The Fourth, and Final, Potato
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a short one today, with the last few shots from a Birthday walk wherein I contemplated – amongst other things – just how Superman would stop a runaway train without causing a derailment. I had just taken up station at an oft visited brewery found alongside CSX’s Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks when CSX #3320 appeared from the east. Or at least eastwards. I’m still working out the cardinal directions here, and have added a compass to the long list of stuff attached to or in my camera bag.
I had an ‘ok’ cheeseburger for dinner. Beer’s pretty good here, but the food is – as the youngins would say – ‘mid.’ #3330 is a GE ET44AH model locomotive, incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From the same direction a GE C30-7 model locomotive, which CSX has assigned the charming moniker of ‘#7036’, appeared. It’s a fairly old train, apparently, as this model was produced sometime between 1976 and 1986. It seemed nice.
Given that it was my birthday, and that I also thrive on this sort of ‘Doctor Nerdlington’ information, it seems that the average rate of human fingernail growth is about 1.5 inches a year. Thereby, some 7.125 feet worth of fingernails have been produced by and clipped away from me, over an entire lifetime. How much of a mess are you? How much cellular debris do you think has been let loose upon the world in your name?
Apparently, I’ve also shed something in the neighborhood of 85 pounds and 8 ounces of human skin, as exfoliate, over the years.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX currently has 2,700 locomotives in its fleet, the average length of which is 60 feet. All together that’s about 162,000 feet of end to end hardware. In miles, that translates to 30.68 miles of just locomotive engine. That assembly would theoretically produce a force of 11.34 million horsepower if combined perfectly.
This brings us back to Superman, doesn’t it? Given that the Man of Steel has ‘one arm’ pushed the Earth out of the way of a passing comet and returned the planet to proper orbit multiple times, can we say he’s more powerful than ‘ALL the Locomotives’ in the future? I’ve done the math on this, or at least a handy computer program has.
The last of my Birthday trains was CSX #7037.
Back next week.
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Three Potato
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mentioned several times this week, a humble narrator found himself taking a birthday walk here in Pittsburgh, and there was a regular cavalcade of CSX trains witnessed for the whole way. I was listening to a short playlist of songs, which I refer to as ‘my theme music,’ which includes a song about Superman by the 1990’s group ‘Crash Test Dummies.’
The eventual destination for the walk was the now familiar Sly Fox Brewery in the South Side Flats area, along the Monongahela River, where libation and good company was found.
This was my 20,820th day on the planet. That’s 499,680 hours, by the way. I still get pretty good mileage despite being so close to a half million hours in, although the frame has become a bit warped, and I could definitely use a new set of brakes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve been contemplating the whole Superman is ‘more powerful than a locomotive’ thing of late. CSX #7269, up there above is – for instance – a rebuilt GE AC4400CWM model locomotive. It weighs 426,000 pounds and produces 4,400 HP of traction. That means Superman has to be capable of exerting at least 5,000 HP worth of counter force through his hands if he’s going to overpower it. Figure in momentum, and Supes would need to muster maybe two to three times that amount of force to bring it to a stop.
Now as to what ‘horse power’ means, it’s complicated. Also complicated is how Superman might stop a train without causing a derailment to ripple through all the coupled carriages behind the engine.
Suffice to say that Superman is surprisingly capable, and that the laws of physics don’t entirely apply to him. Strange visitor from another planet, indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a week or so before my half millionth hour on the planet, this is what I was getting up to. To be fair, I’ve had worse Birthdays.
Me? I barely manifest any horse power at all. A strong breeze is enough to push me backwards, and I was recently knocked onto my butt after colliding with a housefly back at HQ.
To be fair, that was some fly I ran into. Wonder if it might have been Kryptonian? Does a fly perceive us as meat locomotives, or just as strange visitors from the same planet? What do you say, lords and ladies?6
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Two Potato
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After CSX #148 hurtled past my lens, which is pictured above and was described yesterday, the CSX Subdivision’s signal lights indicated that the transportation company wasn’t quite done with showing off on this particular afternoon. Well… it was a humble narrator’s birthday, after all.
It was also the anniversary of the Pittsburgh incident of 1968, a fictional account of which was packaged up by local film makers for national distribution. Coincidentally, I share a Birthday with the original Kosciuszko Bridge, over Newtown Creek back in NYC. Like me, that bridge has left the city and the creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You don’t normally see two trains facing in the same direction hereabouts, so that drew my attention when they appeared. The tracks to the right are generally hosting traffic heading west or ‘away.’ The train on that side was static, whereas the second train was soon hurtling forward on the left side track. Fun!
If you click through to the larger incarnations of the photo, hosted at Flickr, you’ll notice a great deal of heat distortion captured in the image. It was in the high 80’s, but luckily it was only a bit humid at this particular moment. If you don’t like the weather in Pittsburgh, just wait an hour and it’ll change into something different.
Ya got yaself whatch youse might call’s one a dem ‘volatile atmospheres’ here, sparky. What you gonna do?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX #7006 broke out of formation on the left hand track and started pulsing its way towards your humble narrator. I’m told it’s a Rebuilt GE CM44AC model locomotive that’s been hurtling around North America since 1996, and is one of 593 such locomotives operated by the company.
