Posts Tagged ‘Bridgeville’
Bored in Bridgeville
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of my ‘day in the life’ style of postings greets you today, wherein a humble narrator was going about his own domestic and quite mundane business, on a Saturday, when he decided to fruitlessly wave the camera around a bit.
Pictured above; a memento of yet another annoying interval spent along a certain set of Wheeling & Lake Erie RR tracks, in the Bridgeville section of Pittsburgh, that is commemorated photographically.
I’ll get this shot, eventually.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Newtown Pentacle time warp continues to flux, as a note, with these photos having been gathered on the 5th of September, and the post itself was written during the third week of the same month. If my scheduling is correct, you’re seeing this in late October.
One has been keeping busy, despite this chronal fog.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you’ll see in subsequent posts, I’ve finally surpassed the ten mile walking barrier, a limitation which the broken ankle had introduced into my life. It’s been a deal, I tell you…
Starting with the penguin style walking, when I could barely manage two or three miles of scuttle without agony, I kept on pushing until the five mile barrier was surpassed via weeks and weeks of walking downhill courses, which helped regenerate the atrophied musculature in my legs.
All summer long, I was working on endurance and distance, while capturing thousands of fetching photos along the way. It’s been a shvitz.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After handling the various household errands which Our Lady and I were obliged towards the performance of, with said tasks having brought me out to Bridgeville, after heading back to HQ we met up with a few neighbors for a beer back in Dormont, and then galavanted over to a local restaurant for some comfort food.
Gyros, before ‘George the Atheist’ asks. Gyros.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Shlepping back home, and towards Moe the Dog, we spotted the T Light Rail, arriving at the Potomac Avenue stop here in Dormont. As is my habit, the camera was deployed and a few shots captured.
The next day was going to be an ‘exercise day,’ wherein I’d earn the calories from the beer and that gyro, and in spades.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve spent the last four years here in Pittsburgh observing, learning, and reading. Keeping my mouth shut. For those who know me in real life, the not talking thing must be surprising. It surprises me.
‘Shut up and listen’ is what I’m trying to achieve these days.
One has developed a decidedly surface level understanding of this place, and its mores. I can see under Pittsburgh’s skin here and there, now, as well. I’m still developing ‘intimacy’ with this place.
I also can’t seem to figure out a good time of day to get that shot at the railroad tracks in Bridgeville, so there’s still a distance to surmount.
Back tomorrow with something different – 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.
A Day Out in Bridgeville: Classic Cars and Local Vendors
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady of the Pentacle and myself have been spending a bit of time during recent months over in the community of Bridgeville, which is fairly close ‘neighbors’ with Dormont, where HQ is found. Both Bridgeville and Dormont are in a region of Pittsburgh called the ‘South Hills.’
As we’ve been transiting through Bridgeville, signage promising a pre July 4th street fair was noticed, and thereby we decided to check out Bridgeville’s ‘Day on the Avenue’ event.
A classic cars club attended and set their polished up vehicles up on display for we lookie loos. Check out that Oldsmobile. Interior shot here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The local Fire Dept. deployed, and were handing out little plastic fireman hats to kids. There were all sorts of vendors, selling largely bland food. We did find somebody selling fantastic Italian style sausages, and Our Lady encountered a vendor selling carnivorous plants, so she bought a predator vegetable. Pitcher Plant, apparently.
Back at home later, I caught her killing a fly and then using chopsticks to pick it up and feed its corpse to her new plant.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Check out that Nash!
The new polarizer filter came in really handy on this particular day, allowing me some control over reflections and specularity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You could eat off that engine block, it was so clean.
Officially speaking, that’s the most ‘Brooklyn Jewish’ sounding statement that I’ve ever offered here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All I could think of when looking at these cars was the current price of gasoline. My first car, which was wrecked in less than a year after I got keys to it, was a 1966 Buick Skylark that got something like thirteen to eighteen miles per gallon of gas.
