Posts Tagged ‘McKees Rocks’
Hey Now!, Bottoms Up
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part seven:
Your humble narrator has been keen to capture a shot of a CSX train running through that little bridge seen above for quite a while now.
The Carson Street Rail Bridges is what this dual span is called, just for the curious.
Really, this was a pretty lucky shot to get. I was hoping for it, but… Y’know… it’s just like fishing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s CSX #3141, incidentally.
It was hauling minerals, probably coke or coal. These are the same course of CSX tracks which I often shoot along, whether it’s from that recently shuttered brewery, or from up on the West End Bridge, or along the trails which line the banks of the Monongahela River. When pointing out that a train is heading north-westerly, that means it’s heading in this direction.
Hey Now!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I stuck with the train for a minute. The light was good.
Saying that, this was the final ‘wish’ on my shot list for the day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One still had to ‘walk out’ of the industrial area and find a safe spot where I’d be able to ‘chill’ while waiting for a ride home. Another three or four miles to the east was a T light rail stop, but the walk there would involve walking along the side of a highway, and marching my mud covered butt right through another scary vehicle interchange.
I consider myself lucky for having not gotten squished by a truck back at that Ohio River Blvd.’s crossing, onto the McKees Rocks Bridge.
Nope.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Here’s a closeup of the rail bridge. Neat.
An amalgamation of adolescents were observed, who were congealing into a mob of unfocused energy nearby, so one skipped along his path a bit quicker.
Teenagers… brrr… no impulse control.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, that’s Chartiers Creek, which winds its way through the South Hills on its way to the Ohio River. Just out of frame, a couple of guys were fishing.
About a block away is a car wash, where I summoned a rideshare cab to come scoop me up and carry the bloated monstrosity my brain is trapped within back to HQ, where Our Lady of the Pentacle and Moe the Dog awaited.
Back tomorrow with something different.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Hitting Bottoms
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Topsburgh to Bottomsburgh part six:
At the southern end of the McKees Rocks Bridge, one enters that eponymous municipality which the bridge is named for. On the other side, you’re within the City of Pittsburgh.
There’s several different sections and styles of life found in McKees Rocks – normal ‘urban’ streets with wood frame homes, private suburb style development can be found up in the hills, there’s a bunch of ‘worker cottage’ style dwellings in a flood plain section that is called ‘the Bottoms.’
There’s lots and lots of commercial activity: warehousing, light and heavy industry, and a fairly enormous railyard which is operated by the CSX Railroading outfit. Saying that, there’s also a good number of abandoned industrial and commercial buildings here too.
The rest of my walk played out in these ‘bottoms.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’d be debarking the bridge nearby that first line of houses at the left of the shot above, and then negotiating myself into the industrial zone. Those aren’t ‘mill town’ houses, incidentally. That’s something else entirely. Worker cottages are also a different banana.
Ain’t so pedestrian friendly down there, I’d mention.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My plan involved following that long road parallel to the rail tracks. People just cross back and forth across these tracks all the time. I don’t.
My old pal Bernie Ente once cautioned me about being wary of the active tracks nearby Newtown Creek, as a switch could remotely trigger and trap your foot. As with everything else Bernie told me all those years ago, it was good advice and I stick to it.
I also don’t text while I drive, but that has nothing to do with Bernie. I just try to not do stupid things, although I do stupid things all the time. I do try, though.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It seems that if you need to park a semi in the Pittsburgh area overnight, there’s a parking lot in McKees Rocks just for that. It’s connected to a fairly large gas station, with multiple diesel ‘stalls’ for truckers to fill their tanks.
Finally, I negotiated myself over to that road without the sidewalks pictured above, and started heading away from the bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A line of warehouse and light industrial buildings lined the tracks, as you’d expect. The steeple of that church caught my eye.
Economically speaking, things didn’t look so hot along the rails. More on that observation coming up tomorrow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
So, this is where all that walking led me to.
I still had to walk ‘out’ and find a spot where I could summon a rideshare to get back to HQ, but that section of the walk ‘out’ involved another one of my ‘shot list’ objectives. I really wanted that rail shot…
More on that tomorrow, and the end of this particular scuttle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
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Bottoms end
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This post concludes a fairly satisfying walk over the gargantuan McKees Rocks Bridge, here in Pittsburgh. As stated at the start of this series, Our Lady of the Pentacle was attending a pierogi festival at one of the churches in McKees Rocks, and the opportunity was taken by myself for an exploratory walk over this mile and a half long span.
