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Coke, coal, & Clairton
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A rare sunny/warm January day found a humble narrator behind the steering wheel of his Mobile Oppression Platform, heading eastwards along the Monongahela River. My destination was the community of Clairton, where U.S. Steel maintains and operates the Clairton Works. The manufacturing mission here involves the refinement of Coke from Coal, for usage at other company facilities dedicated to the production of steel. This process, coincidentally, produces a tremendous amount of ‘coal gas’ along with several other undesirable compounds.
If Pittsburgh happens to smell like rotten eggs on any given day, odds are that the wind is blowing past the Clairton plant with its voluminous exhaust of sulfur compound waste products.
There’s a great site called ‘Plume Pittsburgh’ which offers a live ‘weather’ report on the local triad of point sources (of which Clairton is the primary offender), and it basically lets you know which way the wind is blowing here, or at the two other U.S. Steel facilities in the ‘Mon Valley.’ PlumePGH can be accessed here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I haven’t spent much time around these parts, yet. Partially, it’s the fact that other places closer to home have drawn my interest. Another factor is that the town itself seems pretty stressed – with shuttered store fronts, abandoned homes, and other ‘rust belt’ indicators which indicate an insalubrious state of affairs, and suggests that the local gentry wouldn’t necessarily be welcoming to a curious stranger wandering around with a camera. Got to acknowledge ‘vibe.’
The locals seem to park on sidewalks and in private lots, which indicates to me that the streets are fairly ‘verboten’ for strangers parking on them. This is a place which you have to get to by automotive means, although I’m told there used to be street car service from Pittsburgh proper ‘back in the day.’
Luckily, there’s a branch of the Montour Trail which overlaps with the still unexplored ‘Steel Valley trail,’ and the Montour outfit offers a free parking lot for its visitors. After securing the MOP into said lot, a humble narrator set out on foot. I was seemingly the singular pedestrian in this section of the town. Definitely was the only one wearing a filthy black raincoat and carrying a camera.
There’s near constant rail traffic here, and there’s a lot of maritime activity on the nearby river, as well. CSX runs a frequent freight service whose coal carrying cars bear the logo of ‘Coke Express.’ Pictured above is a Norfolk Southern Train which is also no stranger to these parts, and observed but not photographed was U.S. Steel’s ‘House Brand’ Union Railroad.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s about a 3 or 4 block walk from the trail’s parking lot to a fairly large vehicular 1987 vintage bridge spanning the Monongahela River, one whose anterior side provides for a point of view of the Clairton Plant, and the thing offers a pedestrian/bike lane. Thereby, away I scuttled,
Unfortunate circumstance on the bridge itself involves the State authorities’ usage of the sort of chain link fencing pictured above. Little 1 inch diamond shape holes… this is always a difficult circumstance for the wandering photographer to shoot through, and similar fencing used to annoy me back at Sunnyside Yards in Queens. There’s rail tracks all over the place, but the main tracks are found just below the bridge. This sort of fencing is commonly encountered at locations overlooking rail lines, so it’s likely some sort of Homeland Security regulation.
Tomorrow, I’ll show you what I saw on the other side, and make an attempt at a semi informed description of the milieu.
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Coking up in Clairton
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the U.S. Steel Clairton Works pictured above and below, which manufactures Coke from Coal. Still can’t tell you all that much about the place, other than directing you to a Wikipedia page about the town it’s found in, and pointing out that this plant has its own sub-site at EPA.gov.
It makes for a nice picture, though.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I posted the first shot in one of the Pittsburgh Facebook groups, accidentally touching off a contentious conversation/argument amongst the Yinzers about the mill. One side was ‘how do you expect to have things and jobs and fund the county if…’ and the other argument revolved around ‘environmental justice and late stage capitalism…’
What if both sides of an argument are valid? What if we all climb down from the calcified positions of the respective political pulpits we inhabit to inhabit and solve problems instead of pointing fingers? Crazy idea, no?
Bah. As I learned to say it, and often stated, on Newtown Creek – it’s not bad, it’s not good, it just is. Are you working to maintain the status quo, trying to improve the situation, or striving to make things worse? Are you doing nothing at all and just sitting on the sidelines while telling people ‘why bother’?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had a friend in town for about a week, and she received a bit of a tour of all the cool spots and sights I’ve discovered so far in Pittsburgh. Clairton was one of them, which is how I ended up taking a picture and then accidentally setting off a debate on the internet. Pictured above is a community called Elizabeth, where I had a very nice plate of french fries with an ok burger for lunch.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
Fifteen barges? C’mon…
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described last week, a humble narrator was recently engaged in a longish walk around the center of Pittsburgh on a pleasant spring afternoon.
