Posts tagged: Steam Engines (Photo courtesy O. Winston Link
Museum, Roanoke, Virginia) Once you see one of his photographs,
you never forget it. Inky darkness is frosted and silvered by
pools of light. People and places, most in small towns in rural
Virginia, are frozen in the moment. And always, dominating the
scene in sometimes startling ways, is the presence of a massive
engine, billowing a plume of smoke and steam. O. Winston Link
was born in Brooklyn, New York, 1914 and like most boys of his
time, he had a fascination for the big steam engines that roared
down the tracks through small towns and big cities across the
United States. But it wasn’t until after World War II that he
found an outlet for that fascination. While on an industrial
photography assignment in Staunton, Virginia, Link traveled to
Waynesboro to take photos of the Norfolk & Western Railway steam
engines, the only railroad still running steam engines at that
time. For the next five years he would spend more than $25,000
of his own money a