Just as I reached my ‘turn around point,’ the phone chimed and Our Lady was summoning me back to ‘base’ for the journey home.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
While scuttling along, a Norfolk Southern train was seen on the Ohio Connecting Railroad Bridge, on the Ohio River. This 2025 post from a painful scuttle at the end of May describes the section of the river from the ground level on the northern shore.
This is one of the very few times that I wished a very long and expensive telephoto lens was part of my kit. Conversely, carrying a six thousand dollar, eight pound lens around ‘just in case’ i see a distant train is kind of a non starter.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot overlooks a former penitentiary, once which is scheduled to be gentrified away, and towards the so called ‘Golden Triangle’ of Downtown Pittsburgh. As mentioned last week, the skies were dynamic and changing by the minute as weather systems and storm clouds blew about.
I was scuttling back towards Our Lady the whole time, I swear.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The train finished its crossing of the bridge and river, and reappeared behind the Alcosan Wastewater Treatment Plant (or whatever it is that they call it) and started heading north west in the direction of their enormous Conway Yard.
Tied a bow around my efforts for the morning, that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A short scuttle and I was back over the ‘Bottoms’ section of McKees Rocks. I still had a way to go, the staircase I’d be exiting from is connected to the fairly distant steel arch seen in the upper right side of the shot above. It looks further than it is, and it took me about 15 minutes to get there.
As mentioned, I was pretty ‘amped.’ Very productive and interesting location, and I’m definitely coming back for more in the future. The bridge was stolid enough to justify usage of a tripod for long and loving views of the place.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Scanning about, noticing everything, that’s me.
Couldn’t help myself from locking onto a couple of random boats just sitting there in someone’s back yard.
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.
Pelagus Exhaurire
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing with a fun walk, recently undertaken, on the McKees Rock Bridge. This series of shots are from the section of the bridge that overflies the Ohio River, which returns to solid ground on the very steep ‘north side’ of the Ohio, here in Pittsburgh.
That’s where you’ll notice a gaggle of gear, and a huge industrial plant.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, aka ‘Alcosan,’ operates this massive sewer plant. According to some very topical research on the facility, it opened in 1959 and processes wastewater from some 83 separate communities. The plant’s campus is some 59 acres in size, and the agency states that it processes some 250 million gallons of ‘honey’ a day. Sewer professionals (at least the ones back in NYC) call it ‘honey,’ as a note. They also hate the term ‘sewer plant’ and prefer ‘wastewater treatment.’ Saying that, the people back in NYC’s DEP were kind of divas and also overtly political animals.
Neat.
As long time readers will tell you – your humble narrator is fascinated by these sorts of systems.
This post provides a bit of an overview of the sewer plant in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint, and this one visits the Manhattan Pump House on E. 13th street and Avenue D. CSO’s, storm sewers… grab a beer and let’s chat. There’s dozens of posts discussing the subject here. Click around.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The McKees Rocks Bridge just continued on and on. The pedestrian walkway circles around the masonry anchor pier, which allowed a small notch for me to stand in and get the shot above of the two arches supporting the roadway in this section.
Me? I was drawn – inexorably – towards getting a better view of the ‘Alcosan North Side Plant.’ I’ve been looking around for the ‘official name’ of the facility, but have seen at least three variants so I’m running with ‘Alcosan North Side’ until someone tells me differently. In accordance with my complaint about the presumption of knowing ‘Pittsburgh Vernacular,’ I’m figuring that ‘everybody from here knows what it’s called, so why put that on the website or mention it anywhere else.’
Vernacular also figures into my growing frustrations when there’s some social event, described as going on ‘after lunch’ at ‘Joe’s Garage’ in ‘Lawrenceville or something.’ Street addresses, yo. Not all of us are from here. In fact, I’d say at least 20% of the city are out of town college students, but there you are.
As a point of fact, the sewer plant’s street address is ‘3300 Preble Avenue.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Settling tanks! They’ve got aerated settling tanks! Last time I was up close to a set of these, it was with Ned The Nose in 2012.
This is one of the first steps which sewage takes after entering a plant.