As a note: I’m still fairly bewildered by all of this train stuff. The specificity, the overlapping ownerships, the nitty gritty of model types and years of – it’s all so very confusing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While the train was advancing, your humble narrator kept on moving from one patch of shadow to another hoping for an angle of view advantage. The trail is graded to rail standard and is thereby easy walking, but it has a very slight rise in altitude when you’re standing ‘here’ vs. ‘there.’ Splitting hairs, really.
There was also a tree line to contend with, one which occluded the Fort Pitt Bridge above and the Pittsburgh skyline behind it. I finally settled on this spot as the train neared.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The second train on the right hand track was still static after #7006 passed by, pulling what looked like a collection of automotive carrier cars and random cargo or tanker cars. Scuttling soon resumed, but every few minutes a point was made of checking over my shoulder to see if anything was happening with that other train.
That second train was being held in place by signal lights, luckily they’re ones which you can plainly read from the neighboring trail.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While walking along, I noticed a towboat on the Monongahela River heading towards the Ohio River. See – the photo above proves it.
Back tomorrow with more.
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One Potato
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A birthday scuttle was underway, and your humble narrator was hoping to see a few locomotives along the way. Sometimes, you get lucky.
My path followed the Great Allegheny Passage bike and pedestrian trail down the shoreline of the Monongahela River, and this section of the facility offers several commanding views of Pittsburgh’s downtown cluster of office buildings, and several bridges, along the way.
It’s also mirrored by the Pittsburgh Subdivision’s right of way, owned by the CSX railroad outfit, so there’s a pretty good chance of seeing a few trains running through what’s basically a choke point for CSX’s operations.
If trains were Persian soldiers, and these tracks were Thermopylae, that would make me Leonidas. That’s madness, you say?
Dis is Spartah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I spotted the first of what turned out to be several passing locomotives as it was transiting beneath the Fort Pitt Bridge. All of the land in this area used to be a rail yard owned by the now defunct Pittsburgh & Lake Erie RR outfit. Their yard property has been redeveloped as ‘Station Square,’ which hosts restaurants and bars as well as a couple of hotels and a Soccer Stadium in modernity. It’s also where the docks of the Gateway Clipper tourist boats are found. Saying that – CSX’s subdivision is still very active.
The three surviving U.S. Steel mills are found to the southeast, and CSX has an intermodal yard just west of Pittsburgh in an area called McKee’s Rocks. This location is more or less the middle point between those two other areas of interest. Lots of traffic.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX #148 got close, and a humble narrator started a-clicking the shutter button as it did. Choo-Choo.
#148 was built in March of 1996, when the most popular toy in America was the ‘Tickle Me Elmo’ doll, and the #1 song on the national charts was ‘the Macarena.’ How popular was that song when #148 was spawned? Here’s Hillary Clinton clapping along with it at the DNC convention just a few months after #148 went to work.
#148 is a GE AC44CW model locomotive, I’m told.
Back tomorrow with more Choo-Choo.
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West End Girls
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent scuttle played out on what turned out to be a humble narrator’s latest birthday, which occurred during an interval of tolerable climate.
It’s been one heck of a hot summer out here in the Paris of Appalachia, with high temperatures and humidity defining entire weeks. It’s always a quandary for me – I need to walk, and walk, and walk for health reasons, but then you run into dangerous atmospheric conditions that preclude being outdoors. What are you going to do?
You can fight City Hall, but you can’t argue with the weatherman. Or a Fire Inspector, as they are omnipotent.
This particular soirée into the milieu of Pittsburgh’s arcane street ‘grid’ began at the West End Bridge, spanning the Ohio River. This path would carry me to the southern shore of the Monongahela River, the Great Allegheny Passage trail along it, and ultimately to that brewery nearby the CSX Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks which I regularly visit.
First, I needed to get across the bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Quoting from a prior post describing this bridge:
“There’s a steel tied arch bridge near the center of Pittsburgh, one which spans the very mouth of the Ohio River (formed up by the convergence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers), and it’s called the West End Bridge. West End Bridge’s construction was declared as accomplished in 1932, and the thing was built by Pittsburgh’s own American Bridge Company (steel and span) and the Foundation Company (foundation and masonry piers). West End Bridge was originally just under 2,000 feet long.
After a sprucing up and redesign in the 1990’s, which saw the addition of pedestrian and bike lanes, as well as the removal of several vehicle approach ramps on its northern side, the West End Bridge was and is 1,310 feet long.
There’s 66 feet of clearance over the water, it’s 58 feet wide in totality, and the bridge carries 4 lanes of traffic through a 40 foot space. West End Bridge is a challenging and unforgiving span to drive over, I would mention, given how narrow the travel lanes are.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Down below, there’s a Towing outfit which maintains a series of docks for their Tow Boats, as well as a fleet of barges.
The West End Girls from the title of this post are pictured above – The ‘Gale R. Rhodes’ and one labeled as ‘CTC.’ CTC stands for Campbell Transportation Company, which is presumptively the operator of this particular docking complex and probably not the name of the vessel.
I couldn’t find much out about either of the boats, as neither one was displaying a call sign number visible from the POV I was inhabiting. Call sign numbers are the key to identifying random maritime vessels you might encounter. Just saying.
Back tomorrow.
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