Posts Tagged ‘Ohio River’
Hey Now! West End edition.
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described last week, your humble narrator was perpetrating a constitutional scuttle, around the titular center point of the Pittsburgh Metro area. My horrific footfalls carried me from a T light rail station on the North Side over to the West End Bridge, whereupon I’d squamously cross the Ohio River and enjoy a point of view or two from the other side.
Midway across the span, a CSX freight train appeared, one which was moving directly towards my point of view.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s CSX #3430, pictured above. I’m told that it’s a ‘GE ET44AH’ model locomotive, which you can read more about here. Right about this moment was when the other train, the one which had been held in place for a bit, began to move. Fun.
Did I mention that it was cold and windy?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The train passed over an outfall which allows Chartiers Creek to express itself into the Ohio River, quite close to the confluence of Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers which form the headwaters of the Ohio.
I kept on keeping on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve always thought that if you really want to hide something, and you’ve got a budget, that the best place would be a train cargo car. The budget would be required to keep the thing you’re hiding constantly moving, and if there’s enough cash available you could theoretically keep the hidden item on the move indefinitely. Connecting it to one random freight train after another, you eventually send it to a train yard in either southern Mexico or Boreal Canada where your secrets can be forgotten.
Theoretically, the same approach would work with a semi trailer, and leave behind a far sparser paper trail.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just before it was time to deal with my terrifying descent down a flight of stairs on the south side of West End Bridge, a tug caught the eye.
Yeah, I know… it’s a Towboat out here, not a Tug. I know.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Gale R. Rhodes has been mentioned here before, in this post from 2024, which was published about a couple of weeks prior to the ‘orthopedic incident.’ That’s how I’m referring to the broken ankle situation from this point out, so just get used to that one, lords and ladies.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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“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.
Cold and lonely, always afraid
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Continuing with a forced march around Pittsburgh, in today’s post.
Simple plan. I’d follow the headwaters of the Ohio River to the West End Bridge, cross over to the southern shore, then track back up the shoreline towards that brewery I hang around, nearby the train tracks on the South Side of Pittsburgh. Drink wasn’t on the menu for this particular day, but I was very interested in capturing a few shots of freight trains.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now! Norfolk Southern was getting up to something on their elevated trestle tracks. The static train in the foreground was CSX’s, and they seemed to be held up by signals. These train shots are all telephoto ranged ones, with the zoom lens dialed all the way out to its maximum objective.
One kept on keeping on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My cursed footsteps pollute the waterfront trails with intransigence, but nevertheless did your humble narrator navigate his carcass to the West End Bridge. This part of the walk exposed me to stairs, which the rotting worms in my skull box have devoted a phobia about, an afterimage of the ‘orthopedic incident’ which defined my life for most of last year.
I’m all ‘effed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s not the going up that affects me, it’s the descent. In particular, it seems, the steel steps that are painted with Pittsburgh’s ‘brand color’ of PPG brand ‘Aztec Gold’ seem to really excite the old amygdala, especially so when descending them. ‘Mustn’t grumble.’
After urinating on a nearby bush, your humble narrator moved upward and onwards, and ascended the scary steps.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This walk has become one of my ‘stations of the cross’ routes. That’s what I call easy to reach areas that are ‘pregnant,’ in terms of photo possibility, but which also offer long stretches of mostly flat terrain that I can lean into. The ‘easy to reach’ part is kind of important.
Back in Queens, I’d head south – out of Astoria – for a Dutch Kills walk which served a similar function and ‘reachability.’ Down Steinway to Northern, where it becomes 39th. 39th to Skillman and Sunnyside Yards, Skillman to Hunters Point Avenue, and then I’d hang a left towards Dutch Kills. After visiting a few spots along the water, I’d then scuttle back out to 43rd street and turn north for the walk back home to Astoria.
That walk was often referred to as my ‘patrol area.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey now! That’s a ‘heading away from Pittsburgh’ CSX freight train appearing on the second track, alongside that train from the Norfolk Southern shot which was being held by signals. Lucky!
Back next week 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.
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 