#o. winston link

[yama-bato]

O. Winston Link

NW 1350, Solitude Siding, Arcadia, Virginia 1957, printed 1987

[newloverofbeauty]

O.Winston Link: Solitude Siding, Virginia

[davidhudson]

O. Winston Link (December 16, 1914 – January 30, 2001), Train No. 17, the Birmingham Special, Moving West, Gets a Highball at Rural Retreat, Virginia, 1957.

[joeinct]

Hagerstown Meeting of N&W No.1 and 2, Photo by O. Winston Link, c. 1955

[lascitasdelashoras]

O. Winston Link

[federer7]

Solitude Siding and Train No. 2. Virginia, 1957

Photo: O. Winston Link

[henk-heijmans]

Maude Bows to the Virginia Creeper, 1950s - by O. Winston Link (1914 - 2001), American

[alightinthelantern]

O. Winston Link - Sole North bound passenger train No. 2 crossing the 125' truss over the C&O at Natural Bridge Station, VA, 1957

[sohannabarberaesque]

Postcards from Snagglepuss

So who was O. Winston Link, anyway?

O. WINSTON LINK MUSEUM, ROANOKE, VA: Outside of railfans (especially such fond of the Norfolk and Western Railway, which has long had a presence in Roanoke, one continuing in its contemporary form as Norfolk Southern) and students of photography, the name O. Winston Link (1914-2001) probably doesn't ring quite a bell.

But in the Blue Ridge country, his photography of tne Norfolk and Western Railway as it was preparing to make the transition from steam to diesel locomotion in the late 1950's is something of the stuff of legend. Especially a two-year initiative of his during 1955 and 1956 in particular, which featured plenty of night scenes of steam draped against backdrops rural, semi-urban and urban ... the sort, you might say, bound to strike the fascination of Super Snooper and Blabbermouse. Who, for some reason, decided to join our own party of vagabonds in Roanoke's former Norfolk and Western station, as houses the Roanoke Historical Museum, of which the O. Winston Link such is a part and parcel.

"It just seems particularly fascinating, Blab," Snoop could be heard remarking, "how one could situate a hotshot freight train in the background of a drive-in movie theater, with the inevitable pair of lovers kissing away in the foreground."

"And wondering what to pay the more attention to--the movie or the train," remarked I. (Which, you might like to know, was taken in the summer of 1956 in Iaeger, West Virginia.)

"It just gets me here, Snoop," Blabbermouse was quick to note on seeing a picture of a coal train passing through a small West Virginia town in the proverbial wee small hours of the night as the late shift waitress was being picked up from her shift at the local cafe. Like sentiment was directed at a nighttime wedge shot out of Luray, Virginia as the engine was preparing to take on water.

Crazy Claws was quick to chime in as well: "And you wonder how many flash bulbs he went through just to get the shot, to begin with!" (As a matter of fact, Link and his assistant, George Thom, relied on the asynchronous firing of no less than 42 #2 flashbulbs and one #0 flashbulb just to get that shot at the Iaeger drive-in. As Link himself famously explained that penchant of his for night photography in that project of N&W steam in its twilight, "I can't move the sun — and it's always in the wrong place — and I can't even move the tracks, so I had to create my own environment through lighting.")

Breathe in, then, such sentiment for times long past, bringing in a sense of moodiness in a landscape doubtless much changed. Yet it makes you wonder, especially as moi, Huck, Snoop and Blab took note of one shot of a gravity-feed gas pump at the local store in Vesuvius, Virgina as the N&W's premier overnight train, the Pocahontas, passed by at close range ... in the middle of a power outage affecting the village!

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[amalgameheteroclite]

O. Winston Link, La Ligne Principale sur la Rue Principale, Northfork, Virginie-Occidentale, 1958.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

truly lmao 2024 lambda literary award finalist wynnstannery

[yama-bato]

O. Winston Link

Untitled (from the Clouds series), circa 1950

[usedcarheaven]

[davidhudson]

O. Winston Link (December 16, 1914 – January 30, 2001), Main Line on Main Street, North Fork, West Virginia, 1958.

[joeinct]

Train 16 Leaves Williamson, Photo by O. Winston Link, 1958

[lascitasdelashoras]

o. winston link