Posts Tagged ‘Ohio River’
West End Girls
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent scuttle played out on what turned out to be a humble narrator’s latest birthday, which occurred during an interval of tolerable climate.
It’s been one heck of a hot summer out here in the Paris of Appalachia, with high temperatures and humidity defining entire weeks. It’s always a quandary for me – I need to walk, and walk, and walk for health reasons, but then you run into dangerous atmospheric conditions that preclude being outdoors. What are you going to do?
You can fight City Hall, but you can’t argue with the weatherman. Or a Fire Inspector, as they are omnipotent.
This particular soirée into the milieu of Pittsburgh’s arcane street ‘grid’ began at the West End Bridge, spanning the Ohio River. This path would carry me to the southern shore of the Monongahela River, the Great Allegheny Passage trail along it, and ultimately to that brewery nearby the CSX Pittsburgh Subdivision tracks which I regularly visit.
First, I needed to get across the bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Quoting from a prior post describing this bridge:
“There’s a steel tied arch bridge near the center of Pittsburgh, one which spans the very mouth of the Ohio River (formed up by the convergence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers), and it’s called the West End Bridge. West End Bridge’s construction was declared as accomplished in 1932, and the thing was built by Pittsburgh’s own American Bridge Company (steel and span) and the Foundation Company (foundation and masonry piers). West End Bridge was originally just under 2,000 feet long.
After a sprucing up and redesign in the 1990’s, which saw the addition of pedestrian and bike lanes, as well as the removal of several vehicle approach ramps on its northern side, the West End Bridge was and is 1,310 feet long.
There’s 66 feet of clearance over the water, it’s 58 feet wide in totality, and the bridge carries 4 lanes of traffic through a 40 foot space. West End Bridge is a challenging and unforgiving span to drive over, I would mention, given how narrow the travel lanes are.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Down below, there’s a Towing outfit which maintains a series of docks for their Tow Boats, as well as a fleet of barges.
The West End Girls from the title of this post are pictured above – The ‘Gale R. Rhodes’ and one labeled as ‘CTC.’ CTC stands for Campbell Transportation Company, which is presumptively the operator of this particular docking complex and probably not the name of the vessel.
I couldn’t find much out about either of the boats, as neither one was displaying a call sign number visible from the POV I was inhabiting. Call sign numbers are the key to identifying random maritime vessels you might encounter. Just saying.
Back tomorrow.
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Fifteen barges? C’mon…
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described last week, a humble narrator was recently engaged in a longish walk around the center of Pittsburgh on a pleasant spring afternoon.
My footsteps carried me over towards the West End Bridge (spanning the headwaters of the Ohio River) in pursuance of accessing one of the many waterfront trails found here, in the Paris of Appalachia. The particular trail I was heading towards leads back to a light rail station which would be my day’s penultimate destination, on the way back to HQ some five miles distant. It was late in the afternoon – rush hour time.
Choosing this path ended up being a fortuitous decision, and for the next hour or so Pittsburgh offered quite a show for the wandering photographer to record.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Midway across the bridge, a towing vessel was noticed approaching the span. The boat was handling what seemed like an impossible number of minerals barges. The Towboat was heading eastwards along the Ohio River, towards the confluence of Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers which mingle and form up the Ohio.
One got into position, chose an appropriate lens from my ‘bag of primes,’ and worked out the correct suite of settings for the camera.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Fifteen barges of what looked like coal were being towed directly beneath the West End Bridge where I was standing. The towboat is called ‘Miss Ivy Brynne,’ which was built in 1974 and offers its crew some 3,800 HP worth of motive force to work with. The boat is currently flagged out of Belle Vernon, PA.
Read more about Miss Ivy Brynne here, at tugboatinformation.com.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As the Towboat moved along, so did I, trying to find different perspectives. There must be a speed restriction under the West End Bridge, as the boat was moving at a snails pace.
My guess is that its ultimate destination was going to be one of the two U.S. Steel plants found up river along the Monongahela – either Clairton, or the Mon Valley Works. Given that it was traveling west along the Ohio River, it must have negotiated the lock and dam systems operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers found downriver.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lens swap occurred, as my footsteps carried the camera away from the middle of the West End Bridge. I needed a bit more ‘reach,’ so the 85mm was affixed to the camera.
Right about here is when the towboat’s wheelhouse ‘gunned’ its engines and the vessel began picking up speed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shot above was captured just as a humble narrator got to the southern extant of the West End Bridge, while also passing over a towing company’s docks that were hosting several other mineral barges.
This was just the start of a heavy industrial show, one which I was privileged to witness on the back end of my scuttle.
Back tomorrow with more.
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Wassup in Sewickley
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sewickley is a Borough in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, found about 12 miles northwest of Pittsburgh proper, and is home to about 4,000 people. It’s quite a lovely and seemingly well-off suburb, I would mention.
There’s a park and a boat launch along the Ohio River, the access road of which is pictured above as it tunnels under the Norfolk Southern tracks which I’d been shadowing all afternoon and has been mentioned in prior posts. In the shot above, the tracks are carried above the boat launch tunnel, with the Ohio River in the background.
