Posts Tagged ‘Fort Pitt Bridge’
Remains of a scuttle
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After traipsing all over Pittsburgh during a longish scuttle, your humble narrator found himself heading into more familiar territory along the Monongahela River. Another not so friendly to pedestrians route was chosen, this one paralleling a series of high speed roads which operate in a trench. Pictured above, in the distance, is a traffic machine called the ‘Fort Pitt Bridge.’
Every GPS navigation package you can think of directs all the traffic in Pittsburgh going to and from the South Hills region onto the Fort Pitt Bridge and tunnel. There are two other perfectly acceptable highway paths you can take out of the central section of Pittsburgh towards the South Hills, which deposit you in more or less the same area on the other side of Mount Washington, I’d mention. Saying that, all of the ‘maps’ apps just love sending traffic to that very congested bridge and tunnel.
The Fort Pitt bridge offers what I consider to be one of the worst traffic interchanges in the entire country. It’s an ‘X,’ and the thousands of cars and trucks an hour which cross it and enter that tunnel having to negotiate a diagonal merge in a surprisingly short interval.
As I’ve intoned earlier, the driving culture of Pittsburgh is absolute brutality, so this ain’t pretty.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Moving easterly, the mirror face of the PPG Plaza building caught my eye as it threw reflection of the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself around. Disdain for the memory of architect Philip Johnson blossomed in my mind.
The plan for the rest of the day involved heading over to familiar territory at the Sly Fox Brewery where I’d hopefully get to see a train go by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Smithfield Street Bridge is a wonderful touchstone. The original bridge here was designed by John Roebling, and when it needed an upgrade they hired Gustav Lindenthal to do it. The bridge’s piers are original to the Roebling version, and the tension spring upper steel is Lindenthal’s.
Roebling, of course, designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge. Lindenthal is the mastermind behind the Queensboro Bridge. I quickened my stride.
I was heading for the brewery, after all, and was fairly thirsty by this point. I also needed to make ‘wee-wee.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A pint of lager in hand, and after a trip to the loo, one settled in and waited for the signal chimes to start ringing at Sly Fox Brewery. It took maybe twenty minutes of waiting before CSX #4749 exploded into view.
HEY NOW!
It’s a 2003 vintage ‘EMD SD70MAC.’ A 16 cylinder engine in the locomotive produces some 4,000 HP of thrust, and it is said to offer a top speed of 70 mph.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It had been a nice, long walk. Lots of ups and downs, long distances, and mostly flat. What was desired was attained, which was to do some shooting while subjecting my gamey ankle to a longish walk.
As you’re reading this, remember that exactly one year ago today I was still confined to a wheelchair, and experiencing ghastly amounts of pain. The injury was more than just orthopedic, as lots of soft tissue damage had occurred too. Suffice to say that I learned about a new one during this experience – pressure blisters. Felt like a burn, but under the cast.
I just can’t stop remembering that right about now. Trauma, yo.
Adding in that I was all doped up on opioid pain killers, this situation wasn’t at all pretty. All I could do, besides watching a Turk soap opera about the Ottomans, was dream about recovery, and getting back to doing…
…This…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the saying goes: Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans, right?
Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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Vouchsafing against Diurnal Nosferatu’s
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off, there’s no way you’re going to get me to believe that the sub specie of Vampires hasn’t figured out a workaround for their sunlight problem here in the 21st century. Sunscreen? Hats? Something?
I figure that their ‘not crossing flowing water’ prohibition is a little harder for the armies of the night to conquer. Just in case a diurnal vampire has locked onto me, I’ll often take a quick hike across any available bridge as a vouchsafe. In this case, it was the Fort Duquesne bridge over the Allegheny River, here in Pittsburgh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fort Duquesne leads into Point State Park, and offers sweet views of its sister bridge – the Fort Pitt. The path off the bridge is wooded on both sides, so… excellent perching spots for day vampires to grab a snack off the path and chow down in the sylvan shadows. I stayed directly in the middle of the road, which I’ve actually never understood as being the metaphor for ‘safe.’
