You mean like the same municipalities who once thought it was a swell idea to build combined sewer systems so that everytime it rains, the pipes get flushed out real good? [xx(]
I’m glad I got some good photo suggestions, because otherwise this thread has turned to …
[;)]
The Connellsville area would likely be the area that I would find most interesting, but as we learned in the other thread, your itinerary is pretty much already set, and you just want photo ops that fit into your program, so I didn’t even bother bringing it up.
The street car graveyard in Winber PA would be a “must see” for me, as well, But it’s likely too far out of your way, also.
CO, I very much appreciate the input. But I’m pretty sure that the Carrie furnaces are as far as we’ll get out of town. There’s a lot we want to see and do in the city, and we’ll only have a few days. (Plus, I’d prefer not to have to rent a car there, as we already have car$ in two other place$ lined up. From what I can tell, Pittsburgh has good public transportation.)
I always get melancholy when I go to Pittsburgh. I was first there in the early 70s and to see all the vacant land that used to be steel mills and railroad yards is depressing. I know time moves on, but that doesn’t mean that you have to like it…
As a kid my family lived in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park, however, both sides of my family called Baltimore home and as such there were numerous trips on the B&O from Pittsburgh to Baltimore and return. The normal trip was to leave Pittsbugh in the evening on #10 and witness the steel mills light shows as the train followed the river from Pittburgh to McKeesport; our return trip from Baltimore would be on #9 arriving in the evening and witnessing the light show. While some trips were made during daylight hours - you never got the impact of the the light show in daylight. Night time it was better than any laser light show of the 21st Century.
I also recall the first place ‘pizza’ was discovered - a place on PA-51 across the street from a slag pile that was 100 or more feet high. Watching the steel mill’s ‘slag train’ operating on the top ‘rim’ of the pile and dumping the slag over the edge.
Good area to eat and catch a train …
That looks great. What railroad is that? NS?
Station Square is the former P&LE Station and is on CSX.
Station Square has a great restaurant called the Grand Concourse. It’s owned by Chuck Muer, a Detroit tradition. It’s a steak/seafood place. They also own the Gandy Dancer in the old Ann Arbor Michigan Central station and the River Crab in St. Clair, MI overlooking the St Clair River and the lakeboats.
When I was a kid we traveled a lot between Dallas and New Orleans. The oil refineries at night were quite a show. I loved seeing them.
Best light show from a steel mill is when slag is being dumped. Before Wisconsin Steel Works was shut down in 1980, about a dozen slag thimbles would be periodically shoved by a CWP switcher to the dumping hill just north of 104th Street. There were some spots on the street where you could see the molten slag flowing with the sky well lit. The neighborhood just east of the hill was known as Slag Valley.
I’m a Western Pennsylvania kid. My mom is from the area and I have family up and down the Allegheny River valley. We moved back to Pennsylvania when I was 4 and I lived there from 1986 to 2010, aside from four years in Erie and State College. My memories go back far enough to have seen a high hood Conrail unit on the now gone Butler Branch and saw B&LE F7s on a late season ore train (must have been 1988 or 1989).
I’ve been past that bridge hundreds of times. Never seen a train on it. It is my White Whale.