Posts Tagged ‘Monongahela River’
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.
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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
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High over Pittsburgh
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, an unusually warm February day found a humble narrator marching around Grandview Avenue on Mount Washington here in Pittsburgh. This street sits on a ridge overlooking Downtown Pittsburgh and the Monongahela River, and it’s bookended by the two inclines – Allegheny and Duquesne. The views from up top are fairly killer, and it should be mentioned that I’ve been here up before. There are overlook platforms, and a sort of linear park which is well used by the public, along Grandview Avenue.
The bridges in the photo above are the Fort Pitt and Fort Duquesne Bridges, both of which were recently walked over and described.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is – as always – fascinated by the massing shapes and parabola of the access ramps leading to and from the bridges. The water is the Monongahela River, and this is nearby the titular end of the 130 mile long waterway where it combines with the Allegheny River and the combination transmogrifies into the Ohio River.
Wanderings over the last couple of months have seen me stitching around, exploring. One was feeling the need to come back to square and reconnoiter from above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking up the Monongahela River, in the foreground is the Smithfield Street Bridge and the P&LERR building. Next up is the Panhandle Bridge which carries the T light rail into Downtown. Behind that is the Liberty Bridge, and the yellow one is the South Tenth Street Bridge. In the distance, you can see the Birmingham Bridge.
All along the waterfront are ‘rail to trail’ public spaces. Between Birmingham Bridge and South Tenth Street on the north side of the river is the Eliza Furnace Trail, for instance, with the Hot Metal trail found in the south side of the water.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T is seen crossing the Panhandle Bridge in the one above. I’m planning on putting some time and spending some shoe leather on this section of the world this week, so stay tuned for that one.
I’m also planning on heading further out, specifically returning to Clairton and the trailhead of the Montour Trail found directly across the street from the sense shattering US Steel mill found in that community. I’m also planning on walking another section of the Great Allegheny Passage trail which should provide great views of USS’s Mon Valley Works in Braddock from across the river.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This one looks back along the steep slope of Mount Washington, where the trees are still very much in their winter time hibernation mode.
Since the start of the year, there’s been a couple of very high profile crimes which resulted in the shooting death of two Police Officers in separate incidents, here in the greater Pittsburgh area, and thereby the flags have been flying at half mast throughout the City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One spent a couple of hours marching back and forth on Grandview Avenue, during the late afternoon. The day was coming to an end, and I wanted to do a few tripod shots, but desired to capture a less common point of view. One headed back to the Mobile Oppression Platform (my pet name for the Toyota) which had been parked at a metered spot midway twixt the two inclines, and headed towards my next destination.
The good news is that I’m finally getting comfortable with having a car be a part of the equation. Compared to having to drag ass back to HQ after walking around NYC and getting on the Subway to discover MTA is having yet another meltdown and “you can’t get there from here” it’s a real pleasure to have some personal agency in terms of getting from A to B.
Back tomorrow with what I saw and recorded.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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There and back again
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Birmingham Bridge which a tugboat is navigating up the Monongahela River under, here in Pittsburgh. Where the bridge comes back to land on the southern shore, seen on the right hand side of the shot, is where my car was parked. Due to construction, my original plan to walk across Birmingham Bridge was thwarted, and also due to that project a humble narrator was forced to just keep on going in a generally westwards direction until a river crossing manifested itself. This is from the northern shoreline of the waterbody, and I needed to get to the south side and then back to my waiting automobile.
That’s the quandary. I solved it by doing what I do, which to just keep on walking. Scuttling, actually, but let’s call it walking. Luckily, an apparently quite energetic young woman jogged past me, hopping a couple of feet into the air with every stride, and since she seemed to know where she was going I kept an eye on her path.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The path which that fitness enthusiast blazed led me directly to the South Tenth Street Bridge, which I’ve actually mentioned before. The bridge connects several levels of the north side area together, including leading up to Duquesne University via a very steep staircase set against a bluff. There’s also a vehicle only tunnel punched through the base of the bluff which leads out to local streets. On the river facing side, you can navigate down to the waterfront and it’s trails, as well as to ‘for pay’ parking lots surrounding several governmental buildings. On the other side of the river, the bridge enters the South Side Flats neighborhood. That’s where I needed to go, to find my way back to the car.
Luckily, protected pedestrian and bike paths on bridges are pretty common hereabouts. One hung a left, and away a humble narrator went.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a pretty pleasant walking experience, actually. Separated from vehicular flow by steel girders, but few chain link sections of fencing. One of my most sincere complaints about NYC DOT’s Bridge operations revolves around the prison yard fencing that they throw up everywhere they can. One of my proudest moments along Newtown Creek was convincing the NYS DOT not to chain link the new Kosciuszcko Bridge and instead install a model of fence which didn’t occlude the views. I talked them into creating a fence not dissimilar to the one surrounding Calvary Cemetery, arguing about visual continuity with the designers. It’s just a coincidence that the width between the bars of that fence happen to be 1/2” bigger than the barrel of my favorite lens. Coincidence, I say.
It’s only about 1,200 feet across, the South Tenth Street bridge, so it’s a fairly quick walk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I heard it right about here, I’ll cryptically mention.
The ‘quality rolls’ place in the background was some kind of metals mill, not too sure about what they roll or the quality thereof. As has been the case every time I’ve left the house for the last month, I’m not pretending to myself that I’m going to “photograph” anything (I’ve taken a lot of ‘crime of opportunity’ photowalk “shots”) and that my order of the day continues to be scouting in pursuance of future photo outings which will be more in depth.