Worst place to be, middle of the road… that’s where the double yellow line is. Even worse are the other sides of the travel lane, at the extreme edges of the pavement, along the white lines.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The guy dressed up like a British soldier was likely a historical reenactment actor, but he could have been a ‘day vampire’ that has been dressing like that for hundreds of years. Anything is possible these days, as objective truth has become plastic, moldable, and pliant.
Hope that guy in the blue modern clothes made it home to his family.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I continued on, scuttle scuttle scuttle.
If I was a vampire, I think that I’d run for political office.
Mesmerize the crowd, tell them ‘those people over there whom you don’t like are taking something away from you, and giving it to somebody else far away that you like even less.’ I’d pontificate that garlic didn’t exist before 1957, that it’s an invasive specie sent to America by International Communists in order to traffick children in exchange for Fentanyl. Holy water would need to be banned by my edict, and then scheduled as a Class One controlled substance with the DEA.
I’d advocate for smog, and promise that the overcast conditions offer ‘freedom from sun burns and skin cancer’ for the span of my reign term.
My supporters would be called ‘freedom children, of the night,’ and they’d be required to wear red clothing so as to hide the leftovers from luncheon feedings, and I’d exclusively staff my inner office with loyal cohorts sent to me from amongst the Romani’s Rudar clan in Romania (or just reach out to Sunnyside in Queens, where the former ‘Maspeth Romani’ live).
Boxes of native soils from Brooklyn’s Canarsie would be stored around my district, and in Washington. You gotta sleep sometimes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For crossing the Monongahela River, I avoided the obvious path of walking the Fort Pitt Bridge. Kind of out of the way for where I wanted to get to, and I was interested mainly in shaking off any potential day vampires who might be following me. ‘Day Vampire’ isn’t a metaphor for something ugly, by the way, I literally mean ‘day vampire.’
A counter narrative to my vampiric musings was playing through my headphones, incidentally, with Dragnet’s Joe Friday interrogating a bombing suspect, whose house hosted a bunch of Nazi stuff – flags, uniforms, etc. This script was also turned into a teleplay during the ‘Dragnet 67’ television version of the show, if it sounds familiar.
Friday gave one of his speeches about American values – free speech, freedom of conscience, the role which science and vaccines had played in freeing the WW2 generation and their descendants from avoidable disease and disfigurement. Friday put this speech forward as a rebuke to the suspect, who just wanted to tear the entire edifice down.
Joe Friday versus Vampires… now, that would have been something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Smithfield Street Bridge carried me across the Monongahela River, which made two flowing water barriers crossed. It did occur to me that Vampires probably use cell phones these days, and distinct populations of them might be communicating with each other remotely.
‘Hey, check out the old guy with the camera, he looks juicy. Lol’
Back next week with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
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The Coke Express
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The track signals told me something was heading my way, along the Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks of CSX, so a position under the Fort Pitt Bridge was taken up, and I figured out my exposure settings in advance of the subject barging through the scene..
HEY NOW, that’s CSX #3297 passing by.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Normally, it’s fairly impossible to guess where one of these trains is coming from, but given the direction it’s coming from and what it was hauling – it was either PA’s Clairton or Irvine.
That’s where you’ll find two of the three huge US Steel plants which remain in the Pittsburgh area. One is designed to manufacture coke from coal, the other to harvest the gas from the process. If I had to bet, this train is coming from the first one in Clairton.
This ended up being a great day for trains. Go, Monday!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The CSX train was heading westwards, towards… Ohio.
Funny to me is how the Pittsburgh people react when you mention Ohio, offering the same sort of reaction that a Brooklynite displays at the mention of …Staten Island… or ‘Joisey.”
That’s the West End Bridge in the distance, which I had walked over and described in posts last week. Scroll down if interested.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My audiobook listening had continued after completing “The Lurking Fear,” and I was now knee deep into “The Thing on the Doorstep,” both audiobooks based on stories by H.P. Lovecraft and read by Wayne June.
Y’know, I wonder if there’s any interest in a list of all of my fave audio books? Let me know in the comments, and if so, I’ll build a list with links to where you can find them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An almost imperceptible glimmer of black vapor was trailing out of the coke express cars. It was moving too fast for the smell of coal to permeate out, but there was still a vague petrochemical ‘taste’ in the air.
