The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday sep 24

– photo by Mitch Waxman

After a medium length walk, one ended up at a familiar spot in the South Side Flats section of Pittsburgh.

What’s now called ‘Burgher’s Brewery,’ formerly the ‘Sly Fox Brewery,’ sits alongside a set of CSX railroad tracks that are fairly busy. Upon my arrival at the brewery, and after a visit to the lavatory, I purchased a pint of ale and got busy.

First up was CSX #1897, which was painted up in ‘heritage’ colors.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

American Railroads offered a quite confusing business map when they were the dominant form of investable industry in this country, and it gets more so when you enter and exit the post Conrail era. The current nationwide companies consolidated, with other survivors of the industry’s early 1970’s apocalypse and nationalization, out of Conrail.

Outfits like Norfolk Southern and CSX were formed from the smoking rubble of the bankrupted freight rail system, dominated by Pennsylvania Railroad and their arch rivals New York Central in the northeast.

This is too long a tale to tell, so I’ll direct you towards Wikipedia for what Conrail was and how all of the modern freight rail companies ‘fell’ out of it.

To understand the ‘world which was,’ let’s just analogize that in the late 19th and early 20th – you didn’t gamble on bitcoin or tech stocks which were promising breakthrough AI services – you bought into railroad stock, and then got out as soon as it paid a return. Rail was pretty much the ‘high tech sector’ back then, but was far more volatile. Let that sink in.

All of the modern freight carriers run ‘heritage units,’ with specialized paint jobs, which signify railroad routes and companies which they have consolidated into the modern operation. Rail fans love this stuff.

‘Monon Railroad’ was one of the many smaller outfits that were combined into CSX. Hear about 1897 direct from the horse’s mouth.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I usually don’t keep shooting after the ‘head of the snake’ has passed out of frame, but there were several ‘DPU’ locomotives in line behind 1897 and a couple of them were interesting to me.

Y’know, even if I was shooting video here, there’s no way I’d be able to convey the absolute landslide of reflected noise which a group of locomotives makes when passing through a narrow brick lined slot like this. Were I able to record it, I wouldn’t be able to play it back at the same volume without the benefit of some movie theater’s sound system – and even then… LOUD.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Another interesting locomotive was in line, this one painted up with the branding and color way of the ‘Maryland Midland’ outfit.

Hmm. That’s a new one.

I headed inside the brewery and ordered a ‘reload’ for my ale, and also paid my tab. As mentioned often, two drinks is plenty for me these days.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I started walking towards the Station Square Light Rail station shortly after CSX #5236 up there passed me by. I followed one of the trails, after returning my glass to the bartender. Yep, inspected the porcelain again, then set off. I managed to meet up with the group of people I wanted to see, and got a free hot dog out of it too.

At the end of the game, after arriving back at HQ, I had walked something like nine miles all told. ‘Not every walk has to be the Bataan Death March’ is – as you might recall – a new motto of mine.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

While plying the trail towards the T light rail station, yet another CSX train rolled past me. All told, I felt pretty satisfied with the outing’s effort.

My day didn’t suck.

Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.

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