Posts Tagged ‘Monongahela River’
316,800 inch long scuttle, part 4
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing with the longest walk I’ve been able to perpetrate since breaking my left ankle and dislocating my foot back in September…
After debarking the West End Bridge and its PTSD inducing staircase, the path followed the waterfront of the three rivers back to the southern shoreline of just the Monongahela River. There’s an arterial street which runs along this path, called Carson Street. In this area, it’s called West Carson, and offers connections to several bridges and a tunnel or three. From what I understand, everything between Carson and the water used to be part of a giant rail yard in the glory days of Steel.
I was amused that they closed the sidewalk and set up protection for the barrier. No accommodation whatsoever for pedestrians. To be fair, the protected barrier was sitting on top of a manhole cover, so the construction people were probably trying to vouchsafe the utility shaft.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
About 3/4 of a mile’s worth of scuttling found me on a waterfont trail that more or less parallels the CSX Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks and which also leads towards that Beer Brewery I haunt. That’s one of the inclines, which I colloquially refer to as ‘the red one,’ but which is properly called ‘The Duquesne Incline.’
The ankle was holding up pretty good. I seem to have put the whole ‘walking like the Batman villain Penguin’ behind me. I was definitely ‘feeling’ the exercise, but it wasn’t painful at all. That’s also a first.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were a few trains transiting by on the CSX tracks, which provided me with moments of joy. Well… joy is too strong a word, as it would imply that I somehow have started experiencing the sort of emotional highs and lows which ‘normal’ people do. I really don’t get all that.
My normal existential and emotional state is best described as being a cold gray in color, with the buzzing sound of old florescent bulbs omnipresent, and punctuated by brief flashes of annoying drama and bold colors. I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was very pleased with myself, regarding the shot above. As I was scuttling along, I kept looking over my shoulder to see if anything might be coming my way and saw this train being held in place at a signal all the way back at West End Bridge. That’s the aforementioned bridge in the background, btw.
These are amongst the last ones from this set of locations you’re going to see for a while, regrading the CSX tracks hereabouts. Now that I’m on my feet again, even with the limitations, it’s time to get out and explore again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A few people (railfans) have told me that it’s frustrating to them that my interest in trains mainly focuses on the locomotive at the front of the unit. An effort to satisfy these traction enthusiasts will be made.
Look, the train was hauling drywall.
Paint drying, for me. The ‘drama’ shot is in the engine, not the caboose.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A series of tanker cars followed the drywall. According to what’s indicated on the tanks, they were carrying Butadiene. Others were hauling Isopentane. There you go, railfans.
Back tomorrow with the last shots from this scuttle at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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316,800 inch long scuttle, part 3
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing with captures from a recent walk around Pittsburgh, as your humble narrator exercises himself back to normal circumstance, post broken ankle. As previously described: one was crossing the Ohio River on the West End Bridge, as folks do.
Along the way, there were lots and lots of interesting things to point the camera at, and amongst them was the Towboat King Conan towing four barges of minerals in a westerly direction after leaving the Monongahela River. The region to the east along that river is locally referred to as ‘The Mon Valley.’ That zone still hosts a fantastic number of industrial facilities, but it’s a shadow of what once was.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Call sign WDN4839 is how King Conan would ID itself on the radio, and I’ll refer you to this page at marinetraffic.com for more details on the boat. After a series of floods in early 20th century which wrecked Western Pennsylvania and seriously curtailed the output of the steel industry, the Army Corps of Engineers installed several lock and dam installations along the three rivers to control the water. A fairly major lock and dam in this system is the nearby Emsworth Lock and Dam. King Conan was heading that way, and here’s a page from the USACE describing the facility and its costs.
Really, I’ve been working hard to remain ignorant here, but it just keeps on seeping in. Just last week I met somebody who works at the big sewer plant near Sewickley and… uhnnnn…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking back towards Pittsburgh’s north shore while scuttling along one of the West End Bridge’s pedestrian paths, that’s what’s depicted above. One of the severe difficulties you’ll encounter while driving in Pittsburgh is that you need to position yourself before the crossing to be in the lane for your exit. It’s quite an endeavor to switch lanes on the other side, and Pittsburgh drivers are fairly merciless. There’s also the whole ‘vernacular’ thing, wherein the fact that this is a fairly insular community has created a culture wherein the presumption is that everybody has the same knowledge base as everyone else. I mean, you want to go to California Avenue, you get in the left hand lane when you board that bridge – everybody knows that. Vernacular.
