Posts Tagged ‘Pennsylvania’
Cooler if spelled ‘Eerie,’ instead of ‘Erie’
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long story short, I somehow found myself standing on the shoreline of Lake Erie, in the recent past. Never laid eyes on this Great Lake before, so yay.
Turns out that Lake Erie is about a two hour drive north of HQ, basically in Pittsburgh. Didn’t have time to linger, so this was a ‘run and gun’ and all shots are from a singular perspective. Plan on me coming back this way again in the not too distant future, but with a whole lot of preparation – a shot list, Google maps of possible ‘POV’s’ – all that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That thingie seems to be an observation tower of some kind.
Big tourist zone, this section of Pennsylvania’s Erie shoreline is. It seems that ‘waterfront vacation’ in this section of the country (Northwestern New York, Western PA., eastern Ohio) takes the form of either visiting one of the Great Lakes, or driving all the way to the coast at Ocean City in Maryland.
Funny thing is, having grown up on Brooklyn’s southern shore, which faces out to Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic, when my parents wanted to do a ‘vacation getaway,’ they always talked about heading to the Catskills or some other mountainous area of the sort where the very people who like to come to Erie or Ocean City for vacation live.
Dichotomy, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Have to imagine that I landed in exactly the wrong spot for my particular interests, given that this was a quite modern real estate developmental area which was entirely tourism focused. Big hotels, docks, convention center type buildings. Lots and lots of what looked like time share apartments looking out on the lake too.
Research, have to do some of that before returning.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator generally doesn’t like photo destinations which he can’t just walk up to. It annoys me to have to drive places, in the Mobile Oppression Platform – a Toyota, but.. as the saying goes – the mountain ain’t coming to Mohammed.
Recent endeavors have seen me driving eastwards for rail action; in Cassandra and Cresson. South towards Maryland’s Cumberland, west towards West Virginia’s Weirton and Ohio’s Steubenville.
The photos in today’s post are from the northern edge of what could be described as the ‘Pittsburgh Metro Area,’ a roughly 100 mile circle (or rounded rhombus) with Pittsburgh’s Golden Triangle and Acrisure Stadium at the economic and cultural center.
I’ve mentioned the ideation that Pittsburgh is at the center of an Appalachian Megalopolis, locally overshadowed by the Chicagoan, and especially the East Coast seaboard’s setup with NYC, and Washington DC, as the pole stars of a continuous urbanized area that runs from Boston all the way to the south.
North American megalopolis zones (or at least the ones centered in the USA) include the southern one around Houston, the entire west coast from Tijuana to Vancouver, the Atlantic coast from Boston to Atlanta with the NYC to DC zone forming its dense core, there’s also ‘Chicagoland,’ and there’s a few smaller entities like the Appalachian one, or the Mormon one out west. Up north, there’s Toronto, and then… you get the concept.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That is one heck of an enigmatic church which caught my eye. It appears to be ‘Orthodox,’ although I couldn’t guess what version of orthodoxy they employ within. Next time, I’ll be prepared…
My time in Erie was short, as I still had to drive roughly two hours to get back home. This one wasn’t a photo trip, I had something else to do up here that was utterly banal, and really not worth discussing.
Erie is roughly 120 miles north of Pittsburgh, and the drive back is all on one road and its various extensions – I-79.
Most of that drive hurtles through quite rural areas, with limited stops on the highway. Speed limits are high, up in the 65-70 mph zone depending on where you are in the drive.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The next morning, well, there I was… standing alongside a set of railroad tracks in Pittsburgh’s Bridegville, waiting to photograph a Wheeling & Lake Erie RR train which never arrived. C’est la vie.
Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
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Cassandra Railroad Overlook
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described last week, your humble narrator decided to take a day trip and get out of Pittsburgh for a bit. I visited a Railfan Park in Pennsylvania’s Cresson in the last post, and then headed over to another spot in nearby Gallitzin – where there’s a rail tunnel that is meant to provide one with a nice photographic opportunity, but nothing was happening there and I moved on.
My third stop for this particular day was in nearby Cassandra, where another railfan focused overlook park is found.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a rail trench carved out of the landscape here, which is adorned with wire netting along its sides. The net wires are electrically connected, and the entire system is designed to vouchsafe against a locomotive barreling into a landslide at full speed. As I understand it – were a landslide to occur, the falling rocks would hit and break the cables, which have an electrical current running through them. If the circuit breaks, a signal is sent down the tracks, and train traffic halts until workers can arrive and assess/correct the situation. Neat!