Can’t imagine what it would cost to operate a muscle car like a 70’s Firebird Trans AM or something, or any of the old ‘American Land Yachts,’ under current fuel pricing. My old skylark dropped an eighth of a tank just speeding up after a light turned green. Sheesh. The Toyota Hybrid I’m driving nowadays gets more than forty one miles to the gallon and it’s twice the size of the Skylark.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ‘Day on the Avenue’ was a pretty standard street fair, but in contrast to the ones back in NYC’s Astoria, most of the vendor tables were local business related and not some traveling band of grease peddlers and bouncy castles that took over the neighborhood for a day, draining money away from the local shops and businesses before moving on to do the same in somebody else’s community the next day.
Back next week with something different.
“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.
Bridgeville’s Bridge No. 1
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found your humble narrator casting shadows in Pennsylvania’s Bridgeville, part of the larger Pittsburgh metro area and found just a few miles from HQ.
Pictured is a section of Chartiers Creek, which has been mentioned before in connection to massive environmental remediation efforts that various governmental entities have been working on in order to ameliorate an acid mine runoff condition. Bridgeville used to be a center for coal mining, and processing, at the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. They also mined Vanadium, and a few other elements and minerals hereabouts.
Basically, and as I understand it, when you’re operating a mining operation the two biggest problems you’ve got involve the pumping out of ground water, and then piping in air for ventilation.
When the business shutters, nobody is performing those functions anymore. The mine fills with water, the volume of which in turn gets incorporated into the subterrene patterns which ground waters flow through, down below, which then migrate back up to the surface.
Hydrology, yo.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Again – as I understand it – the thing that makes Coal a great fuel choice is that it’s a rapid oxidizer. That’s why it alights fast, and burns hot.
The post facto of the mining process exposes left behind or non harvestible coal to the atmosphere, and to ground water, which causes it to oxidize in place. Iron pyrites, amongst other compounds, are found in the Appalachian layer cake that forms the coal’s firmament. The pyrites rust, and leech out of the flooded mines, entering the ground water/aquifer.
The pH of this leachate water is altered by the carrying of these dissolved metals, and thereby it leans towards acidic. No bueno for the bugs, turtles, or fish.
Less than a mile away from the first shot in today’s post, and that’s the Chartier’s Creek tributary McLaughlin Run pictured. As you can see, the running water here is a bright orange. That’s rust from those iron pyrites.
It’s the 1941 vintage ‘Bridge No. 1 McLaughlin’s Run,’ that’s pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As is my habit, I photographed the bridge’s signage – click here for that.
I’ve read that Bridgeville has experienced severe storm flooding in the not so distant past, and lots of built accommodations for high water events were observed around this structure. Notice the chain on the manhole cover above, securing it to the raised pipe.
One had a bit of time to kill, on this particular morning, and a few new toys I wanted to play with.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator was in ‘full kit’ mode, as I had the car with me for this effort. Both a tripod and that ‘super clamp’ mentioned a few posts ago were deployed. I was also experimenting with a set of magnetic lens filters which I had just received.
These things are magic – btw – you can just snap a polarizer or Neutral Density filter onto your lens, in seconds.
As you’ve likely noticed, there is a rail trestle/bridge here, which belongs to the Wheeling and Lake Erie outfit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
McLaughlin Run is containerized behind masonry retaining walls, and forms the back yard border for several commercial properties and homes.
My time grew short, and there were other things that didn’t concern me which I wanted to stick my nose into, so the gear began to go back into the bag as I prepared for departure. One more shot, though…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one (and several others in today’s post) used a 10 stop ND filter, and the superclamp tripod setup. Bucolic, no?
Back next week, with something different.
“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.
What could possibly go wrong? Pfft…
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bridgeville, PA., well, that’s a community which can be found within the South Hills region of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area.
Historically, Bridgeville’s economy was centered around coal mining, during the late 19th and first few decades of the 20th centuries.
Basically; Boom and bust, entrepreneur and robber baron, monopoly and trust, abandonment and dissolution. Usual story.
The coal people left behind a huge environmental mess, and it’s pretty routine to observe the waterways in this part of Pennsylvania running with bright orange water, suggesting that it’s runoff from abandoned mines that’s causing the pollution. The orange coloration is caused by dissolved metals, notably pyrites and iron, in the ground water. In prior mentions of Bridegville, I’ve mentioned the vast taxpayer funded environmental remediation efforts at work in the area.
