Posts Tagged ‘Duquesne’
Second GAP: Part 2
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described in yesterday’s post, one visited the Great Allegheny Passage trail on the south side of the Monongahela River again, but this time from the Duquesne side of things. That’s part of the United States Steel Mon Valley Works pictured above, which is found on the north side of the river in a community called Braddock.
The steel mill is fired up using coke and coal, and what that means is that there’s one heck of lot of railroad activity going on in its vicinity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Union RR Port Perry Bridge pictured above, with multiple locomotive engines working together to haul a series of coal cars to the furnaces. Union Rail Road is a Class 3 switching railroad which is ultimately owned by US Steel.
Port Perry used to be an actual town, on the north side of the river, but it essentially got swallowed by the steel mill as the operations there expanded. Saying all that, it’s not just Union RR that uses these tracks, the big boys play here too.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A second rail bridge is found here, the PRR Port Perry Bridge, which carries Norfolk Southern’s Port Perry branch over the Monongahela River. A Class 1 railroad, Norfolk Southern has been in the news a lot over the last few weeks due to a spectacularly mishandled derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
A friend of mine, who has a trench warrior’s mentality when it comes to his politics, recently spent a bit of time with me on the phone blaming the current President for this. The political partisan bait I was supposed to take would have seen me blaming the last President for this so then we could argue about stolen laptops, party islands, and all that.
Unfortunately for my pal, I actually know a little bit about this subject. Republicans only want to argue about what they’re currently mad about, so he was upset. This week, they’re going after Hershey’s Chocolate for being “woke” because the candy bars are “her” and “she.” I’m not kidding.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off, there hasn’t been an American President ever who wasn’t on the side of “management” regarding the railroads. That includes FDR, Harry Truman, and the rest. Union shmunion, they’ve all broken strikes for their sponsors in the board room.
Given the number of freight trains moving around the United States at any given time – there’s has to be somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand MILES of trains (deliberate underestimate) speedily moving about as you’re reading this – the East Palestine disaster stands out because it’s actually kind of rare. A statistical anomaly in terms of the total numbers.
You drive a car every day, for instance. You drive that car for ten years, never having a problem, but one day the car doesn’t start. That’s one day out if 3,650. 1/3650th downtime is what you’d call a statistical anomaly, not a pattern. Saying that, if you were to now define the entire ownership period based of that car on a statistical anomaly… that’s sort of where the national discussion is going right now on the subject of trains. Things went horribly wrong in East Palestine, just like in Canada’s Lac-Mégantic, but again – anomalous in terms of the total numbers of trains and miles involved. The fact that trains don’t derail every day, especially given the criminally low amount of money which the regulatory bodies require RR’s like Northern Southern to invest in infrastructure is certainly a testament to something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I should mention that the train pictured above is not the same unit seen in the prior two shots, instead I got this one early in the afternoon. The shots are out of order for storytelling purposes. I wasn’t in the right spot to capture this shot for the second train pictured coming over the bridge above.
I’ll say this, if your hobby is “rail fanning,” the GAP trail here in the Duquesne area offers excellent opportunities along a fairly comfortable path. I met a couple of blokes who were doing just that, and they filled me in on a few spots elsewhere in Pittsburgh where I’d enjoy waving the camera around. Apparently, Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park and ‘Panther Hollow’ is now on my list.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Norfolk Southern train was hauling empty mineral cars, ones which olfactory and visual inspection revealed as having recently been full of coal. This was a sunny 70 degree day, in Pittsburgh, in February. Hell, this post should’ve been about that – as that’s a statistical anomaly all of its own.
Back tomorrow with something different from the Paris of Appalachia, at 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.
Second GAP: Part 1
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So much fun was had by a humble narrator on a recent unseasonably warm afternoon that it cast a shadow over the rest of my week. As mentioned here in the past, one of the most surprising public facilities in Pittsburgh’s neck of the woods are a network of ‘rail to trail’ paths which snake around the rivers and neighborhoods in the Right Of Way or “ROW” footprints of defunct railroads. One of these liminal spaces that I’m exploring on foot at the moment is called ‘The Great Appalachian Passage’ trail, a path which I could theoretically walk along all the way to Washington D.C. Right now I’m doing it in sections of between two and four miles at a time, thank you very much.
A while back, I offered several posts (Part one, Part Two, Part Three) from the section of the GAP stretching from Homestead to a point directly across the Monongahela River from the USS Mon Valley Works on the northern side of the waterway.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Parking the Mobile Oppression Platform (my Toyota) at a designated parking lot for the GAP in the community of Duquesne, one gathered up his old kit bag and crossed a secondary arterial highway at an incredibly terrifying intersection. There was a light, yeah, but terrifying. Smile, smile, smile.
The GAP in this section is found somewhat inland from the Monongahela River’s shoreline. There’s an entire industrial zone humming away on the side between the path and the water, whereas on the other there are several sets of railroad tracks which all seemed pretty active as I was scuttling through.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A pipe yard is one of the many attractions hereabouts. This might be a great spot to get all artsy fartsy sometime. That’s what a humble narrator pondered for a moment, but I kept on moving. There were acres of these pipes stacked neatly.
My goal for the day was to get to the spot I had walked to from the Homestead side and take a look at what sort of photo opportunities existed in the stretch closer to Duquesne. I’m looking for vantage points overlooking the USS Mon Valley Works, in pursuit of gathering cool photos of it from a distance.
I found and subscribed to a great YouTube channel offered by Pittsburgh Photographer Jeffrey Bowser, called “Fort Frick,” which offers several startlingly well done time-lapses of the Mon Valley Works that exploit the sort of ‘POV’s’ which I’m anxious to find. Check out the Fort Frick channel here. I’m a fan.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So why the pipes? Seems that US Steel manufactures gas at a nearby plant in Clairton and the pipes carry it over to the furnaces at the Mon Valley Works, or at least that’s what I think is happening. The pipe yard is where they store the old and new ones. I’m probably wrong about something in there, so not sure and ‘dunno.’ What I can tell you is that when a charge of gas goes through those pipes and you’re standing directly under them – it’s disconcerting. That’s basically the Shofar of Hephaestus blowing hydrocarbons right there above your head, all American style.
The sound is something like “floooooomph pufffffassasss” followed by a deep vibration which echoes out of the pipes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s not just gas that’s getting pushed towards the steel mill, there’s also high voltage transmission lines snaking out of the hills and pushing current towards the place. It seems that there’s a nuclear generating plant about fifty or so miles west of here, right along the Ohio border.
Duquesne, the community which this pathway is found in, used to have its own blast furnace – at the time the largest on the planet. Its post industrial period, however, started in 1930. Today, Duquesne, like it’s neighbor Braddock across the river deals with a declining population and a whole lot of challenges. Average median income in Duquesne is about 25k a year. AMI indicates the 50% mark, so that means that half of its citizenry survives on far less than that number.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Mon Valley Works, which still incorporates Carnegie’s 1875 vintage Edgar Thompson blast furnace into its operations. I knew about the air pollution issues associated with the three surviving steel mills in the Pittsburgh area before moving here., but in person… They burn coal and coke, which produces a significant plume of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Depending on which way the wind is blowing on any given day, you might catch a slight whiff of a rotten egg smell where I live, which is about 10-15 miles from here. For the communities which actually neighbor these plants, it’s a real and ever present problem. Here’s where the emanates of the steel mills are blowing towards today.
Back tomorrow with more from the GAP. Trains! There’ll be trains.
“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 