T Time
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An internal staccato, as offered by a humble narrator’s bones and ligaments as they ground and popped against tendons and muscle groups deep within my roadway interface, hit a somewhat epic rhythm on a recent afternoon while staggering up a steep hill which leads from HQ to the nearby light rail station. ‘The T,’ as Pittsburgh’s light rail is called, was a part of my plan for an afternoon walk. I wasn’t planning on the musical accompaniment from the legs and feet, but you take what you can get during the cold weather months. The locale HQ exists in is lovely, but it’s a residential town and not chock full of the sort of visual stimuli one such as myself craves.
This wasn’t going to be one of my long walks, instead I was shooting for burning out a few miles in an area which is coincidentally photogenic. As mentioned in the past, Pittsburgh has this weird dealie going on, regarding the T. When you’re heading into the center city you pay the fare as you board, whereas as you’re heading away from the city you pay when you debark the train set.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s a comfortable ride, most of the time, the T. Gets me the five or so miles from HQ to the City of Pittsburgh in about 20 minutes, unlike the R train back in Astoria wherein a journey of a similar distance (say… Astoria to Union Square) would consume the better part of an hour. While riding to my destination in the middle of ‘downtown,’ I decided to spend some of my afternoon with the newish 16mm wide angle lens which I added to my bag at the end of last year.
I’ve discovered a trick regarding Amazon, btw. Let’s say that there’s some frammistat or gizmo that you want, but don’t like the current pricing of it or the thing is from a brand which seldom discounts… if you put that item onto a ‘wishlist,’ the site will inform you when there’s a change in price to items on that list. That’s how I found out that two lenses (which I wanted rather than needed) were discounted by more than a third last year, during Christmas sale season, and that’s how they ended up in my camera bag.
Canon almost never offers that deep a cut in pricing, I’d add. You gotta jump quick when they do. Same rules as Apple.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T uses underground stations in the city center, having taken over an old freight tunnel that’s under the downtown area, when the service was conceptualized. The modern system replaced a far more extensive Trolley style service. I still haven’t taken a bus anywhere here (which was the other replacement for the trolleys), as it’s a lot simpler to just drive the Mobile Oppression Platform to vehicular sorts of destinations than deal with mass transit and the unknown, but that also means I’ve been missing out on seeing Pittsburgh’s ‘Busway’ system. Private roads these busways are, often elevated, and only municipal and transit vehicles can travel on them. How cool is that?
Pictured above is Steel Plaza Station, where I left the T system and got back to that rhythmic popping and creaking that my legs were offering. More on what the wide angle lens saw, later on this week.
Back tomorrow.
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Walking here
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, I’ve been having a devil of a time with the sort of aches and pains one associates with age, and particularly so in my legs and feet. To be fair, I’ve got a full resumes worth of injuries to the roadway interface that are the source of my troubles, but this has been a literal pain in the butt for the last few weeks. Best thing to do is exercise, get the gears spinning, and stretch out all of the meaty rubber bands contained within. Best thing to do, for me at least, is lean into it.
I headed over to the Monongahela River’s South Side frontage, here in Pittsburgh, and got moving. This was a much shorter walk than the one mentioned earlier this week, about four miles – I’d reckon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I seem to be the only person in Pittsburgh that focuses in on the T light rail. It ain’t the 7 train back in LIC, as far as cinematic good looks, but there’s something about the T service which I find visually interesting.
One really wasn’t ‘photowalking’ on this particular day but the camera is always ready to go, and so am I. You can happily wear your headphones on this trail, and I was revisiting an old favorite – Mike Duncan’s “History of Rome” podcast – as I scuttled along.
It reminded me of a forgotten opinion I hold that Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (the last and worst king of Rome before the Republic) is one of the dumbest sounding names in all of western history. I’m often surprised that Trump hasn’t added a ‘Superbus’ onto his name.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, a CSX train came shooting along the tracks, hauling coal. That’s the Fort Pitt Bridge on the left, and the Smithfield Street Bridge on the right. There’s a fence between you and the tracks in this section, one which is about five feet high, I’d guess. Not hard to shoot over it.
Back next week with more from the Paris of Appalachia, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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Frustration
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The weather has generally not been on my side during February, and after the trip to NYC, one has found the rubber bands in his legs and feet tightening up and offering generous amounts of discomfort. The only way out of this particular trap for me is to follow one of the mottos which people who know me in real life are sick of hearing repetition of, the one about ‘internally lubricated parts and using or losing them.’
Thereby, any spare minute when I don’t have to be sitting down, I’m standing or moving. It hurts less the following day when I do.
A recent afternoon found me with an opportunity to stand AND move, so I hopped into the Mobile Oppression Platform and headed over to the ‘Seldom Seen Greenway’ trail, which is a quick drive from HQ. I’ve mentioned this place several times in the past.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yes. I was back hunting for a certain shot which I desire to collect.
No. I did not get it, again, even though I stood around like a schmuck for about two hours.
Funnily enough, a few people appeared along these isolated tracks and interesting conversations ensued. One bloke described the problems he experiences running a dairy farm in the 21st century, another one was a genuine young railfan who aspired to achieve a Master’s degree in Urban Planning someday. Really wasn’t expecting to see anybody up here at all.