The example I always use to describe the Yinzer POV is somebody saying that ‘I’ll see you where Smith’s used to be, after lunch.’
My answer would be, as a foreigner from NYC: bro, I don’t know what Smith’s was or where where it used to be and I have no ‘effin idea what time you eat lunch. Give me an address or an intersection and name a time. Vernacular. They speak in vernacular here.
There’s also the not exactly legal but commonly offered ‘Pittsburgh left’ wherein the lead car on the opposite side of an intersection will flash their brights at you to allow you to make a left turn at the start of a light cycle. This practice works surprisingly well at keeping traffic moving on the narrow and often steep streets hereabouts, as a note.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of traffic, the south end of the West End Bridge overlooks the CSX Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks heading towards Ohio, and just as I arrived at one of several ‘Bernie Holes’ in the fencing a train appeared rounding the bend. The term ‘Bernie Holes’ refers to my old pal Bernard Ente from Newtown Creek, who passed away in 2011. You can still find the holes he cut into fences in the dead of night, just big enough to fit a camera lens through, all around the creek, Sunnyside Yards, and various LIRR bridges in Maspeth and beyond.
I had time to get ready and noodle with the camera’s settings and figure out a composition.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yeah, I like this one. Subject is sharp, composition good, and the background environmental detail provides a sense of place. Yay for me.
A problem I’m starting to encounter in my plotting and planning involves ambition, and the desire to forget about the ankle and fully immerse myself back into the ‘mishegoss.’ Just last night, I was sitting there in front of the iPad with. Google maps open considering a scuttle on a natural dirt and rock path down the face of Mount Washington, and on a trail which I haven’t explored yet. Given that this would have been a difficult but productive pathway to move through – prior to busting my ankle – it’s folly to even consider it at this point in time.
Instead, there’s an industrial zone on the north side of the triangle – which is largely flat – that’s ’next.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the end of the West End Bridge on the southern shore of the Monongahela River, you encounter a set of steps. Brr.
Given the PTSD I’m experiencing regarding stairs, one intentionally pointed his toes in this direction in the name of getting past all that.
I actually froze for a few minutes at the top landing, but managed to force myself to start walking downwards. The mental problems forced me to move in a stiff and somewhat robotic fashion, as I ‘protected the ankle,’ and in doing so actually interfered with a smooth passage and caused a terrifying stumble or two along the way down. This PTSD is going to be inhabiting me for a bit, I think, but exposure to terror is generally what makes fear go away.
Back tomorrow with more, at your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Trailing behind
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular scuttle in Pittsburgh had a simple premise, which was to ‘keep moving.’ The current medical phase of my broken ankle related drama involves ‘stretching and strengthening,’ which basically boils down to a bunch of roadwork. If I was like everybody else, I’d find an athletic field and walk the track (there’s plenty of that sort of thing around these sports happy parts), but I’m an odd duck and easily bored so my interpretation of the Doctor’s mandate to ‘use it’ is instead to walk a different kind of track. Railroad tracks, that is.
After riding the T light rail into the metro core of Pittsburgh, from HQ in the Boro of Dormont, one navigated over to one of the trails which garland the three rivers’ waterfront. I was moving through the Monongahela River coast, on the south side of the so called ‘Golden Triangle,’ and that green painted area in the shots below and above indicates the pathway which this particular trail follows.
This is a fairly ‘complicated’ spot, with an interstate’s off ramps feeding into local traffic. You really want to use the walk/don’t walk buttons on the lamp posts when executing a crossing in this zone.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the path, centered between those ‘do not enter’ signs. Given that I’m moving pretty slow these days, and running really isn’t an option, I waited for that red hand symbol on the light to turn into a white walking person icon before stepping off the curb.
It’s ironic, given how much Pittsburgh uses its waterfront for recreation and all that in modernity, that the city is stuck with a (literally) Robert Moses spawned highway design that was rammed in through its downtown and which completely blocked public access to the waterfronts back during the 1930’s and 40’s. Of course, there were steel mills and rail yards in this area until quite recently, and the waterfronts were engaged in commercial activity.