Our Lady of the Pentacle has been taking a class in Bridgeville – and apparently – so have I. While she’s bene inside ‘a-learning,’ I’ve been wandering the streets, which are my classroom.
I recently spotted this charming feature, pictured above, which seems to be an open to the atmosphere coal mine portal. Lovely.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now that I sort of know what to look for, it’s everywhere.
Conversation with the locals reveal that it’s only been a generation or two since mine work was a common experience, for men in particular. My dad used to tell me that you could pick up non-union day work along the waterfront in South Brooklyn, unloading ships and loading trucks, back in the 40’s and 50’s. Wonder if it was the same sort of situation here, but with coal instead of maritime trade goods?
I’ve read that child labor was pretty common in the mines, as a note.
One was standing along the fence lines of a large industrial site, which in modernity hosts several businesses, and that’s where I spotted that chunk of rusting machinery pictured above.
That thingie looks like the remains of, to me at least, a ‘Coal Tipple.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The older structures at this industrial park display a characteristic masonry motif that one has learned to associate with the Pittsburgh Coal Company, a historical monopolist trust that was controlled by the Mellon Family.
Hey… where do you think that the extra money to start a university, and then a bank, came from for these Captains of Industry? They had poor people dig treasure out of the ground for them on 12 hour shifts, employed child labor, and colluded with oligarchal colleagues like Henry Clay Frick – who were the end customers for the coal at the steel mills – and with whom they conspired to set wages and prices – so everyone felt great about the whole affair, while drinking french wine in their baronial mansions, before moving to Manhattan. When the coal seam sputtered out, the trust moved on, leaving behind a real mess.
Captains of industry, right? Not ‘Robber Barons,’ right? America was great, back then, right? Which side are you on, kid? Bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady’s class was scheduled to last an hour, so I had a somewhat limited amount of time available to me to wander about with the camera.
An interesting bit of trivia about this particular area, transmitted to me by the folks who were conducting Our Lady’s class (they are located within this complex), is that this section of Bridgeville seems to have been rich in deposits of Vanadium. So much so that a nearby road is dubbed ‘Vanadium Road,’ and that tenants in these industrial buildings need to set up specialized monitors and ventilation systems within, as the subterrene deposits of Vanadium produce radioactive gas, and the depositional strata associated with the element seems to include the compounds that produce Radon, with all of this reactivity happening deep down within the Appalachian Layer Cake forming the ground hereabouts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now! That’s Wheeling & Lake Erie #6986 hurtling by.
Above and just beyond these tracks is a bus depot and maintenance garage. Below them is that open coal mine portal. Sigh…
The really annoying part of this scene is what they were hauling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Don’t know if the tankers were full, but they were pulling a long train of LNG tankers through a densely populated area. I’ve used the term ‘bomb train’ before, but it’s alarmist and somewhat disingenuous.
Let’s just say that if conditions were just right when said conditions went perfectly wrong, and any single of those tanker cars were to derail and became punctured… that would make the news. Remember East Palestine in Ohio, where a train went boom?
There’s a lot of ‘horizontal fracturing’ or ‘fracking’ oil company activity around these parts. Major part of the local and national economies, it is. Future generations will hate us for this, and talk about this industry in the manner which I do, regarding coal.
Back tomorrow with something different.
“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.
Chartiers Creek, Bridgeville
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Chartiers Creek, in Pennsylvania’s Bridgeville.
First – allow me to say that I’m new to this urban waterway’s story, so if I get something wrong as far as your lived experience, please leave a correction and ‘get me smart about it’ in the comments section.
Second- This waterway has historically received an absolute ocean of mine runoff over the last century, emanating from several historical coal mining sites extant along its course. I’m told that it was quite common to see these waters running a bright orange, not too long ago.
It seems that iron, and pyrites, are commonly found in the layer cakes of Appalachian soil – alongside coal, shale, dolomite, sandstone, and limestone.
When a coal mining shaft exposes formerly sealed away minerals to the atmosphere, oxidation occurs, causing ‘rusty’ water to collect below. Natural processes, like springs, carry the runoff water up to the surface.
