Archive for the ‘Pennsylvania’ Category
It’s a bit like going fishing…
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Railfanning has never been my ‘thing.’ I certainly like taking pictures of trains, but the whole hobby of driving off at 5 in the morning to some remote trackway in order to see a train roll through is just counter to my whole dealie.
Keep moving. That’s my thing. If there isn’t a train going through between when you arrive and depart, it isn’t ‘meant to be.’ Standing around with a camera dangling off of you makes you ostentatious, and the meaner elements of street life will become attracted to you. Crooks or cops, who needs the trouble.
Tsuris, amirite?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is surprisingly difficult to get a decent photo of a moving train. It’s moving faster than the human eye would suggest, the machine itself is huge and literally bigger than a house, and there’s a ton of fiddly details which are vibrating about and also moving independently as the thing rolls by you. You have to set up the shot in advance; get the exposure right, figure out a composition, aperture and ISO. Even then…
I have a trick for vehicles of any type, which is to focus in on the strut at the edge of the windshield closest to you, which the intersecting plane of the driver’s side window trails away from. Learned that one when shooting the long running ‘cool cars’ series of posts I had going back in Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All of the train shots in this post were gathered over something like 30-40 seconds, which speaks to how fast these things are actually moving. Each exposure is in the neighborhood of 1/1000th of a second, at ISO 800 and F8. That’s when the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself is floating directly overhead in late afternoon/early evening, and light is bouncing around everywhere. Like I said – ain’t that simple shooting trains.
Back to railfanning, that’s not what I’m doing with this latest fascination of mine. Instead, I’m trying to conquer a difficult subject and develop a muscle memory for the act so that when I encounter it happening in the future, an understanding of the settings are intuitive. Like I said, these trains really are moving quick. Additionally, Pittsburgh sits squarely in a nest of rail tracks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX 968 (an ES44AC-H, I’m told), wasn’t carrying anything too exciting, mainly cargo boxes and tanker cars. One is still working out when the most frequent activity takes place along this Pittsburgh Subdivision of theirs, but limited experience suggests that it’s early mornings and evenings. There’s traffic all day, of course, but in terms of frequency I’ve observed a lot more activity at the edges of the day.
For a few years before COVID, I’d developed an acumen for what times of day the NY&Atlantic outfit in Long Island City were most likely going to be doing something along Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The head of the snake, as mentioned, is the singularly interesting section of the train for me. I’ve seen shots of these trains moving military equipment around – tanks and the like – and that’s a sight I’d like to record, so I do pay attention. Mostly normal cargo, followed by a coal or coke train, rinse/repeat, that’s what you mostly get here.
As the title would suggest, I keep on having the sensation you get when fishing a waterway for the first time. You drop a hook, dangle the bait, and hope for the best. Sometimes you get one train over the course of a couple of beers worth of time (I’m a nurser, drives my friends crazy. They’re starting their third and I’m finishing my first) and sometimes you get five. Seriously, I don’t know how the foamers do it, I don’t have the patience.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All fixed up after a couple of belts, and with several photos on my camera card, I gathered myself together and headed off for the T light rail and a ride back home. That’s a blue line one crossing the Panhandle Bridge, I live along the Red Line.
Back tomorrow with something somewhat different.
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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.
Day late, dollar short
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned last week, a longish walk found me scuttling along the pedestrian/bike path of the PJ McArdle Roadway here in Pittsburgh, which connects the prominence of Mount Washington with the South Side Flats section found on the banks of the Monongahela River. I entered the roadway path at about the halfway point, leaving the upper section for a future walk.
There are some pretty impressive points of view available along this path, although negotiating your way to it is pretty terrifying as you need to cross several vehicle lanes which all lead into a primary crossing and tunnel leading out of the city.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My desire was to wrap up the walk at a spot I’ve become pretty entranced by, which also happens to host a brewery with outdoor tables. Further enhancement of my personal joy in this matter is provided by the bar’s proximity to a fairly busy set of freight rail tracks. The icing on my proverbial cake is provided by the fact that the tracks involve an at-grade street crossing, meaning that gizmos with signal bells with flashing lights and lane blocking arms activate when a train is nearing so I get advance notice of the approaching locomotive, and subsequently the time to run over and get into position.
That would be later on in the evening, though, and I wasn’t done kicking my feet about. This ‘zone’ in Pittsburgh hosts a lot of relict building stock, much of it seeming to date back to the early 20th and late 19th centuries.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I should mention that I’m making a concerted effort to not get all ‘history boy,’ quite yet, here in Pittsburgh. Partially, it’s because a series of existential issues concerning the ‘now’ are occupying my time. Also, I’m not really planning on becoming the walking encyclopedia that I was in NYC. Whatever happens to drift into my head and lodge there is osmotic gravy, but I’m currently not involved in any form of research.
That building above is pretty interesting, to me, at least.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After looping and scuttling about for a bit, one decided to head towards the ultimate destination for the evening – that aforementioned brewery. It’s a part of some gentrification scheme being pushed by a NYC real estate developer, wherein they’re making the same mistakes here that they made at the Bush Terminal in South Brooklyn. Saying all that, I don’t care anymore about stuff like that, and all I wanted was to pour a couple of pints of cold beer into the talkie hole on my face.
I enjoy the solitude and anonymity here in Pittsburgh. For the last several years along Newtown Creek it became a standard thing, for instance, to have a garbage truck driving by and hearing the driver shout out “where ya goin today, Mitch?” Once I was actually stopped by a DSNY crew who asked me to let the city councilman know about a broken water main that nobody cared about fixing which was getting in their way. It got fairly weird, being me. I like being some random bloke with a camera, again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Frustrating is how I describe the situation when I’m approaching a set of rail tracks here in Pittsburgh, and I’ve just missed the opportunity to photograph a train. The only shot I really want from a freight train is one of the head of the snake – the locomotive engine.
