentacle readers – I’d ask you to leave a comment below.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As it turned out, that conspicuous building – pictured above – was a pretty cool find for me, but all that’s for tomorrow’s post.

Back tomorrow.

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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.