There you are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Towboat Vulcan was spotted, heading back the other way from the direction it was traveling in when shown in an earlier post. They were also ‘sans barge’ so it must have been delivered to a nearby customer. My guess would be one of the two concrete plants on the western side of the Birmingham Bridge.
Back tomorrow, with even more trains. I know…
“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.
Six mile scuttle continues on, and on
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As one may recall from last week’s mishegoss, your humble narrator took a lovely walk in Pittsburgh on a summer day and saw lots of cool things. Many photographs were collected along the way, and now you’re all caught up.
The Duquesne Incline is pictured above, descending from the heights of Mount Washington to its lower station. I refer to this incline as ‘the red one,’ as there’s also a ‘yellow one.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst picking my way along the shoreline, the sound of rock being cut or drilled into began to echo. A cloud of white smokey dust began to billow from beneath the incline’s tracks, and then the incline was being run right through it. Neat!
There weren’t any fire people or cops running around, so I figured that there was no reason to panic. Atmospheric!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I felt obligated to crack out a few shots of this scene, with the one above being my favorite. Glad that I had outfitted the camera with the ‘all in one’ Zoom lens that has a range of 24-240mm. Long reach, that.
This was roughly the half way point on this scuttle, which started on Pittsburgh’s North Side at the terminal stop of the T light rail.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Towboat Vulcan appeared, towing a very low in the water barge.
In the background is the Allegheny River, and the Fort Duquesne Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Fort Pitt Bridge would be where I next ‘took up station,’ but I mean beneath it not above. Troll, me. Under bridges, that’s where I can be found. Really, it’s also quite shady down there.
The signals over the rail tracks indicated that something was coming towards me, and there’s a spot I like under the bridge for rail photos, so I walked as fast as I could to it. Post broken ankle, I still can’t run, so I started heading towards that spot as fast as I could manage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A tourist boat, The Gateway Clipper, gave me something to point the camera at while I was waiting for the next train to arrive. It navigated under the Fort Pitt Bridge and away.
Back tomorrow with more from the Paris of Appalachia – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
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Mon Mon Mon
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s always another bridge to cross.
The one pictured in today’s post is the ‘big kahuna’ of Pittsburgh’s bridges, and dubbed the ‘Fort Pitt.’ Given the centrality of its role in how traffic moves through this region, it’s surprising how terrible the design of the traffic interchange on this span is. The bridge leads into the Fort Pitt tunnel, which feeds directly onto an interstate that leads to the South Hills region, and the Pittsburgh International AirPort. There’s also a set of local exit ramps which provide vehicle connections to local streets on the coast of the Monongahela River. The way traffic enters this interchange necessitates an ‘X’ shaped merging pattern, where multiple lines of traffic need to intersect and cross with each other in a relatively short distance. It’s practically a ‘fender bender’ machine, with an inelegant plan and truly lousy signage. Like most of Pittsburgh, you need to know where to position the vehicle before you get there for a successful merge.
‘Vernacular,’ as I refer to it. Pittsburgh is all about vernacular.
Wasn’t my problem, this time around, since your humble narrator was walking rather than driving for a change, but I did take a moment to observe the milieu. If this was back in Queens, I’d be doing something about it, but it’s not and I’m not.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Having crossed the Fort Pitt bridge, I was soon high over the shoreline of the Monongahela, which is defined by Mount Washington’s towering precipices. I hung around for a few minutes hoping for a train to hurtle past, but timing wasn’t on my side this particular afternoon.
As often stated – it wasn’t a ‘sit around on a set of stairs and wait day’ instead it was a long walk, so one leaned into it and got moving again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another absolutely awful thing about the Fort Pitt Bridge is the setup greeting pedestrians when they exit the thing.
The bike/pedestrian ramp comes back to ground and merges into a sidewalk about a half mile away near one of the inclines, but there’s a rather concerning set of rusty steel steps to navigate which negate having to go all that way, and said steps deliver you to a sidewalk along a secondary arterial roadway which leads to several bridges and a highway. There’s no barrier between you and the forty mph road, except for the standard three inch curb. Traffic hurtles past.
There’s about a quarter mile worth of this lovely experience, until you encounter a steel rail fence line, that’s easy to step over, which allows entrance to a parking lot adjoining the waterfront trail. From there, you’re safe as houses.
Scary.
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 