Modernity always presents a false picture of the past. It must have made sense at the time, but a lot of these decisions our grandparents made look awful from the perspective of the tyranny of now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If anyone cared what I had anything to say about it, they’d deck over the highway and create new land for more productive usages than a high speed traffic trench, which is given to flooding during spring spurges of water on the rivers. I suggested this to several of the feudal lords back in Queens, regarding the Grand Central Parkway back in Astoria. Yeah, it would be expensive, but more so than exposing children to a residential exposure to all of that automotive exhaust? What about storm water? Decking a highway and installing a sponge park on the deck plates? Something? Anything? No? Let’s stay with the car canyon instead, and worry about affordable housing which nobody can afford.
At any rate, I wasn’t ’urban planning’ on this walk, I was just trying to maintain a steady walking pace and avoid having to sit down too often. That’s my deal at the moment, along with telling friends that I can’t walk terribly fast and that they should just move at their own pace, I’ll eventually catch up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s where I executed a left, at the Smithfield Street Bridge over the Monongahela River. In the background, you can see one of the two inclines operating, the ‘yellow one’ as I refer to it. After crossing onto the bridge, I heard a train horn sounding off to the west and tried to get myself into a fortuitous spot to capture a shot of the thing.
As mentioned above, running isn’t really an option for me right now.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX #7215 was heading south east along the Pittsburgh Subdivision trackage. Like ornithology, it seems that everytime I try to say what kind of a train is I get it wrong, so in accordance with my ‘birds workaround,’ that’s a General Motors rocket sled which is powered by sixty angry kangaroos which are chained to extremely uncomfortable bicycles within. Cruel, but efficient, the rocket sled is.
I made an effort to find out what actual reality #7215 exists in, but for some reason the internet blew a gasket and all that Google wants to tell me about it involves the legal status of the CSX rail cops. I’ve learned a lot about the world of rail from watching ‘Hobo YouTube,’ and one of the bits of wisdom offered by the traveling folks involves total avoidance of the rail cops and at all costs. They’re not nice like regular cops.
Since you likely know what ‘regular’ on duty cops are like, with their complete lack of a sense of humor, imagine that cranked up to level 10. Rail cops.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, a T light rail appeared over the active CSX tracks. I like it whenever I can capture multiple trains in a single shot, especially so when they’re both moving.
Back tomorrow with lotsa Choo-Choo.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Scuttleburgh
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ok, I’m really starting to lean back into my ‘normal’ things, lords and ladies. I’ve fully convinced myself that nobody thinks I can fully recover from the busted ankle because they think I’m old and weak, and further packaged that up with a lot of of other personal resentments and annoyances, so I thereby have to prove the world wrong. Again.
What? How do you motivate yourself out of the house to enact a forced march when the only thing you want to do is stay at home and whine about how much your ankle is bugging you? Pfah.
The hill I live at the bottom of was vaingloriously surmounted, and your humble narrator then heroically scuttled off in the direction of the light rail station. The goal for the day was a short walk, of about three miles, but the effort would also include walking some of Pittsburgh’s steeply problematic hills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I made it to the apex of those hills, here in Pittsburgh’s Boro of Dormont. That’s where you’ll find the T light rail station, and it’s where I boarded the carriage to carry me to a more visually interesting section of the metro area. I boarded the thing and it lurched roughly towards Pittsburgh, about 5-6 miles away. For you New Yorkers, think boarding the subway in Downtown Brooklyn or the Northern Blvd. sections of LIC and Astoria for an analogue. Just a few stops and you’re ‘there.’
Observably, I seem to be the only person in Pittsburgh who shoots photos out of the T’s windows, but that’s a habit I started back in NYC while riding the subways. Helped pass the time during a commute, and you never really knew what you were getting until going through the photos back at HQ. Most of my ‘shooting out of a train window’ ends up getting trashed, but every now and then you get something unique or interesting.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That concrete blockhouse looking structure is the entrance to Pittsburgh’s Liberty Tunnel. The terrain surrounding it is byzantine, with multiple arterial roadways leading here. There’s also the T tracks, which are elevated on a causeway here, and there’s also busways, and a couple of heavy freight rail trestles also get threaded through this area. It’s complicated!