This spot is around a two hour drive from Pittsburgh, a bit over a hundred and change miles away from HQ. Distance is very different out here than it was back in NYC. A hundred miles of driving back home would be a grueling marathon of stop and go’s in standstill traffic that took all day, whereas out here a hundred miles is experienced at highway speeds on relatively open roads.
Your problem, as a driver, is not exceeding the posted speed limits.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now! A train’s a coming.
I spent my time waiting for this train to arrive joking around with a couple of old codgers that had driven here all the way from… Ohio… to spend their day watching trains. They told me that they make this trip about once every couple of weeks. Wow.
…Ohio…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s Norfolk Southern #1145, pulsing down the tracks at Cassandra.
This would be the last series of shots I captured, before having to head back to Pittsburgh. I had left HQ around 8 in the morning, arrived at Cresson around 10, and these shots had to have been captured somewhere in the early afternoon. I was going to be getting back to Pittsburgh sometime around the start of rush hour, and on a highway at that, so this was the only train I shot at Cassandra Overlook.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you’re reading this, the ‘Big Boy’ locomotive has already passed through this spot at least once, and I’m sure that an absolute calamity’s worth of people filtered though Cassandra to get a photo of it.
I’m hoping I might catch the thing in Pittsburgh, but it’s not really a high priority shot for me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking of Pittsburgh, that’s where the track that this train is traveling on goes to. Same ‘road’ as the one which I normally show you from the pedestrian bridges in the South Side Slopes, and the one which runs in a trench through a park on the North Side.
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.
Cresson Railroad Observation Platform
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off, The Newtown Pentacle Time Warp (patent pending) is still in effect. Your humble narrator has somehow managed to maintain at least a month or so of ‘lead time’ on these posts recently and is chronologically disconnected. The photos in today’s post were captured at the very start of May, and the words you’re reading were typed out at the end of that same month. Fun, huh?
So, I decided to take a road trip. Loaded the car up with camera gear, a cup of tea and a bottle of water, and then set off in an easterly direction from Pittsburgh. A bit longer than two hours worth of driving found me in Cresson, Pennsylvania, where a ‘proper’ railfanning park and observation platform can be found. Neat!
Ummm… Hey Now! That’s Norfolk Southern #4259 pictured above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Basically a huge patio deck, the observation platform allows one some elevation. There’s seating, and a couple of spots where you can escape the sun. Cresson is perilously close to Altoona and the Horseshoe Curve, meaning that that the tracks leading aways from that bit of mega-infrastructure are chokepoints that literally ‘everything’ needs to travel through.
I’d heard of this spot, and few others near it, so the resolve to ‘check it out’ grew in my brain. Cresson Railroading Park is found here on Google Maps.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now! NS #7230 is pictured above, which seemed to be doing ‘switcher’ duty.
Have to say, this was a pretty pleasant morning for me, and train sets were rolling through about every fifteen minutes. There’s a LOT of other rail stuff in Cresson which I want to get photos of, including a Wye. I’ll definitely be coming back here in the future.
Likely in the fall, I think those BW locomotives of theirs will look really cool against an autumn backdrop.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This section of Pennsylvania is ‘feature rich.’
Multi day ‘explores’ in this zone include: Johnstown (of horrific flooding and mass casualties fame), Altoona and the Horseshoe Curve, and there’s also a host of other historical RR goodies in this area, left behind by the Pennsylvania Rail Road Company.
yeah… HEY NOW! NS #4673 passed through next.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now… NS #7648 arrived next, heading westerly.
Both of the larger subjects – Johnstown and Altoona – will be receiving my attentions sometime this year as well. I have to develop a shot list for each zone, and when those lists grow long enough to warrant overnighting there in a motel or AirBNB, I’ll go. Saying that, Cresson and my other destinations on this particular day were ‘one and done’s’ so any return here is a day trip. It’s only a two hour drive.
Very much car country, this.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m all out of Hey Now’s.
Norfolk Southern #4212 was the last train I shot before heading back to the Mobile Oppression Platform (a Toyota), and firing up the engine to get to my next destination, which you’ll see next week. Hurray!