After one walked through the tunnel, surprising a couple of people who were surreptitiously enjoying some cannabis, one discovered that the views attainable here weren’t terribly photogenic so I walked up a nearby hill to try and find a POV.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Sewickley Bridge came into frame at the hill top, a 1981 vintage truss which spans the Ohio and carries State Route 4025 – which connects Sewickley to Moon Township on the south side of the river. I’d be driving over that bridge before the afternoon was over, on my way back to HQ.
One scuttled about, and I received a phone call from an old friend while doing so, who’s been referred to here as ‘The Hermetic Hungarian.’ We caught up and discussed the issues of the day while I scuttled about and crossed my fingers that I might get a shot of a train, after haunting these tracks in different locations all afternoon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wishes do come true, apparently, as Norfolk Southern #4781 came roaring into view. I’m told that’s an ‘EMD SD70MAC’ model locomotive.
That probably means quite a bit to someone versed in the railfanning hobby, but as is often stated – I like taking pictures of trains, and photos always need subjects to focus on. Trains are also sort of difficult to photograph, especially so when they’re under full steam and cooking along their way. Not railfanning, however.
Back next week, 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.
On the hunt
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After visiting Emsworth Locks and Dam along the Ohio River, located just outside Pittsburgh, one noticed a plastic box labeled with ‘take one’ that contained xerox flyers proclaiming this spot as being ‘Buzzie’s Corner.’
I haven’t been able to find out too much about this cognomen, but apparently this was, and is, a popular railfanning location. There’s a website: Buzzie’s Corner, but the proprietor thereof confesses their own ignorance as to the origin of the name and whom Buzzie was or is.
I’m reminded of a Staten Island spot on the Kill Van Kull back in NYC which my friends and I started called ‘Skelson’s Office’ in honor of our dearly departed pal John Skelson – a photographer who lived nearby that spent countless hours photographing the parade of maritime vessels exiting and entering Port Elizabeth Newark from a certain spot on the shoreline.
Man, I’ve got a lot of dead friends.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Historically preserved, restored, and moved from its original location, pictured above is a 1797 vintage log cabin dubbed the Dickson Log House. The Buzzie’s Corner site has a page devoted to its story – check it out here.
Me? It was time to move on to another location and see what could be seen from it. A few miles down the river was found a neat little town which looked a great deal like a fishing village. It was all of two to three blocks in depth, and pavement on its roads stopped about 200 feet from the highway off ramp that took me there. At the very end of an unpaved and muddy road is a small park with a baseball field that sits right along the same Norfolk Southern tracks mentioned yesterday.
I discovered that the end of this road is where the local ‘working guys’ go ‘cribbing,’ meaning that this where they park their trucks while taking a nap at work.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Still batting zero on the train front, I keyed in the next destination on my phone, and let Google maps guide me to another spot I wanted to check out. A rather circuitous route was laid out for me, which allowed for visual inspection of a nearby suburb. One is often annoyed by the navigational suggestions hereabouts. Google doesn’t seem to take into account that their ‘shorter by three seconds’ route requires driving up a mountain and back down again when a U or K Turn would have done the job more simply and not burned out a bunch of fuel.
What also annoys me is these sorts of routes send motorists into residential neighborhoods, increasing traffic flow in precisely the areas where you want it to be cut down.
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.
Emsworth Lock and Dam
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As part of a humble narrator’s continuing exploration of the Pittsburgh metro area, an afternoon in late March found me standing at the fence lines of an United States Army Corps of Engineers installation called the Emsworth Locks and Dam, on the Ohio River. As it turned out, I missed a dramatic set of events here which would occur in early April when an unusually high volume of rainfall caused all sorts of chaos here in the local vicinity.
Hullabaloo, I tell’s ya, hullabaloo.
The Three Rivers overflowed their banks which flooded several waterfront parcels, and here at Emsworth – 26 maritime barges which were tied up upriver that were full of minerals got loose from their moorings, and ended up wedged up against the dam.
Before you ask, I followed my usual policy of staying the hell away from such horrors unless someone was specifically going to be paying me to take the risk, in order to get a photo or deliver a video.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned above, this particular afternoon was one of my ‘exploratory trips’ wherein a series of waypoints were encoded into a Google map, which I then followed while driving the Mobile Oppression Platform from place to place. This one wasn’t a walk, it was a drive.
So far, my ‘get out there and see something’ instincts have been drawing me up the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers away from the center of Pittsburgh, with just a few ventures out and along the Ohio.
There’s a series of GPS waypoints which I’ve tagged along this river’s banks – boat launches, public parks, trails, etc. – which I’ve planned on visiting sometime in the near future, or in the case of this week’s posts – now. There’ll come a moment sometime in the future when I’m actually crossing into – y’know, the State of Ohio – which is about a 90 minute drive from Pittsburgh, here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Along the Ohio River, and this shot is from the northern side of the waterbody, there’s a pretty expansive series of rail tracks which are used by the Norfolk Southern outfit. I was hoping to catch a shot of a passing train when I was here, but no such luck was on offer. Have to get myself one of those railfan scanner radios one of these days, so I know if something interesting is coming my way.
Go west, old man.
Back with all that, at this – your Newtown Pentacle, 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 