Posts Tagged ‘railroad’
End of scuttle, and Hey Now!
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A fairly long walk through Pittsburgh found a humble narrator in need of a quick meal, and while sitting in front of a pizzeria on Pittsburgh’s East Carson Street while eating a slice and drinking a Gatorade, a Pittsburgh Fire Department’s fire engine hurtled past.
Can’t resist.
My plan for the remainder of the day involved that slice of pizza forming a late lunch/early dinner, and then I’d down a pint or two of beer at that brewery I often visit, alongside the CSX train tracks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the way, I found myself admiring the simplicity of some of the older residential structures nearby. The people who originally inhabited this area were mill workers, and suffice to say that the built environment is quite ‘humble’ around this zone.
That pizza got me moving again. Amazing what a bit of fat and carbohydrate does for a wandering narrator’s flagging energy level.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You just can’t ignore it when a composition like the one above appears in front of you, you just cannot.
I arrived at the brewery, ‘inspected the porcelain,’ and then bought myself a beer. One had been in constant movement for about six hours, with an hour of sitting down at the library lecture right in the middle of that.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX #990 appeared, which rounded out my scuttle, and offered a logical juncture wherein I could ‘hang my hat’ and say ‘that was a day.’
I was actually on my second beer when they showed up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I slurped down the last of my glass of suds, and paid the tab within.
Another inspection of the porcelain, and then I was back in motion. One was physically tired in a muscular rather than psychological sense, and it felt like my back and legs definitely had a decent workout. The meal and the drinks had filled me with carbohydrates so I was ready to roll again.
The camera straps were arranged, the heavy backpack slung across my horrific frame, and then things were leaned into for the final movement.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Within a few minutes of walking, I was soon at a T light rail station called ‘Station Square,’ whereupon my chariot arrived.
Back next week with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Slogging south, and a Hey Now!
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Something horrible must have happened on one of those highway ramps, as a big cloud of white steam, or smoke, or dust, suddenly drifted in front of the camera here in Pittsburgh.
Your humble narrator was nearing the end of a long walk, and my energy levels were flagging.
This scuttle ended up being around eleven miles, all told. Started up on ‘The Bluff,’ included a section of the Uptown Neighborhood, and then I attended a lecture at a library in Squirrel Hill after a quick cab ride. After the lecture, I started walking towards the South Side neighborhood, in pursuance of eventually accessing the T Light Rail, for my ride back to HQ in Dormont.
All caught up?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
God help me, but I do love this point of view.
Getting to this POV is kind of harrowing, but I’ve always talked about my love of photographing the massing shapes of highways, with their elevated ramps. The path involves following that sidewalk on the right side of the shot to the Birmingham Bridge over the Monongahela River. Have to get out here at night sometime.
As far as I’ve been able to work it out, this complex of ramps and highways is more or less where the J & L steel mill used to be found.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a lot of construction activity going on in the section of Uptown which it touches the Birmingham Bridge, which makes the scuttling a bit difficult as I need to vouchsafe my still gamey left ankle.
See? haven’t mentioned it in a while!
Here’s the catch up – it low grade hurts all the time, and I know when it’s going to rain as my ‘ankleometer’ goes off (due to arthritis). Fun!
Saying that, I’m more or less able to get around and do what I want to again, so… win?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the southern side of the bridge, there’s a point of view over the CSX Pittsburgh Subdivision’s Tracks, and I hung around a few minutes in the hope that…
Hey Now! (I literally say that out loud when a train appears)
– photo by Mitch Waxman
CSX #3174, which is some sort of train.
I’ve been trying to call out the make/model of these things, and figure out their stories. I’m not a railfan, I just like taking pictures of trains, and I just didn’t feel like deep diving for this trio of shots as it’s kind of surface level and fairly disingenuous to pretend that I care about this thing being rebuilt in some recent year. I feel like it’s offensive to actual railfans trying to speak intelligently about their area of expertise.
#3174 was heading easterly, and hauling a mixed up series of cargo cars.
Personally, I hate it when some newbie starts telling me about something I ‘nerd out’ about – comic books or sci-fi stuff which they’ve just discovered, which have the status of religious texts for me. I try to keep that resentment of the uninitiated newbie in mind, regarding the world inhabited by the railfans.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My internal fuel tanks were empty by this part of the day, and a not insignificant mental effort to ‘keep going,’ not punk out by calling a cab, was underway.