Enjoy the fireworks.
“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.
Archives #029
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A frequently walked pathway to Newtown Creek from Astoria was one that would see a humble narrator march southwards along 43rd street in Sunnyside, and then hang a right on Greenpoint Avenue towards Blissville and Brooklyn. Newtown Creek Alliance’s HQ is just across the water in Greenpoint, so as you’d imagine – there was a lot of back and forth along this route over the years.
In 2014, a humble narrator had grown annoyed at thousands of illegally placed advertisements, ones that suddenly appeared on every lamp post in Western Queens – as discussed in this November 14th post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek is where I spent a lot of time over the last dozen or so years I lived in NYC. To start – it was the section of the creek closest to my house, and a twenty minute walk would deliver me to a subway station if I decided to punk out and find a ride home. Deserted, generally. No one on the streets but me.
The photos in the post ‘pressure laminated’ were gathered while crawling around the bulkheads of Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary, but the text talks about pandemics. Oddly, I was only about three to four miles off in my prediction of Covid’s global epicenter being in Astoria, rather than in Elmhurst where it ended up being.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The age of oil started in western Pennsylvania in a place called Oil City, which is right next door to PA’s Titusville. A day trip in 2023 saw me visiting both municipalities, and photographing some of the sights.
In 2023, this post about Pennsylvania’s Titusville was published.
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.
Salisbury Viaduct
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator crossed the Mason Dixon line again recently, and just shy of the famous borderline between America’s ‘North and South,’ a visit was paid to the Salisbury Viaduct in Pennsylvania’s Somerset County, nearby the Commonwealth’s border with Maryland.
Part of the Great Allegheny Passage trail in modernity, this structure was built by the Western Maryland Railroad and opened to rail traffic in 1912. Abandoned in 1975 by the rail people, it was rehabbed into a bike and pedestrian ‘rail to trail’ which opened for inspection in 1998.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I had a photographer buddy along with me on this particular day. We had delayed our original plans for this road trip to Maryland by a day, because of a precipitous drop in atmospheric temperature and a concurrent series of storms that manifested as the cold front moved in.
When we piled into the Mobile Oppression Platform (The MOP, aka my, my, my Toyota) back in Pittsburgh the next morning, it was 11 degrees outside.
It had warmed up a bit by the time we arrived at Salisbury Viaduct, about 22 degrees according the MOP’s dashboard display. I was wearing two fleece sweatshirts up top, but had neglected to put on thermal underwear leggings for the roadway interface section of the physical plant.
Told you that I’m an idiot in the mornings, and I should have laid them out the night before as a prophylaxis against my stupidity but there we are. My legs were quite chilly, thereby, but once we started walking…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s pretty rural in this zone, which – I’m told – is the Casselman River Valley. Dairy farms, agricultural fields, highways. That’s the service road of US 219 pictured above, with the main road riding on top of those ramps at top left. It’s right here, if you’re curious or want to take a look around on Google Maps or something. Before you say it, I’ve been to the middle of nowhere – which is in Northern Arizona – and this ain’t it.
We were on our way to other locales, but one such as myself is always drawn to these sorts of places. It’s a liminal space! It’s also 101 feet off the ground, so ‘view.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, a CSX freight train was heading… north?… while I was still within throwing distance of the tracks. Recently, another friend (who is coincidentally the Brother of the guy I was hanging out with on this day), told me that I’ve become a railfan.
My answer to that one was that I no longer have tugboats. What do you all say? Have I transcended to a higher level of nerdom? Too much with the train stuff?
To be honest, I enjoy the challenge of shooting something that’s the size of multiple blocks of houses and moving along at 35mph through less than ideal lighting conditions. T’aint all that easy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We proceeded to walk the 1,908 foot span of the Salisbury Viaduct. My friend got busy with his camera in an old grave yard on the other side, whereas I became transfixed by a small dairy farm and what Our Lady of the Pentacle might call ‘Moo Cows.’
We had other places to get to on this day trip and a quick half mile walk back to the MOP, in the crisp winter air, was enacted.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This spot is 115 miles from Pittsburgh, and 218 miles from Washington D.C. It kisses up against the Western Panhandle of Maryland, at its border with West Virginia. It was also very, very chilly.
Tomorrow, the Mason Dixon is crossed, and Western Maryland visited.
“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 