Posts Tagged ‘West End Bridge’
316,800 inch long scuttle, part 1
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has finally managed to break the pernicious five mile walking threshold which has been actively blocking my activity since September of last year, due to the broken left ankle and dislocated foot incident. I know that five miles – or 316,800 inches – sounds like no big deal, and normally I’d be the first one to say so, but it’s taken me months of physical therapy and self guided exercise to get here.
So, huzzah.
The endeavor began when I walked the hill which I live at the bottom of on up to the T light Rail station, here in Pittsburgh’s Boro of Dormont. I did take a picture of the train I actually rode in on, but the shot above is of a train set heading in the other direction made for a better opening shot.
Lighting, yo, lighting.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The T was ridden to its terminal stop, which is directly across the street from the actual center of the Pittsburgh universe – Acrisure (Heinz) stadium. On this walk, I was still consciously avoiding uneven or angled paths, as such terrain still gives me a bit of trouble. Instead, I decided to try and work a few flights of stairs into the equation to spice things up.
As I’ve mentioned, a bit of PTSD seems to be floating around in the old Gulliver these days, which is centered around stairs.
Given that the ankle shattering occurred while I was walking down a set of steps it’s fairly understandable, but when confronted with a set of steps these days I freeze up a little bit and get overly cautious. This set of psychological reactions actually endanger me while negotiating a set of stairs, which causes me to move stiffly, in an almost robotic manner, and sets my nervous side on fire.
I’ll get past this because I have to. My whole life has been ‘have to.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, the T station has escalators, which don’t fill me with dread despite being stairs and all the horror stories my pal Hank the Elevator Guy has told me about these devices. Industrial meat grinders use the same design, he opines.
I exited the station and headed north west. I’ve been carrying a little compass with me these days, and like to check in on the cardinal directions periodically to maintain my bearings. Pittsburgh is still very much a foreign place to me, even after a couple of years here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Passing by an abandoned building along the way, one was amused by the ‘SPQR’ graffiti. If you don’t know what that means, you should read more, specifically the classics of the pre modern era. The decline of the Roman Republic is very much a to[ic you should be familiar with these days.
Edward Gibbon… read Gibbon. Marius and Sulla are next, for us, and that’s where it gets bloody. Caesar is absolutely coming, but is still a few decades away. It will be very exciting for people to watch on tv, all this. They will feel things… indignation, fear, anger, pride… all of the seven deadlies. They will microwave burritos and watch.
Me, I’m just walking here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The major crossing over water for the day was Pittsburgh’s West End Bridge. It crosses the Ohio River, roughly at the waterway’s point of navigable origin where the admixture of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers occurs. It’s yellow.
The specific yellow is a color called ‘Aztec Gold,’ which – if memory serves – is manufactured by Pittsburghs own ‘PPG’ or Pittsburgh Plate Glass.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ankle was behaving itself. I felt no clicking or the sensation of cords being pulled in my heel or on the top of the foot. I was consciously altering my pace and ‘leaning in’ while walking. A couple of times my brain sent orders down the spine for the legs to move as they normally would have prior to all this trouble. I moved quickly!
Couldn’t sustain it for more than a couple of city blocks at a time, but your humble narrator managed to scuttle along a great deal faster and more surely than at anytime in the last six months.
Top of the world, ma, top of the world.
Back tomorrow with more.
“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.
Going home empty
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A last triad of images, from a rather unproductive afternoon, but given that in this post-broken ankle interval, I’m vaingloriously trying to maintain a daily schedule here in the absolute trough of a Pittsburgh winter, it’s the best I could do. Norfolk Southern let me down, there should be trains moving around in the shot above. Blast!
I was prepared, by the way. I had a radio scanner in my camera bag and everything, but no activity. Thwarted!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I was cold and bored, so for some reason this vine imprisoned hunk of cement on the rail bridge caught my eye. After about a half hour or so of waiting around, I limped over to the Mobile Oppression Platform (a Toyota) and fired the engine up.
With the exceptions of the days I go to ‘PT’ or ‘physical therapy’ and the day directly following one of the sessions when sore, I’m beginning to feel ok most of the time, regarding the injury. The PT sessions involve a lot of targeted exercises which are coached directly by the therapist. These include some time on a leg press, an interval on a sort of bike, stretches, and there’s a few things they have me doing which just look ridiculous.