One of these days I’m going to debark the T at a nearby stop and try to get some decent shots of the complex. At least until the cops chase me away, or I get bored while waiting for a freight train to cross one of those trestles.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in prior posts, a good amount of construction work is currently affecting the T light rail, and the lines will all be detouring through the Allentown neighborhood until the autumn. Unfortunately, the ‘PRT’ transit agency which runs the show only added a single stop way at the top of the hill for the inconvenience, but there you are.
If you’re curious, the camera formula for this sort of ‘out the window shooting’ involves setting the ISO sensitivity up to nighttime levels (6400 for my camera) and setting the device to its ‘AV’ or aperture priority mode. The camera will then find the correct exposure automatically while maintaining the ISO and aperture settings (which is f8 for the particular zoom lens I was using this day). Normally, I shoot in full manual mode, which allows me control over all aspects of the exposure, but shooting out of the window of a moving vehicle isn’t very normal and the technological assist is welcomed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the set of tracks which I often point the camera at, the ones nearby that brewery I keep mentioning. My plan for the day involved the relative flatness of this area. The beginning of my walk involved a bit of muscle, in terms of getting to the T via the hills of Dormont. This section was all about exercising the more discrete tissues in the foot and ankle, and getting them moving and all lubricated.
Six months, and two weeks. That’s exactly how long I’ve been dealing with this broken ankle business. As mentioned last week, the Doctors have more or less given me the ‘all clear’ and thusly I now need to seriously work the joint in order to get back to what I consider ‘normal.’ Thing is, ‘normal’ is what it used to feel like, and it’s a pretty different ankle after the injury and surgery. How it works, feels, performs – all different.
The asymmetry is really hard to get used to, but in time I don’t think I’ll even notice it. If only I was born patient, instead of good looking…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T was debarked at the Second Avenue station, which is fed traffic by the Panhandle Bridge pictured above. The plan was to walk a bit on one of the trails along the waterfront of the Monongahela River, cross the waterbody on the Smithfield Street Bridge, then try and get a few train shots. It wouldn’t be a ‘have a beer too’ day, although my end point for the walk would be nearby that now familiar spot nearby the brewery.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
How many axles, now?
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The last test which I subjected my newly solid ankle to was walking down a street covered in pavers. Many refer to this sort of street cover as ‘cobble stones,’ but that’s anachronistic and incorrect – they’re called Belgian Blocks by the traffic engineers. Suffice to say that they’re also challenging to walk on for someone regaining his feet after a long medical recovery period.
This scuttle ended up being just shy of about 7,000 steps, according to the somewhat inaccurate reporting offered by my phone. I’m happy to report that I wasn’t suffering in the manner that I was after attempting a similar path just a couple of weeks previously. Progress, lords and ladies, progress. That huge brick structure is the former terminal warehouse building which houses the brewery nearby the CSX tracks, so after a trip to the loo, logic dictates that I soon had a beer in hand and was waiting outside for the signal arms along the CSX Pittsburgh subdivision to start chiming. I didn’t have to wait long.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX #3235 appeared first, hauling what looked like empty coal ‘bucket’ cars. These trains were heading ‘away from Ohio’ and ‘deep into Pennsylvania in the direction of West Virginia and Maryland.’ I’m still learning all of this train stuff, I’d remind. 3235 is an ‘GE ES44AC-H’ model locomotive, part of General Electric’s Evolution series of products.
I had ordered a pint of Stout, and it was delicious. After #3235 passed, I went into the brewery, ordered a sequel, and then paid my tab. Two are enough for me these days, I’m a lightweight these days, after not drinking a drop of alcohol during the entire ankle recovery. Last thing I needed was to add alcohol into that mix of pain killers and fog.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Regarding the title of this post, as mentioned yesterday I’ve recently added a new gizmo to my camera bag, a radio scanner which allows me to listen to the transmissions between train operators and their towers. One of the things which pops up, amongst all the squelching, is the automatic defect detector equipment which counts the number of axles that the engine is pulling or pushing. If the number suddenly changes, the operator knows there’s a problem, possibly a derailment. The train pictured above reported 318 axles at work shortly before arrival.
The 318 axle train was CSX #3184, pulling a train composed of container cars – some automotive, some cargo boxes. #3184 is a GE B23-7 model locomotive and it’s almost as old as I am.
Me? I was pleased with my day. Pain was at a minimum, I kept moving (one of my credos), and at the end of the day the memory card on my camera was nicely packed with all the images you’ve seen this week.
Back next week, hopefully, 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.
The Newtown Pentacle 