Is it a Morning thing? Summer or Fall thing? What time of year do these sticks and twigs flower? All that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned, I heard it back on the bridge. Luckily for me, the crew was stuck at a signal and I had all the time in the world to get into position before they blew the horn and started moving.
I have been extremely unlucky as far as timing goes when it comes to freight rail. That construction detour back on the Eliza Furnace Trail on the north side of the Monongahela River actually set me up. Serendipity, I tell’s ya, serendipity.
That’s a CSX train set, on the Pittsburgh Subdivision. There were tanker cars in the line, but who the hell knows what was in them or maybe they are empty inside. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a photo of a CSX unit towing Army Tanks and military looking container boxcars along these tracks. Was there ammo on board? Who knows? There’s supposed to be a ‘no hazardous material’ rule within the city’s limit, I’m told, but is that enforced? By who? Is there a formal compliance agreement between the carrier and the State or the Feds? Have dirty rotten cheaters gamed the system?
Who knows?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That derailed Norfolk Southern business in Ohio is about 50 miles away from HQ. I’ve been watching the social media ripples of the event splashing about, and all I can say is that maybe when the Union wanted to go out on strike last month we should have listened to them and the members if Congress shouldn’t have engaged in a rare bipartisan alliance to crush their right to strike. Joe Biden joined a long list of American Presidents who have orchestrated against Labor when the industry involved is Rail – and that includes FDR, Truman, Nixon, Reagan etc. This sort of thing goes beyond party, btw, and has nothing to do with that. It’s national security, supply chain, mega capitalism.
Vital industries depend on rail, and the last thing you’d want to do is increase the amount of volatile material that travels around the USA in trucks. The fact that the sort of disaster which the people in Ohio, just an hour’s drive west of here, are living through is rare and comment worthy is a testament to how good American rail workers are at their jobs, and how robust the American Rail system actually is. The problem right now is success, as in the success of the company in the eyes of Wall Street.
Not enough butter is getting spread over too much bread in the name of growing the profit margin, in order to make Norfolk Southern and CSX look good to the Wall Street hedge fund managers. That’s why corners get cut, maintenance deferred, and the trains and yards are undermanned.
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Eliza Furnace Trail
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After having crossed the Monongahela River here in Pittsburgh, via the Hot Metal Bridge, one then proceeded onto the Eliza Furnace Trail heading in a generally westerly direction towards Downtown Pittsburgh. In yesterday’s post, I walked on the two other trails found on the south side of the river, and then on one set on the Hot Metal Bridge itself. It’s all very confusing, really, but you get where you want to eventually.
Eliza Furnace Trail is cut through a weird liminal space formed by bridges, highways, industrial activity, and is set against very high ridges and cliffs… wow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a maintenance project underway in this spot, involving one of the minor Bridge/Onramp structures weaving about on the north side of Pittsburgh. Workers were up on scissor lifts with concrete and metal working equipment. Scaffolding was in place, as were steel structures acting as drop cloths under the job site.
Pittsburgh is in a constant state of emergency repair, due to the challenging geology and a lack of systemic maintenance during its downward financial spiral at the end of the 20th century. Sinkholes are known to form here, and a few years ago – one opened up downtown and swallowed a city bus. It’s become an unofficial seal for the city, and people sell t-shirts and xmas ornaments of the scene.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Eliza Furnace Trail wanders fairly far afield of the Monongahela River’s waterfront. My original plan for this scouting mission was to cross the river at the Birmingham Bridge and circle back to where I’d parked the Mobile Oppression Platform. Problem was that the construction project had obliterated the connection to the bridge and the surrounding streets, so I ended up having to scuttle about a mile further west than intended to get back to the south side. I need the exercise, anyway, so no big whup.
The traffic, the noise of construction, clouds of concrete dust and auto exhaust hanging in the air… it’s like I was back in NYC for a minute.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A bunch of people whom I’m in telephone contact with have asked “do you miss it?” The answer is “I don’t.” I still feel like I’m on vacation somewhere, but… we now live in a house, on a quiet and somewhat suburban street. The vibe here in Pittsburgh is awesome.
What I do miss is the ability to stagger out the door and walk over to Sunnyside Yards for a few quick train shots, or over to Dutch Kills in LIC for yet another series of loving shots of that unloved industrial canal. I don’t miss the noise, danger, and constant bullshit right under my bedroom window. I have never, ever, had the quality of sleeping that I’m currently experiencing. It’s quiet and dark here at night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m also quite enjoying the discovery of novel and new here. Back in NYC, I was a dirty rotten “know it all.” Want to know who built the NYC Ferry and where? Which one of Kathy Hochul’s sponsors will profit from her interborough rail plan? Who will get to build those 15 foot sea walls they’re proposing for Brooklyn and Queens, and what it cost them to be the first in line when Congress starts writing checks?
It’s lovely not knowing everything. Saying that, I can already tell you that the green/blue steel is owned by the State of Pennsylvania and that the yellow part is owned by the city of Pittsburgh. At least that’s what I think the different colors mean.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My walk continued, after having passed under the Birmingham Bridge and the nest of on and off ramps which feed into it. The Eliza Furnace Trail transmogrifies into the Three Rivers Heritage trail and overlays the Great Allegheny Passage trail somewhere around where the above photo was captured. This path ultimately leads the Point State Park on the golden triangle section of Pittsburgh, where the Fort Pitt Bridge can be found.
Point State Park is the de facto center of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, which encompasses multiple counties and satellite cities, towns, and boroughs in four states – Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland. Culturally and financially distinct from the nearby East Coast, Great Lakes, and Toronto megalopolis, one continues to try to wrap his head around this amazing part of the United States which I now call home.
More tomorrow, 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.
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