My footsteps carried me over towards the West End Bridge (spanning the headwaters of the Ohio River) in pursuance of accessing one of the many waterfront trails found here, in the Paris of Appalachia. The particular trail I was heading towards leads back to a light rail station which would be my day’s penultimate destination, on the way back to HQ some five miles distant. It was late in the afternoon – rush hour time.
Choosing this path ended up being a fortuitous decision, and for the next hour or so Pittsburgh offered quite a show for the wandering photographer to record.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Midway across the bridge, a towing vessel was noticed approaching the span. The boat was handling what seemed like an impossible number of minerals barges. The Towboat was heading eastwards along the Ohio River, towards the confluence of Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers which mingle and form up the Ohio.
One got into position, chose an appropriate lens from my ‘bag of primes,’ and worked out the correct suite of settings for the camera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fifteen barges of what looked like coal were being towed directly beneath the West End Bridge where I was standing. The towboat is called ‘Miss Ivy Brynne,’ which was built in 1974 and offers its crew some 3,800 HP worth of motive force to work with. The boat is currently flagged out of Belle Vernon, PA.
Read more about Miss Ivy Brynne here, at tugboatinformation.com.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the Towboat moved along, so did I, trying to find different perspectives. There must be a speed restriction under the West End Bridge, as the boat was moving at a snails pace.
My guess is that its ultimate destination was going to be one of the two U.S. Steel plants found up river along the Monongahela – either Clairton, or the Mon Valley Works. Given that it was traveling west along the Ohio River, it must have negotiated the lock and dam systems operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers found downriver.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lens swap occurred, as my footsteps carried the camera away from the middle of the West End Bridge. I needed a bit more ‘reach,’ so the 85mm was affixed to the camera.
Right about here is when the towboat’s wheelhouse ‘gunned’ its engines and the vessel began picking up speed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above was captured just as a humble narrator got to the southern extant of the West End Bridge, while also passing over a towing company’s docks that were hosting several other mineral barges.
This was just the start of a heavy industrial show, one which I was privileged to witness on the back end of my scuttle.
Back tomorrow with more.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
Bigly industry
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured in today’s post is the U.S. Steel’s Clairton Works, a gigantic industrial plant whose design and mission involves the transformation of coal into coke. The coke they process here fires the furnaces at other USS plants, notably the Edgar Thompson Steel Mill a few miles west of here.
Fleets of tugboats and railroads carry raw coal here (which does have the appearance of having been pre-processed, particle size wise, I’d offfer), where it’s them cooked in anoxic ovens which produces the coke. Or at least, that’s how I understand how their process works, as I’m still largely ignorant on the subject.
You can read about Coke, and its relatively short industrial history, at this Wikipedia page.
The Clairton Works is the largest manufacturer of Coke in the United States. The history of the plant and the town it is located in are wound up in each other, and this Wikipedia page offers a cogent history which I’d just be referring to over and over so – click here for the overview/scoop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One had parked the Mobile Oppression Platform on the other side of the river, at a lot offered by the Montour Trail outfit, and then walked across the Clairton-Glassport Bridge to the north bank of the Monongahela River for these points of view. I had to shoot through tightly spaced fencing for some of the shots, which is a pain in the butt.
On this shoreline, several large properties were in the business of storing and sorting coal that had been brought using maritime barges. Stout pierage and docks were observed on both sides of the river, which also had impressive concrete bulkheads installed along their water facing edges. I’m sure that I was popping up on security cameras within the plant, and that were I to have crossed some imaginary property line I’d get to meet the local gendarmes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The owners of the plant, U.S. Steel, offer this overview document on their website – which describes the purpose, challenges, and environmental control systems of their operation – you can check that out here.
The economic engine of this part of the country used to revolve around this industry, and in many ways it was the industrial heart of the United States during most of the 20th century. Steel from Pittsburgh allowed Manhattan’s skyline to rise, Detroit to build automobiles, and the Navy was able to replace the Pacific fleet lost at Pearl Harbor due to the efforts of the workers at these plants.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator is – of course – quite new to all of this steel stuff. The scale of things are positively cyclopean, dwarfing anything you’d encounter back in NYC or Northwestern New Jersey. The confluence of massive amounts of rail and maritime activity, everything about Clairton is amazingly large and it’s difficult to conceive of the scale of an operation this big even when you’re staring right at it.