Wasn’t a big deal, since my plan involved an hour and change of sitting on the keister and drinking, but still…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This spot has a fairly nice view of the Panhandle Bridge, which the T light rail uses to cross the Monongahela River, so I zoomed in on that while I was waiting for the show to come to me. When the train’s grade crossing signal alert bells started ringing again, I’d pay my tab and head back home. Luckily, they serve pretty good suds at this watering hole.
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.
Utterly pedestrian
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another ‘long walk’ started with a humble narrator riding on the T light rail service from HQ in Dormont, and back to the center of Pittsburgh. My end stop for the day would be a bar I found that sits alongside the Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks of CSX. Beer and trains! What could go wrong?
This all started around noon, of course, and I had a whole megillah planned for the interval. I negotiated a series of street crossings from the T which would make the ‘Bicycle People’ back home clutch at their pearls, and found my way to the pedestrian path of the PJ McArdle roadway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the way, I discovered a few absolutely beautiful spots to capture Norfolk Southern rail traffic from, and was treated to a series of intriguing city views which I’d only witnessed from behind the wheel of the car while hurtling along at speed.
This is sort of the lower half of the viaduct, sometime soon I’ll show you what a subsequent walk of the upper section revealed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A pretty view of the St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church was on hand from on high. For a panorama image of the view from 100 steps further down the path, click here.
Next week, I’ll be displaying what I captured on the rest of this walk, and the train photos I got while sitting at an outdoor bar drinking pints of craft beer. They’re real big on the craft beer thing here.
Back next week!
“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.
Up, down, all around
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My plan for a ‘long walk’ on this particular day was to force myself into a state of continuous motion for around four hours, so after riding the T from the suburb of Dormont and into the City of Pittsburgh, a humble narrator started kicking his feet around.
My original route was altered by construction on the T which saw it not stopping where I had intended to go, but who cares about that? I soon found myself at a municipal staircase leading up the ‘Boulevard of the Allies,’ which in turn would lead me to a crossing of the Monongahela River over the Liberty Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was only the second time I’ve walked this path, one which I declare as being pretty cool. A recent addition to my kit has been a fishing hat that I bought at Costco for $12. The burning thermonuclear eye of god itself is a baleful entity here in the Pittsburgh area, and on relatively clear summer days it’s a malignant force. I needed something with a bit more cover than a baseball cap, and found my personal desires answered at a warehouse store found, in a shopping mall, that sits on land that used to be occupied by what once was the nation’s largest steel mill. I never felt more American.
It’s funny. My entire life has been defined by the NYC ‘thing’ where you’ve got a knapsack with you when you leave the house in the morning, which contains every thing in it you’re going to need until returning home at night. I’m still adjusting to having a car to stuff gear into, and that it’s ok to bring an extra heavy tripod with me because why not? The NYC experience saw me working feverishly to shave a half pound, or even a few ounces, of weight out of my camera bag, and carefully considering putting one lens or another into my camera bag based on how much the thing weighs rather than what it does.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m actually pretty happy with the shot above, captured from the Liberty Bridge. Fairly frustrated was a humble narrator, however, as everywhere that one scuttled to in search of a neat freight rail photo opportunity was utterly empty of such traffic. As is always the case, when I’d walk away from the POV spot, you’d hear a train horn blowing and feel the rumble of it passing. Uggh. Frustrating.
One scuttled about for a while, pushing forward, and eventually – after the four hours of forced marching were over – headed back to the T and home to Dormont about 6 miles south of this spot and on the other side of a mountain. 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.
Dormont hullabaloo
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A ‘long walk’ day came along, and has been my recent habit at such intervals, a humble narrator scuttled up the hill here in Pittsburgh’s Dormont section to catch the light rail and travel into the ‘central’ section of the metro area. Along the way, I walked past an absolute cacophony of laboring Yinzers.
Yinzer is how Pittsburgh people refer to themselves, as a note.
This particular outfit has been busily scratching at the ground hereabouts for the last couple of months. Word has it they’re installing some sort of fiber optic dealie, and it’s been a bit of pain in the neck as far as noise and street closures. I’m fairly used to this, of course, as the corner I lived on, back in Queens’ Astoria, was a fairly busy one with lots and lots of this sort of thing going on literally all the time. Usually it would occur in the middle of the night, with the generator or other equipment set up directly under my bedroom window.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is Broadway Avenue in Dormont, incidentally, nearby the Patomac station. There’s several spots along this line where the light rail just rides up to a concrete pad no higher than a standard curb, but there’s several stops where you’ve got ‘high platform’ actual stations. Patomac is one of those. The T, as the light rail is called, has two sets of doors – one for the high platform, and another for the low. The latter exit and entrance is set up like the sort of situation you’d encounter in a bus, with a little set of steps leading out. Pictured above, the light rail set is moving away from Pittsburgh.
As is my habit, when I’m waiting for a train to arrive, the camera starts getting waved around. Some bloke started chatting about photography with me on the platform while I was doing so. Pleasant chap.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My ride into the City showed up more or less at the same time as the one leaving Pittsburgh entered the Patomac high platform Station. The fiber optic project follows the T tracks, more or less, and service has been a bit off for the last couple of months due to this and other projects along the route. Saying that, it usually won’t be more than about twenty minutes before another T comes along. I’d regularly wait longer at Queens Plaza for the R.
The photography enthusiast whom I’d been chatting with, and I, boarded the T and headed into town. More on what I did there, after wishing him a fond adieu and a pleasant day, and all that… 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 