The flowing waters of mine runoff display an acidic PH level, due to all of those dissolved metals, and is fairly toxic to fish and other littoral forms of life.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The design and operation of a mine involves two critical factors – ventilation, and the management of ground water. When the mine closes, nobody is pumping out the water anymore so a vast reservoir of the liquid forms within these manmade voids. Water always wins, so it gets out of the mine and up to the surface.
The State’s environmental people have apparently been working with both the Feds and Bridgeville, for several years, on a huge remediation process here. Spending the public’s tax money on cleaning up a corporate caused, and quite historic, problem. Sounds familiar, no?
Down below, the largest mining outfit here in Bridgeville was the ‘Pittsburgh Coal Company’s Bridgeville mine’, which was in operation for around 35 years and carved some ten million tons of bituminous coal up and out of the depths. That was just one of the mines here, the largest one albeit, but there were a LOT of smaller claims being worked hereabouts.
Remember, here in Bridgeville, you could observe coal seams at ground level in Colonial and early Republic times, on surface outcrops of rock. Lots of smaller deposits were literally just worked into at ground level, with miners digging straight horizontally into the hill.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It seems that the coal seam, just like all the other rock in the Appalachian Mountains, is folded up in jagged depositional layers, a condition which is due to the range’s long tectonic history. These mountains and hills are older than the dinosaurs, and were once attached to what’s now Scotland.
PA’s Department of Environmental Protection has a cool scholarly explanation of the coal seam’s geology available.
As this land shifted about, over hundreds of millions of years, some sections of the coal got folded up in different ways, and at odd angles, in the layer cake – a ‘syncline,’ for instance, or an ‘anticline.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I did mention that I’ve been reading up on all this stuff, didn’t I?
A lot of what I’ve been witnessing here in Pittsburgh over the last few years offers a similar storyline. An industry appears with lots of plucky small players, then a ‘king’ emerges who dominates them and monopolizes the sector. That Dominar then abandons the industry after extracting as much money as possible and unloading it on someone else, then the ‘Captain of Industry’ would move their family and household to Fifth Avenue in NYC – leaving behind environmental, economic, and societal devastation here in Pittsburgh while they slept on a bed stuffed with dollars in Manhattan.
‘So long, and thanks for all the fish’ indeed.
I’ve described my viewpoint of Pittsburgh’s History, out loud, as ‘they practiced the darkest form of Capitalism out here.’
A hundred years later and the people who profited from the mines are long gone, whereas the modern day taxpayer has to foot the bill for cleaning up the mess that they left behind. Captains of Industry Robber Barons indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Chartiers Creek, pictured in today’s post, has been receiving an awful lot of investment and attention from that modern day municipal kitty in recent years, thereby.
Just south of Bridegville, in the town of South Fayette – there’s the Gladden AMD Treatment Plant, which treats mine water with hydrogen peroxide and removes nearly 1,000 pounds of iron from the flow daily. A passive treatment system, dubbed the Wingfield Pines Conservation Area, uses settling ponds and an aeration fountain to filter some 43 tons of iron from the water annually. There’s all sorts of of smaller projects going on to ensure shoreline stability and enhance the ‘littoral’ zone.
This – of course – is how I spend my free time on a Saturday morning while my wife is taking a class, in a nearby shop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m still learning about all of this coal ‘stuff.’
It’s led to interesting conversation with a friend who’s a tunnel engineer about how ‘they’ navigated cardinal directions and stayed ‘plum’ while digging underground, prior to modern times and ‘back in the day.’ It seems that piano wire was critical to their efforts, as once it’s under tension it doesn’t sag, and spirit levels could be hung along its length to guarantee you were ‘plum.’
I’ve also learned that the ‘canary in a coal mine’ thing wasn’t due to ‘mephitic gases’ emerging from the deep, as the exposed coal seams robbed the atmosphere of oxygen chemically, via oxidation. The canary’s respiratory system includes a heartbeat that’s much faster than ours, making it a lot more sensitive to a lower oxygen environment. If the caged bird fell off its post, you had precisely eight minutes to get out, and find some fresh air.
Wonder if that’s the origin of the phrase ‘eight minutes to midnight?’
Back tomorrow with something different.
“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.
