Mouse over small images for large image and comments.
A catwalk spanning three mooring cells takes you out into the Mongahela River to afford a panoramic view of the whole property. As you walk out towards the little blue shed, the site is behind you to your left and the Hot Metal Bridge is to your right.
This one looks like two approaches to the same problem. For the moment, I'd have to bet on that strong looking cable. In the long run, I'm not so sure.
One of two railroad bridges, side by side. This one is no longer in use, the tracks having been torn up. The one next to it (not shown) is still in regular use.
Not all the tracks through the property are dysfunctional. CSX runs trains through several times a day. There are sidings, as here, where coal cars might be parked, sometimes for extended periods. Some of the engines are robotic, so you can't count on a warning blast from the train whistle if you get or park too close to the track.
I wish I knew for sure what these two delightful objects are. They are on the ground in the roundhouse area. I believe they are floats such as are used in carburetors - or toilets, for that matter. It looks like they have water lines from floating. Just a guess.
This image depicts part of an extended structure on an east-west axis at the north end of the property, fronting on 2nd Avenue. I'm still looking into this one. If you can identify it, please let me know.
Looking down at the waters of the Monongahela River from atop one of the innumerable barge anchorage structures that are known as "mooring cells." This and other cells at the J&L site are accessed by interconnecting metal catwalks.
A small crane extends over a catwalk that runs along the edge of the Monongahela River.
Taken from a mooring cell in the river, most of the present site can be observed. To the left of the red crane is the roundhouse and associated buildings. The large building in the center is the rolling mill and the small blue building at the far right is the water intake.
"Good Bye." A poignant farewell above a mooring cell left by departing employees to passing river traffic on the Monongahela. The top of the rolling mill is seen in the background.
I love all these textures. Pictured is track, ties, spikes, catwalk grates and rubber and tar coverings from on top of the turntable at the roundhouse.
From the Monongahela Interconnecting RR employee locker room. It feels like they're going to walk back into the room any minute. Allow me to project: there's a lot of anger here, too. They left many things behind like they were unwelcome bad memories: boots, coats, hard hats. A sad place.
This is one of the small brick buildings near the roundhouse. I couldn't resist the radial symmetry, extending from top right to lower left.
This image speaks to what its like to have the run of this place while holding a camera. Almost everywhere one looks, something seems to audition for the camera's attention. Here, I'd sat down on the lower steps of an external staircase when this pull-chain for an overhead light looked me in the eye. This place positively flirts with you.
The arrow points the way to what was the "Receiving" area on the mill site. However, in the midst of desolation it appears to point, perhaps appropriately, to the church in the background, with the sign below providing an esoteric reference to the hymnal.
This stuff, please let me know if you can identify it, is one of those super aggressive invaders of empty spaces. This one is growing at the end of an abandoned railroad bridge, also pictured on this page, where there used to be ties and track. Sometimes its pretty but mostly pretty ugly, in my opinion.
Shown here is the place where a chain may be fitted so that this large, heavy plate can be picked up and put into a desired position. The background, seen through the opening was too good to pass up.
At the east end of the property, at the bottom of Hazelwood Avenue, many smaller buildings and repair facilities for the rail cars that worked the coke oven batteries are now gone, brought down by the blades of tractors and ground up by their steel treads: an unseemly irony. All this and the blacktop surface of parking lots for employees constitute the rubble that is already being quietly reclaimed by nature.
Scattered about the place where the mill stood are remnants of machines and devices whose purposes, mysterious to the uninitiated, are now being worked on by the elements. Some of them are reduced thereby to rusted beautiful things as delicate as a flower's petals.
In hurried strokes, an acetylene torch cut this pipe even with the ground, just outside the east end of the rolling mill building. I think this must have been depressing work as, little by little, this vast place was being reduced to pieces and sold for scrap or, worse, just left to rot.
