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Widdershins at Carrie Furnace

Tuesday – photo by Mitch Waxman The Rivers of Steel outfit, over in Pittsburgh’s Swissvale section, recently announced a couple of opportunities to visit the Carrie Furnace site for participating in a ‘photo safari.’ It cost me $35 to gain entry to this event, which I gladly forked over. A quick half hour drive from HQ ensued, early on a Sunday morning, and soon I was wearing a hard hat and…

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Around and around

Monday – photo by Mitch Waxman When a humble narrator finds himself driving around Pittsburgh, the camera is always sitting on the passenger seat, and is preset for a certain kind of capture. If i find myself sitting at a light, or have pulled over somewhere and am saying ‘wow, lookit that,’ said camera is often rudely thrust through either the Mobile Oppression Platform’s moon roof or the…

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Western Maryland Yard, in West Virginia

Friday – photo by Mitch Waxman The Patomac River flows through Maryland’s Cumberland, providing a border between it and neighboring Ridgeley in West Virginia. Driving along a local street between the two municipalities, the Google Maps navigation app on my phone was continually announcing ‘Welcome to Maryland’ followed by ‘Welcome to West Virginia’ and then ‘Welcome to Maryland’ again. One of…

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CSX Cumberland apertif

Thursday – photo by Mitch Waxman Finally, I found a point of view location for the CSX Terminal in Maryland’s city of Cumberland. Take that, jabronies. One realizes that this quest of mine sounds fairly obsessive, and I haven’t been able to get close at all to what I really want shots of (the roundhouse), but… darn it… this is the closest I’ve managed to get to the facility and I was glad of…

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Country, early morning

Wednesday – photo by Mitch Waxman That’s the Salisbury Viaduct pictured above, which used to be a rail trestle but is now a part of the Great Appalachian Passage trail. Shortly after capturing this shot I bumped into a guy who was hiking from Washington D.C. to Pittsburgh via the GAP route. Nice fellow, European accented. He had a clever accommodation regarding the carrying of his hiking and…

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Emperor’s new clothes

Tuesday – photo by Mitch Waxman Occasion recently found a humble narrator on a short road trip, and heading towards Western Maryland. Just a few miles after crossing the Mason Dixon line, I decided to take a break from the effort at the Salisbury Viaduct, and soon after walking onto the structure I heard the horn, and rumble, of an approaching locomotive. It was Amtrak, and I was lucky enough…

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Moist

Monday – photo by Mitch Waxman One has been informed by several members of those age cohorts which follow my own, that the word which forms the title of this post makes them vaguely uncomfortable. My response to this usually involves mentioning the packaging og supermarket cake mixes like Betty Crocker’s with their promises for the finished product, and then questioning them what about why this…

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Back to HQ

Friday – photo by Mitch Waxman After a long walk down a steep hill and a thousand feet of steps, my dogs were barking. Thereby, I was quite pleased when a T light rail train set arrived to ferry me back to HQ, some five miles distant. This option is pretty much going to not exist for the entire summer, which sucks, but the transit agency people are going to be reconditioning the concrete and…

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A heck of a hill

Thursday – photo by Mitch Waxman After having descended along the German Square stairs as described in prior posts, a humble narrator found himself in Pittsburgh’s South Side Flats neighborhood. This ‘zone’ is pretty urban in character, and ‘old timey’ in terms of its building stock. I’m of the belief that there’s a ‘historic district’ rule which applies to certain sections of the Flats, but as…

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Up, down, and around

Wednesday – photo by Mitch Waxman Yup… that’s the shot I was hoping for after walking down a thousand feet of steps. Norfolk Southern #1024. It’s an EMD SD70ACe model locomotive if that means anything to you. What warmed the cockles of my heart, however, was what it was hauling. Check it out. I recognize those containers, and so will longtime readers of this publication. You really never can…

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Slopes to flats

Tuesday – photo by Mitch Waxman As mentioned yesterday, a humble narrator was recently observed walking down a set of municipal steps here in Pittsburgh which are called – apparently – ‘German Square.’ I found a shot of them from 1933, on display at historicpittsburgh.org. Zillow indicates that this area is a named neighborhood which goes by German Square, and that several quite lovely homes…

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Twelve hundred steps program

Monday – photo by Mitch Waxman Famously, the City of Pittsburgh offers hundreds of flights of municipal steps for the usage of the citizenry, which aid pedestrians in navigating the challenging terrain of the place. Recent endeavor saw a humble narrator hire a taxi in order to get to the top of one of the more extreme examples of this sort of infrastructure (not the ones pictured above) and…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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Second Interruptus

Tuesday – photo by Mitch Waxman Happily, I can report that the bug which has been afflicting me has fallen, and destroyed by my mighty immune system, as buoyed up by dozens of hours of sleep. Felt like hell for about 24 hours there, this was a ‘wild eyes looking back at you from the bathroom mirror at 4 in the morning’ kind of thing. Nothing survives within me for long. My gaze causes…

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Interruptus

Monday – photo by Mitch Waxman A humble narrator is feeling a bit off today, under the weather, all that sort of stuff. Thereby a single image greets you, but hopefully regular programming will resume shortly when the physical plant returns to a predictable homeostasis. “follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle Buy a book! “In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11…