It was just a few more miles… keep going… you’ll rest when you’re dead… go… go… go…
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.
What could possibly go wrong? Pfft…
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bridgeville, PA., well, that’s a community which can be found within the South Hills region of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area.
Historically, Bridgeville’s economy was centered around coal mining, during the late 19th and first few decades of the 20th centuries.
Basically; Boom and bust, entrepreneur and robber baron, monopoly and trust, abandonment and dissolution. Usual story.
The coal people left behind a huge environmental mess, and it’s pretty routine to observe the waterways in this part of Pennsylvania running with bright orange water, suggesting that it’s runoff from abandoned mines that’s causing the pollution. The orange coloration is caused by dissolved metals, notably pyrites and iron, in the ground water. In prior mentions of Bridegville, I’ve mentioned the vast taxpayer funded environmental remediation efforts at work in the area.
Our Lady of the Pentacle has been taking a class in Bridgeville – and apparently – so have I. While she’s bene inside ‘a-learning,’ I’ve been wandering the streets, which are my classroom.
I recently spotted this charming feature, pictured above, which seems to be an open to the atmosphere coal mine portal. Lovely.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Now that I sort of know what to look for, it’s everywhere.
Conversation with the locals reveal that it’s only been a generation or two since mine work was a common experience, for men in particular. My dad used to tell me that you could pick up non-union day work along the waterfront in South Brooklyn, unloading ships and loading trucks, back in the 40’s and 50’s. Wonder if it was the same sort of situation here, but with coal instead of maritime trade goods?
I’ve read that child labor was pretty common in the mines, as a note.
One was standing along the fence lines of a large industrial site, which in modernity hosts several businesses, and that’s where I spotted that chunk of rusting machinery pictured above.
That thingie looks like the remains of, to me at least, a ‘Coal Tipple.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The older structures at this industrial park display a characteristic masonry motif that one has learned to associate with the Pittsburgh Coal Company, a historical monopolist trust that was controlled by the Mellon Family.
Hey… where do you think that the extra money to start a university, and then a bank, came from for these Captains of Industry? They had poor people dig treasure out of the ground for them on 12 hour shifts, employed child labor, and colluded with oligarchal colleagues like Henry Clay Frick – who were the end customers for the coal at the steel mills – and with whom they conspired to set wages and prices – so everyone felt great about the whole affair, while drinking french wine in their baronial mansions, before moving to Manhattan. When the coal seam sputtered out, the trust moved on, leaving behind a real mess.
Captains of industry, right? Not ‘Robber Barons,’ right? America was great, back then, right? Which side are you on, kid? Bah!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Our Lady’s class was scheduled to last an hour, so I had a somewhat limited amount of time available to me to wander about with the camera.
An interesting bit of trivia about this particular area, transmitted to me by the folks who were conducting Our Lady’s class (they are located within this complex), is that this section of Bridgeville seems to have been rich in deposits of Vanadium. So much so that a nearby road is dubbed ‘Vanadium Road,’ and that tenants in these industrial buildings need to set up specialized monitors and ventilation systems within, as the subterrene deposits of Vanadium produce radioactive gas, and the depositional strata associated with the element seems to include the compounds that produce Radon, with all of this reactivity happening deep down within the Appalachian Layer Cake forming the ground hereabouts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Hey Now! That’s Wheeling & Lake Erie #6986 hurtling by.
Above and just beyond these tracks is a bus depot and maintenance garage. Below them is that open coal mine portal. Sigh…
The really annoying part of this scene is what they were hauling.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Don’t know if the tankers were full, but they were pulling a long train of LNG tankers through a densely populated area. I’ve used the term ‘bomb train’ before, but it’s alarmist and somewhat disingenuous.
Let’s just say that if conditions were just right when said conditions went perfectly wrong, and any single of those tanker cars were to derail and became punctured… that would make the news. Remember East Palestine in Ohio, where a train went boom?
There’s a lot of ‘horizontal fracturing’ or ‘fracking’ oil company activity around these parts. Major part of the local and national economies, it is. Future generations will hate us for this, and talk about this industry in the manner which I do, regarding coal.
Back tomorrow with something different.
“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.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 