There were about a dozen large material handlers, like the one pictured above, at work when I arrived but it must have been time for a shift change as their operators were all piling into pickup trucks and leaving their rigs behind while I was up there on that bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the view of the Clairton-Glassport Bridge which I walked over, looking back towards the south side of the river, and a residential section of the city of Clairton. The span is about a half mile long, and lined with an unfortunately small chain link fence. As I mentioned yesterday that it is virtually impossible to get a clean shot through this type of fencing.
I imagine that’s by design. I’ve had experience with this type of fence back in NYC at Sunnyside Yards, and it’s a real pickle to get a shot through. The larger chain link fencing, with a more conventional two inch diamond is a pain in the neck too, but the smaller one is nightmarish for photographers. There were a few surveyor holes cut into it here and there, but they didn’t offer salubrious view points.
I used my phone, whose lens is tiny enough to somewhat ignore the fencing, to record a couple of short videos from up on the bridge – check them out here and here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a newcomer to Pittsburgh, I still haven’t discovered the points of view which the natives enjoy. I’m constantly looking at other people’s photos and videos, and trying to scry where they were shot from. The site linked to above is Fort Frick Photography, and I’m a fan.
Again, back in NYC at my beloved Newtown Creek, long experience created an absolute glossary of these POV spots. Climb this, walk there, stand on that – that sort of thing.
I’m still finding those things here, and my occasional encounters with other photo people have included conversation about visual access to the various points of interest around Pittsburgh. I didnt grow up here, so it’s all new to me, and I’m unsure of ‘the rules,’ or where it’s ‘kosher’ to shoot from. You have to worry about teenagers, cops, malign creatures of the street – all that. I’m never so vulnerable as when I’m on foot and using the tripod. Static target.
Back next week with something else, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
Abandoned Bridge
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Union Railroad Rankin Hot Metal Bridge #35, aka the Carrie Furnace Hot Metal Bridge, was built in 1900 and has been out of service for some 40 years. Of late, it has been designated as part of the Carrie Furnace based ‘Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area.’ There’s talk of Allegheny County rehabilitating this span over the Monongahela River for usage by vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists. It connects the Pittsburgh exurbs of Whitaker/West Homestead on the southern bank of the river with the northern connection going to the community of Rankin.
While walking along the Great Allegheny Passage, one might notice a rather prominent fence hole – as a humble narrator did – which leads up to the span. As a note, the bridge is in a deleterious condition, and is quite hazardous. If you’re not versed in ‘urbex,’ or know how to gauge whether or not the next the step you take in a ruined industrial space is either the right one, or the one which sends you to either a hospital or an undertaker… I’d avoid this place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To amplify the caution, there’s several spots where the deck of the thing has deteriorated and the metal decking is nothing more than layers of rust. There’s also quite a number of trip hazards and a few instances where you’re looking through some rusted out hole at the Monongahela River, which is flowing by some fifty feet below you. You never want to have to call 911 for help, even if you could, as that would be an extremely embarrassing situation.
This span was used as a rail bridge, some 483 feet long, and is supported by three stout masonry piers. It was built to connect the Carrie Furnace and Edgar Thomson works on the northern shore to the rail network found on the south side of the river, and it also served as a connection to other nearby U.S. Steel plants in Homestead and Clairton, as well as offering ingress to the incoming rail shipments of coal and coke which fueled the various operations.
There’s lot of sharp edges, drops, and ways to get hurt up here. Also, technically speaking – I was trespassing – but there ain’t exactly a bunch of cops waiting for you up here. Still – it’s a nice spot for photos, and as I kind of know what to look out for, and am also notoriously cautious…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying all that, I was still engaged in my long walk from Duquesne to Homestead along the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) trail. I still had a couple of miles to go before meeting up with a friend at a local brewery for a couple of pints of beer and a session of grousing about the state of the world on that particular week.
The GAP trail reenters the street grid shortly after rounding around the Homestead Pump House historic site, and so did I. One scuttled forward. Ever scuttling, that’s me, God’s lonely man with a camera.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“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.
The Newtown Pentacle 