At least they do when I perform them, as I’m fairly comical to watch.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The nose of the MOP was pointed towards home. This time around, I opted to use the West End Bridge, which I’ve mentioned several times before in connection with walking rather than driving over it.
You’ve got pretty good views from this bridge, which hangs over the headwaters of the Ohio River. 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.
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.
“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.
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.
“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.
‘Effin Pittsburgh, yo
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just as I arrived at a series of ‘Bernie Holes,’ found in the fencing on Pittsburgh’s West End Bridge which overlook the CSX tracks along the Ohio River, a train set appeared. The locomotive engine was CSX #6348, an SD40-2 type built by General Motor’s Electro Motive Division. That’s literally all I can tell you about the thing, as I continue to refuse to ‘nerd out’ about trains.
Really, I just like taking pictures of the things, which I find fairly challenging. Something moving at 20-40 mph that’s bigger than most houses, which just sort of randomly appears… that’s a difficult photo. I guess I’ve been preparing for this sort of scenario with all of those subway posts I used to do back in LIC for a while now.
BTW- How’s that all that going these days, New Yorkers? I’ve seen the news about the Governor sending the National Guard in. Tell me in the comments, I’d love some ‘personal experience’ perspectives on the presence of long barrel military guns being brandished about down below.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This shot looks back along the West End Bridge span I’d just walked. This isn’t a hard walk at all, I’d mention, but driving over this bridge is actually fairly challenging. Narrow – in the extreme – travel lanes, and you have to be in the correct lane for your destination on the other side, I’d offer. The amount of gouging into and transferred auto paint on the bridge’s concrete sections speaks to the driving challenge. Tight fit, this.
Also, as a note… ‘Bernie Holes’… are gaps found in fencing that would otherwise occlude a desirable point of view. Some of these are surveyor’s holes, which are discernible by the fact that the fencing was cut with a power tool. My old friend Bernie Ente, who introduced me to the Newtown Creek community and acted as a mentor when I first turned up on the creek, had created a series of these apertures all over Western Queens. He made me privy to many of their locations, and long have I thereby referred to them as ‘Bernie Holes,’ although the ones here in Pittsburgh were obviously not created by him. They do use his preferred pry bar and spring powered vise grip methodology, however.
For those of you reading this who were members of ‘Team Bernie’, hello again old friends.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The train lumbered along, and the towboats were changing shifts. This one looks up the Ohio towards the Monongahela River. The plan at this point was to walk eastwards, in order to get back to a T station and home to HQ after my short walk.
Simple pathway, this. After debarking the bridge, I’d walk about a half mile, where the entrance to the Three Rivers Heritage Trail is found. An easy walk is found on the trail, which offers quite photogenic sets of circumstance along the way. This has become one of favorite paths here in Pittsburgh. By ‘easy,’ I mean flat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, something about this abandoned automotive service building, constructed of corrugated steel, intrigued me. The moss on the roof was calling, I guess. Imagine that, this has to be the most hostile environments that a plant might nestle into. Griddle hot in the summer, undertaker’s slab cold in the winter. Nature always wins.
One negotiated his way down a couple of flights of stairs from the West End Bridge, whereupon I needed to find a place to take a tinkle. Another sign of age which I’ve had to deal with – other than the various aches and pains which I bitch about endlessly – is that as soon as I start exercising the kidneys kick into high gear. This is a good thing, obviously, but it gets a bit problematic when you are walking over a bridge or something.
Luckily, right alongside that steel building pictured above is a fairly private area with lots of shrubbery. These plants were watered, thereby, with my personal liquor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After obliging these biological imperatives, one continued along with the photowalk. The view was pretty epic from my pee spot, as it turned out, and I waited around to see if another train might be fixing to cross my lens but there was no such luck.
I hate ‘hanging around’ and waiting for something to occur. It’s a ‘photowalk,’ not a ‘photo stand around and wait,’ after all.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One last look back at the West End Bridge, and then to the east did a humble narrator scuttle, which will be described in a subsequent missive.
As a note – I’m still re-listening to the History of Rome podcast mentioned last week, and I’m pretty sure that the story of Marius and Sulla was what was being discussed on this afternoon. It’s a very long podcast, by the way, and highly recommended. Caesar is coming.
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.
