The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This scuttle began on the top of that elevation pictured above, proceeded down Brosville Street in the South Side Slopes neighborhood to the Church Route Steps, and then my stinking carcass could be observed wiggling about on the level streets of the South Side Flats area, by any who cared to notice.

The goal for the day involved purposefully ‘leaning into it’ and propelling myself through space as quickly as possible, in an attempt to begin training my still gamey ankle back to a proper ‘average’ walking speed. I’ll be doing this all winter, I imagine.

Shall I burst back into the vernal season as a speedster then, clad in scarlet and adorned with flashes of lightning? No. That’s a comic book character called the Flash, and not the living embodiment of the phrase ‘remains of the day’ that your humble narrator has devolved into.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Spotted this cool car on my way through. One thought to himself that ‘this has to be the most masculine vehicle I’ve ever seen.’

Since I was in the ‘flats’ neighborhood, I decided to have a pint of beer for lunch at the Sly Fox Brewery, and also see if I couldn’t manage to capture a few train shots while I was there.

Hey, calorically and cholesterolically speaking, beer is a better choice than a burger. It’s hydrating too, and there’s also a toilet in that brewery.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I didn’t have to wait long, and CSX #2218 appeared, heading ‘towards Ohio’ from unknown points to the southeast. This particular locomotive has been mentioned before here, in ‘Road Slug, baby, Road Slug.’

I should mention that the ‘baby’ thing is part of a long running joke between Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself. It got started one night on a Working Harbor trip in NY Harbor back in the 2010’s, when she pointed out a passing vessel and asked if it was a dinner boat. I said ‘you definitely don’t want to eat there.’ ‘Sludge Boat, baby, Sludge Boat.’ It’s been a running joke ever since.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This post represents about a half hour’s worth of sitting around for the train shots in today’s post. As you may have discerned, I’m particularly fond of this location, and admittedly have been overshooting along these tracks in th least few months, but man – it’s practically a sure thing. Also, there’s beer and a toilet!

I had nothing like this at Newtown Creek. If I wanted a rail shot of anything other than a LIRR or Subway train, I had to go hang out under the Pulaski or Greenpoint Avenue Bridges, sometimes for hours. There was no pint of beer, and the toilet was… well, the toilet was actually everywhere. Everything under these bridges smelled like a mix of wet garbage, auto exhaust, and hot asphalt.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s a point of view available above, on a long trestle built for trucks which overflies the tracks. In between train appearances I used the elevator (!) to head up top for a shot or three of these neato concrete trucks moving around the Bryan Materials Group campus.

If I wanted shots of concrete trucks back at Newtown Creek, that was pretty available and easy to get, but you also had to figure in being a bit sly about when and where you’d gather them lest you draw the attention of a certain self organizing group of Sicilian entrepreneurs down upon yourself.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

After returning my pint glass, having only imbibed one ‘lunch beer,’ CSX #7258 next hurtled through the pass.

It’s a ‘GE CM44AC’ model locomotive. I always remind myself about safety when doing rail shots, as even a small mistake could be catastrophic. Famously, this is the sort of thing which I think ‘AI’ is pretty good at describing, so Google’s computer mind was queried and the response to ‘describe the physics involved if a GE_AC44C6M locomotive collided with a stationary human being, while at top speed’ follows:

A GE AC44C6M locomotive, which has a top speed of approximately 75 mph (121 km/h), possesses an enormous amount of kinetic energy and momentum due to its massive weight (around 140 metric tons or 312,000 lbs). A collision with a stationary human at this speed is a highly inelastic collision governed by Newton’s laws of motion and the conservation of momentum. 

The Dynamics of the Collision

1. Initial Contact: The collision occurs over a very short duration. The force exerted is immense due to the rapid change in the human’s velocity, from zero to some high velocity in a fraction of a second.
2. Momentum Transfer: The human’s momentum changes dramatically, accelerating rapidly to a speed close to that of the train (though the human will likely be impacted and thrown, not “stick” to the front). The locomotive’s velocity, and thus its momentum, changes by a negligible amount because its mass is orders of magnitude larger.
3. Energy Dissipation: The human body is not designed to withstand such massive forces and rapid acceleration. The applied forces are far beyond the structural integrity of the human skeleton and tissues. The energy is dissipated through the catastrophic failure of the body’s structure, including bone crushing and severe tissue damage.
4. Outcome: The human is violently struck, resulting in instantaneous fatality with near-zero chance of survival. The body would likely be thrown a significant distance or, depending on the exact point of impact and design of the locomotive’s front (e.g., the snow plow or ‘cowcatcher’), may be caught and dragged or run over by the train cars. 

The scale difference between the train and a person is so extreme that the collision is comparable to an ant being stepped on by an elephant—both are immensely larger than the ant, and the outcome for the ant is the same regardless of the exact mass difference. The locomotive continues with essentially no change in speed, while the human is subjected to fatal forces. 

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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.