Courtesy of the O. Winston Link Museum

Courtesy of the O. Winston Link Museum

Courtesy of the O. Winston Link Museum

Courtesy of the O. Winston Link Museum

The O. Winston Link Museum is located in the restored Norfolk & Western Railway passenger station on Shenandoah Avenue in downtown Roanoke, VA. The museum opened on 10th January 2004, and is owned and operated by the Historical Society of Western Virginia.

Ogle Winston Link was born in 1914 and is best known for his black and white photographs of the last days of steam on the Norfolk & Western Railway, but he also made sound recordings of trains, which he released as Sounds of Steam Railroading on a set of six gramophone records, and produced commercial photographs of a variety of other subjects. He made a cameo appearance as a locomotive engineer in the 1999 film October Sky, and was actively involved in planning a museum of his work when he died of a heart attack in January 2001.

Note: The photographs made by Link on this page are copyright of the O. Winston Link Museum. They are low-resolution display images only and do not link to larger images.

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The museum entrance is on the east side of the main entrance hall.

Related links:

www.linkmuseum.org

www.maps.google.com

www.spikesys.com/Trains/owlink.html

Report a broken link or suggest a new one.

There are three main books of Link’s photographs of steam: The Last Steam Railroad in America, published by Abrams in 1995 and 2000, Steam, Steel & Stars, published by Abrams in 1987 and every few years subsequently, and Night Trick, a catalogue from the Photographers Gallery published in 1983 (click on the cover of each book to search for it on Bookfinder.com).

Planning of the station building began in 1941, but went on hold because of WWII. In 1945, Allmon Fordyce, of Raymond Loewy and Associates, produced updated plans for the building but, because of material shortages following the war, building work did not start until early 1948. The station opened on 1st April 1949.

Internally, the building has been quite beautifully restored to reflect the original modernist styling. This view is of the reception desk in the entrance hall.

Another view across the main entrance hall. The ticket desk was originally located at the present reception desk.

The Raymond Loewy Museum is also located in the station building. Loewy was an influential 20th century designer, responsible for a number of locomotive streamlinings.

Behind the reception desk, opposite a set of large plate glass windows overlooking what was once the concourse and passenger platforms, is a 7½” gauge model of Norfolk & Western A class #1218 built by Val Bragg of Toledo, OH, between 1980 and 1989. The locomotive and tender are 15’ long and weigh c.1,500 lbs.

The schedule board above the model has been set to 3rd June 1956, the date on which O. Winston Link took a self portrait photograph as a traveller next to the board.

The original #1218 is a simple articulated 2-6-6-4 steam locomotive, built by the Norfolk & Western Roanoke Shops in 1943. It is preserved at the nearby Virginia Museum of Transportation (you can see photographs of it on the Virginia Museum of Transportation page of this website).

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, after graduating from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn with a degree in civil engineering in 1937, Link worked for the public relations firm of Carl Byoir and Associates. During WWII, he worked for the Airborne Instruments Laboratory, part of Columbia University and, after the war, established his own studio in New York City, with clients including Goodrich, Alcoa and Texaco.

It was while working on an industrial photography commission in 1955 in Staunton, VA, that Link forged his attachment to the Norfolk & Western Railway, then one of the few Class 1 railroads yet to make wholesale transition from steam to diesel. He took his first night photograph on 21st January 1955 in Waynesboro, VA.

A banner showing Link in an archetypal poses hangs beside the entrance to the gift shop, which was originally the station cafeteria.

Although entirely self-financed, Link's work was encouraged and facilitated by N&W officials, from President Robert Hall Smith down to locomotive engineers who helped set up some of his shots. In fact, his photographs were always carefully set up, and generally involved a significant quantity of equipment. As a result, often with an assistant, Link had to haul bulky electrical relays, cables and lamps into place and wire them up, although the evidence of this equipment and the preparation involved are never revealed in his final shots.

Train No.2 at Waynesboro, Virginia (streamlined 4-8-2 K2a #130) had all the hallmarks of his later photography: using an array of flash bulbs to create a “natural” looking light at night, capturing an object moving at speed while maintaining a deep focal length. However, three months later, he returned and reshot the scene, illuminating the outside of the footwalk stairwell, lighting the waiting room, placing more light on the exposed side of the locomotive, and adding people on the platform.

Link made about twenty visits to various parts of the railroad until 1960, by which time he had accumulated some 2,400 negatives.

Although he is best known for his photographs of steam locomotives, Link also took many photographs of the operating crews, hostlers, shop workers, brakemen, postal clerks, platform and station staff. For Link, these people were integral to the operation of the Norfolk & Western.

For me, shots like Buck Stewart, capture the “heart” of the railroad: the men and women who kept it moving every day of the year.

Stewart was the train announcer at Roanoke station, and was nearing the end of his career in August 1956 when Link took this photograph. According to Link, his voice was “a combination of gravel and southern drawl”, but he still managed to overcome the din of passengers and trains in the echoing space of the station building(Thomas H. Garver,The Last Steam Railroad in America, Abrams, 2000, p.12).

Link’s photographs in the Roanoke Shops and marshalling yards provide a detailed, masterful and fascinating insight into the day to day workings of a major Class 1 Railroad towards the end of its steam operations

In this shot of Norfolk and Western’s East Roanoke Shops, two cranes are lowering the cab, firebox, boiler and rear high pressure cylinders and drive wheels onto the front low pressure engine of Y6-b #2180. This was called “wheeling”, and formed part of the roughly 5-yearly major overhaul every N&W steam locomotive underwent  (Thomas H. Garver,The Last Steam Railroad in America, Abrams, 2000, p.27).

#2180 was a “compound” articulated 2-8-8-2 locomotive, which was built in 1949 at the Roanoke Shops. No Y6-b class locomotives have survived, but you can see some photographs of Y6-a #2156 on the St. Louis Museum of Transportation page of this website.

Hot Shot Eastbound at the Iaeger Drive In taken on 2nd August 1956, is perhaps Link’s best known photograph. He used 43 flash bulbs to capture A class #1242 hauling Time Freight #78 eastbound on the Pocahontas Division. It is a carefully composed shot: the couple in the foreground, Willie Allen and Dorothy Christian, sit in Link’s 1952 Buick convertible. The movie on screen is 1955’s Battle Taxi.

Link published photographs like these in Trains magazine, as well as many other publications in the 1950s, and a travelling exhibition in 1983 brought his work to a more mainstream audience.

Opposite the museum on Shenandoah Avenue is Hotel Roanoke, built in the mock Tudor style to resemble an old English inn by the N&W Railroad in 1882. It was styled to be in keeping with the original N&W Union Station, on the site of the current passenger station, as well as with the General Office Building nearby. The hotel became a centre of social life in the city, as well as being used by N&W for many corporate events over the years.

Originally only 34 rooms in size, it underwent regular remodelling, although always remaining true to the original styling. By 1989, it had grown to 384 rooms, at which time the hotel closed and N&W donated the building to Virginia Tech. Following complete renovation, and the addition of a conference centre, it reopened in 1995.

The hotel was added to the Virginia Landmarks Registry in 1995 and the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

Visiting the hotel is a fine way to end a day of sightseeing in Roanoke. And don’t forget to visit the Virginia Museum of Transportation just a few blocks away (you can see some photographs from the museum  on this website).

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