A magnificent day in Philadelphia

Transr · June 1, 2010, 1:38am

Appearances from CSX and NS can be quite sporadic through the City of Philadelphia so I decided to take a walk over to the site of the planned Penn Park and walked over the multiple tracks leading from Amtrak’s 30th Street Station. Here’s Amtrak ACELA #2035 accelerating out of Philadelphia with it’s modern and ever changing skyline as backdrop. Got lucky (finally) with a better then SImpson’s sky!

Amtrak ACELA against a Philly skyline!

Hope you enjoy the view - thanks for looking!

/Mitch

Paul_D_North_Jr · June 1, 2010, 8:37am

Nice photo, Mitch. You definitely got lucky with the lighting, sky, and subject. Thanks for sharing !

Taken from the South St. bridge - is the reconstruction/ replacement done yet ? - looking northeast, I believe, along the fomer PRR electrified main. That’s I-76/ Schuylkill Expressway on the right.

Actually, I’m more interested in the M-O-W equipment on the left than the blue and silver ‘worm’. It looks like a ballast cleaner, or maybe a scrap or an ‘Other Track Material’ - spikes, tie plates, anchors, bolts, joint bars, etc. - pick-up machine. Note the broad dark-gray conveyor belt, and the 2 white tanks - perhaps for a water spray to keep the dust down - and the several cars behind to hold what’s picked-up. This track often seems to have MOW equipment on it - cars with concrete ties, ballast hoppers, etc. Nest time I’m in Philly with some spare time I’ll wander over that way, find a place to park (good luck with that

wanswheel · June 1, 2010, 10:59am

Great skyline but where is City Hall? It used to be tall.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/det/4a10000/4a12000/4a12500/4a12586v.jpg

http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/e5ca75f1518f3c33_large

Mike

Transr · June 1, 2010, 12:58pm

Thanks Paul, Mike!

The photo is actually from a pedestrian walkway built just North of the still unfinished South Street bridge. You can park near the old baseball field below by where the post office parking lot used to be located.

As for City Hall - cool shots. It’s still visible but in order to see it you need to view from a Northern angle.

Phillly Skyline - Eastern View

/Mitch

Paul_D_North_Jr · June 1, 2010, 1:17pm

What Mike/ wanswheel may be referring to - and as also noted by John West in the comments below the 2nd photo that Mitch linked just above - is that there used to be a rule - written or unwritten, opinions vary - that no building could be higher than the hat of William Penn - the founder of Pennsylvania - a statue of whom is on top of City Hall. Sometime around 1980 that rule was abrogated for certain Center City buildings to enable the city to move into the late 20th century by allowing supposedly more economic ratios of building height to land area. In Mitch’s photo linked in the Original Post, the One Liberty Place building by Rouse & Associates - which is the rightmost tall blue building, with a very stubby antenna - was the first one to go higher than Billy Penn’s chapeau. City Hall and Penn are just about directly behind it.

Mitch, I actually like the 2nd photo better - the converging cloud pattern creates a dynamic that draws the eye in, but the train, road, and river are all running perpendicular to them. The match between the train and cloud colors seems more evident here. Also City Hall and William Penn on top are just barely visible at the far end of the ‘alley’ between the 2 rows of taller buildings - about halfway up the height of the tallest ComCast building on the left side.

Thanks for sharing this one, too. Philly rarely looks so good and modern as with the Acela taking off past the cars that will soon be stuck on the ‘Sure-Kill Crawlway’.

Paul North.

wanswheel · June 1, 2010, 5:09pm

Thank you. Here’s some cool views high at City Hall.

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=171374

Mike

Anonymous · June 1, 2010, 5:56pm

Mike (wanswheel), great photos. They look like the way photos used to look. I intensely dislike the current rage to use telephoto lenses to take train pictures. The photo of the UP yard on the cover of the July 2010 issue of trains shows cars 10 feet wide and only 5 feet long or maybe 2. Terrible, just simply terrible; there is no suggestion of depth or distance.

The photos from the tower provide almost a map like view of the city. True, some foreshortening exists, but seems to be much more normal than when a telephoto lens is used.

Guess I’m getting old and crotchety!

Art

Anonymous · June 1, 2010, 6:04pm

Didn’t mean to overlook Mitch’s (Transr) pictures; bridges look like bridges and cars look like cars. Terrific shots.

Art

Transr · June 1, 2010, 6:48pm

Nice shots, Mike! Unfortunately, the city of Philadelphia limits trips to the observation deck to tourist and those residents that play hooky from work. No Sat or Sunday hours, at least that was the case in the past. The Comcast building was to have an observation deck - first skyscraper in the city (aside from City Hall) that would’ve but they cancelled those plans. I’m always amazed by that. We must be the only major city in the US without an observation deck within a skyscraper. /Mitch

Paul_D_North_Jr · June 1, 2010, 9:04pm

Wow - very nice - thanks for sharing. In the 10th photo down, on each side of the wedge-shaped mirror-like building can be seen bits and pieces of the 30th Street Station complex, including the coach yard and freight “High Line”, etc. On the left below is the 4 (?) track ex-PRR SEPTA commuter line surfacing from Suburban Station and then crossing the Schuylkill River to 30th Street. Thanks again. - Paul North.