The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This post details a part of an interesting walk recently undertaken in the McKees Rocks area, a Borough of Allegheny County which is part of the larger Pittsburgh Metro area.

I’ve been to McKees Rocks a few times in the past, but usually on the literal other side of town, and this was the first time I’d wandered through this section on foot. These shots were captured along Thompson Avenue.

As is the standard with the Pittsburgh area, just because a lot is purposed towards something in modernity, the modern use of the property has little or no relevance as to the purpose which the industrial buildings on the lot were originally designed to accomplish. The particular company whose tenancy I was walking past would appear to be in the iron pipe business, but are actually in the drilling business.

It’s funny… I really can spot ‘em.

That structure pictured above is what’s left of the 1905 Taylor-Wilson daylight factory, which is an architecturally significant and historic industrial structure. Son of a gun…

quoting from sah-archpedia.org –

‘Cummings designed Taylor-Wilson to be cheap and fireproof, and also to show artistic flair. Six bays wide, sixteen bays long, and three stories high, it encloses an enormous space (160 × 120 feet) with a gently arched roof, one-story projecting aisles, and a facade dominated by a round-arched window twenty feet in height, though now boarded over. Wooden window frames were painted red to provide contrast with the intervening bands of gray concrete. Used originally for the production of custom-built machinery for heavy industry, the factory currently serves only as a storage facility.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Neat! Daylight factories were part of an effort by the ‘Captains of Industry’ in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to stave off a nascent labor and class war revolution which had been brewing in the United States since the Homestead Strike.

Back when America was ‘great,’ the strike busting and general hostility shown towards labor by the bosses had radicalized the proletariat instead of taming it. The bosses started realizing that improving conditions at the mills and factories just might ameliorate some of that class rage, and the assassination attempts they were experiencing, and also possibly tamp down the chances of a Bolshevik style revolution breaking out.

Historically speaking, prior to the New Deal, ‘which side are you on’ could be a life or death question. I know this all sounds ridiculous at the stage in history that we’re in, but anarchists and socialists were a major concern for the monied classes at the start of the 20th century. Roosevelt was famously accused of being a traitor to his ‘class.’ Don’t worry, the 2030’s are going to be a blast, so we’ll get to live through it all again during the ‘Great Again Depression.’.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Well… can confirm that these are active tracks. At least sometimes.

According to Google’s Gemini AI:

The tracks operate as an active, localized industrial “switching” and short-line corridor rather than a high-speed passenger or cross-country main line. 

• McKees Rocks Industrial Enterprises (MRIE): They use the line as a primary transloading vein. Heavy materials—such as raw steel, coal, industrial aggregates, and bulk commodities—are moved off river barges on the Ohio River, loaded onto rail cars via these tracks, and staged for transport.
• Pittsburgh & Ohio Central Railroad (POHC): This is a larger regional short-line railroad owned by industry giant ⁠Genesee & Wyoming. The POHC maintains its regional operational headquarters right in McKees Rocks and utilizes interchanges with the PAM trackage to ferry chemicals, plastics, and minerals to and from Neville Island and Washington County.
• Class I Interchanges (CSX & Norfolk Southern): The Thompson Avenue trackage serves as a critical local collection point. Once the short-line switchers aggregate the industrial cars from local businesses, they funnel them out to the major national networks. They interchange with CSX Transportation (which operates a sprawling facility adjacent to Stowe Township) and Norfolk Southern at nearby Duff Junction.

Because the line curves through dense industrial corridors right past factory gates—including the PennDrill facility at 500 Thompson Avenue—trains operate at restricted, low yard speeds (typically around 8 mph) to spot cars for local manufacturing tenants. 

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Couldn’t confirm as I don’t trespass, but supposedly Chartiers Creek flows on the other side of these industrial lots. The waterway is on the map, but I don’t believe anything these days unless I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

I’m planning on returning to this stretch with the car at some point, so that I can sit and linger, while waiting for a train to come through. There were LOTS of great compositions encountered along the way which were just missing a train moving through them, I’d mention.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

St. Mary’s RC church was my navigational icon throughout this part of my day. My wayfinding confidence has been shaken by the two recent ‘wrong way’ decisions, described in prior posts, and now I’m a regular ‘Nervous Nellie’ about committing another gaffe. Shame!

One was in ‘full pack’ mode. I had everything with me – lenses, tripods, you name it. Forgot the railfan scanner radio, of course, but it migrated off the bag when I was slotting an umbrella into the equation.

Throughout the scuttle, I was playing around with a new addition – one of the magnetic camera filters which I had mentioned acquiring, a few posts back. This one was a ‘circular polarizer.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The polarizer gives me some control over reflections, and to a certain extent – color saturation. Particularly so in the sky, where haze and atmospheric humidity can be somewhat compensated for.

The great thing about these magnetic filters is that you just pop them on and off the lens as needed. The older filters I’ve got required you to screw them onto the lens, which is a fiddly, time consuming, and annoying task.

Back tomorrow.

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