Man, just look at that composition… if only there was a subject in the shot, huh? Imagine it, a Wheeling & Lake Erie RR locomotive right in the middle of the photo. That would really be something, wouldn’t it?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While walking gingerly and defeated, down the muddy trail leading back to the paved sanctity of a parking lot, a humble narrator was cursing and frustrated.
Two hours I stood there, feet sinking into the mud along the tracks. I mention this sort of thing – and not because I enjoy describing my failures. Instead, it’s to describe that there’s a process behind the camera which you have to oblige and that whereas you can as ready as possible – gear, time of day, light etc. – sometimes you still come home empty handed despite the effort and preparation.
That’s ok too. Part of the process.
Also, I gotta get me one of them railfanning radios at some point, so I can decide whether or not I’m going to spend my time sinking into the mud productively or not. I actually came back to this exact spot a day or two later and did the exact same thing – stood around waiting for a train for hours, but ‘no bueno.’
Back tomorrow.
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Squaring up
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another of my constitutional scuttles occurred on one of the rare sunny days which the Pittsburgh Metro area has enjoyed in recent weeks, a scuttle which played out along the Monongahela River. The Mobile Oppression Platform was parked in an adjoining municipal park’s lot, and so off I went.
First steps were when I noticed the Towboat ‘Sierra J’ towing a small fleet of barges, in a westerly direction towards the point where the Monongahela’s transmogrification occurs, after an admixture with the Allegheny, and it becomes the Ohio River.
There’s a lot of flowing water around these parts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Next up and along my way, CSX #6926 came roaring by, hauling a mixed up bunch of car units behind it. There was coal, and automobiles, and a lot of random cargo boxes trailing behind it.
This walk was from the 31st street bridge to the Fort Pitt Bridge, which is somewhere in the area of about 3-4 miles. There and back again, I guess my walk was about 7.5 – 8 miles, thereby, which I kicked out in a little over two and change hours.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular path has become fairly familiar to me, and by now I’m sure to you. Its range is along the Three Rivers Heritage Trail, which follows the Monongahela River and is entirely separated from the travel lanes of vehicle traffic. Only foot and bike traffic are allowed. There’s a couple of fairly noisome gaps on the trail, but it’s nothing terribly over the top or dangerous.
There is an opportunity to gain some altitude along the route, which I did to capture the shot above, depicting the T light Rail crossing the Panhandle Bridge and is framed up by the Liberty Bridge and a concrete factory.
Back tomorrow.
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MonongaScuttling
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After returning from NYC to Western Pennsylvania, a humble narrator really felt the toll of that exertion. Honestly, it’s the seven hour drive that does you in. It’s not a terribly challenging automotive course – I-80 to I-99, which then lead into the web of highways and bridges found in the Pittsburgh metro – instead it’s the required all-day mental focus that gets to you. These roads move at 75 mph speed limits, a speed which many regard as being a mere suggestion or a starting point rather than a delimiter. One little screw up and you’re hurtling into the woods at highway speed, a cautious narrator offers.
After a couple of days of rest and recuperation, which included raiding the supply of NYC bagels that I’d returned to Pittsburgh with, before they went into the freezer, it was time for a short walk. I didn’t want to make a big production of this one, and just wanted to stretch my legs for a while and maybe catch a shot or two along the way. There’s a particular section of this trail which I hadn’t laid eyes on yet, so…
A quick hop back into the Mobile Oppression Platform (MOP) soon saw me parking it along the Three Rivers Heritage Trail paralleling the Monongahela River, heading in a generally southeasterly direction.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Across the river, on the site of an old steel mill’s campus, there’s some sort of technology incubator outfit. I have no idea what they’re incubating, other than a vague notion that it has something to do with self driving vehicles. People shudder when that term comes up.
The MOP has a driving assist feature that clicks on when I activate its ‘radar cruise control.’ Sensors on the front end of the car ‘see’ the road’s lane markers and make steering adjustments to keep you in the lane (you have to have your hands on the wheel and provide feedback or alert chimes begin ringing out), and another sensor in the car’s grill regulates speed and following distance with other vehicles, which its sees using a variation of radar technology. Most of my friends shake their heads and say ‘uh uh’ when I mention this capability to them, but it’s actually quite useful on long drives like the one from NYC to Pittsburgh.
That’s an Allegheny Valley RR locomotive on the other shore.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s tie off points for tugs all around this part of the river, which got left behind when the steel mill they serviced was torn down. Unfortunately, they were stoutly locked and fenced off from the trail I was walking on so I couldn’t explore. The only other people on the trail, this time around, were a bunch of college age athletes from Pitt that were doing timed sprints and other track and field exercises.
On the ‘you want to know when you feel old’ subject, it’s when you’re limping along and stretching the ligaments back out, just a couple of days after a 7 hour car trip, and there’s 18 year old kids bounding past you like god damned antelopes. Ute’s.
Four miles or so, and back to the car, so about eight miles all told. Not the most photogenic section of the trail, but easy walking. That’s my yelp review.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 