Aeration equipment at the bottom of the tanks, which can be 20-30 feet deep, pump air bubbles up through the liquid. The liquid becomes so highly aerated that buoyancy cancels out and solids drop to the bottom of the tank for collection. The water is drained off, and the left behind solids are gathered for disposal in a sanitary landfill.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The large round dealies in the shot above are skimmer tanks, which harvest surface level grease and cooking oils as well as ‘floatables’ from the flow.
Ahhh. It’s nice, this, like returning home for Christmas.
While researching this post, I discovered that Alcosan does an annual Open House day in September. Count on the fact that I’ll be there next year, presuming they allow photographers to photograph.
Man… there’s this Hindu temple in Monroeville that needs to be seen to be believed, but they specifically forbid photography there… so there’s no point to the endeavor of a visit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cannot begin to describe how happy this sewer plant made me. All of the trouble and pain from the last year, and here I am – standing on top of a bridge and taking pics of a sewer plant. This is the sort of stuff I dream about.
There is a Santa Claus, here in the murder capital of Pennsylvania.
Back next week with just a bit more from the McKees Rocks Bridge.
“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.
Caelum ad siphona ambulans
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing with a walk over the gargantuan McKees Rocks Bridge, in today’s post. As mentioned previously, everytime I’ve driven over this bridge during the last three years, it’s has been paramount in my mind that ‘I’ve got to take a walk over that thing sometime.’ The views from up here are spectacular.
In many ways, this set of views from up here are from ‘the Pittsburgh I’ve been looking for.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Ohio River waterfront is largely industrial. There’s rail tracks set in and amongst all of the structures, and some of the buildings were of a type whose purpose I couldn’t necessarily identify. Fascinating. This one is from high over the McKees Rocks shoreline side. Looks like it might be a chemical storage facility, down there, maybe.
At first I thought concrete, but there aren’t giant piles of sand and gravel anywhere in sight. The cylindrical tanks are fairly clean in appearance as well. Concrete is messy. I’ll find out eventually, as I’m definitely going to be coming back up here again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one looks back at the ‘Bottoms’ neighborhood of McKees Rocks. See what I mean about ‘the murder capital of Pennsylvania’? Place is neat as a pin. That isn’t what a dangerous neighborhood looks like. Economic distress I’ll buy, but dangerous? All of my ‘tells’ are absent – late model vehicles in various states of repair sitting in front yards, alongside clutter and uncollected garbage, groups of feral teenagers, abandoned homes, all of that sort of stuff.
It’s a grid based street pattern here, which is sort of rare for Pittsburgh, and most of what I was observing from above were either multiple family residential buildings, of at most three to four stories, which were surrounded by a predominance of single family homes.
Hardly anyone was out and about, but it was late on a Sunday morning when I was there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bit of advice I can offer at this stage of the game, gleaned by my small experience, is to not lean on bridge fences in the State of Pennsylvania if you don’t have to.
This fencing was solid, mind you, but my advice remains the same. It’s about a 100 foot drop from this spot, on the pedestrian walkway. My understanding of why PA. seldom omits a walking option for its bridges boils down to the presence of significant populations of religious atavists – Mennonites, Amish, etc. – who pay their taxes but don’t drive cars. Fair is fair.
The weather was dynamic, with a lot of movement in the skies. Bolts of sunlight would suddenly peek through, disappearing when another round of moisture shot through. From up on the bridge, you could see various distant sections of Pittsburgh getting rained on.
I remained dry, since I had carried an umbrella with me, and the perverse humor that the universe enjoys at my expense played out as I didn’t have to use the thing once. If I didn’t have an umbrella, it would have been ‘pissing down.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve walked the waterfront trail surrounding that disused penitentiary before. Check out this May of 2025 post for that, or this one from 2024. My understanding of things is that this POV is set to change fairly soon with a big mixed use real estate development that’s meant to start up nearby the confluence point of the three rivers. That’s supposed to bring a giant Ferris Wheel to the party, and demolish the former prison.
This is the moment when I realized what was directly in front of me. Nepenthe.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A sewer plant… it’s a sewer plant. I’ve missed having a sewer plant to point the lens at. Love me a sewer plant, I do.
You can take the boy away from Newtown Creek, but you can’t actually change the fella or what he loves. Sewers!
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 