It’s 1955 in northern Virginia. The sound of a steam engine comes chugging along, its horn bellowing through the quiet town of Staunton and into the auditory sense of O. Winston Link. The train is among the last of a dying breed of steam engines still running in the United States. Norfolk and Western Railway were making the transition to an all-diesel fleet much like the rest of the trains carrying passengers and freight across North America.
Link wasn’t always interested in trains: As a college student, Link studied engineering and began his photography career with a borrowed Kodak camera. He began photographing for a public relations firm, followed by a job documenting a new government technology to detect submarines using low-flying aircraft. After losing his job in 1945 at the end of World War II, Link was finally prepared to open a photography studio and begin his career as an independent photographer.
His first photo of a steam-run train was by pure chance. Link had been in Virginia taking photos for a client when the idea of documenting the last steam-engine rail was born. His photographic documentation of the death of the steam engine was compiled between 1955 and 1960 with an end result of 2,400 negatives.
Link was notoriously a master at setting up the scene—always posing his tangible subjects into strategic, interesting juxtapositions with the oncoming train. His high standards of perfection lead him to take many of his photographs at night, where he felt he had the most control over lighting. The techniques he used revolutionized flash technology—sometimes using upward of 43 bulbs to light a single frame.
The final collection was titled The Last Steam Railroad in America. Select prints appeared in different train publications and historical museums until finally, in 1983, the collection was made into a legitimate exhibit and has traveled around the world ever since. Recordings of the steam engines made by Link accompany the photos that were eventually made into a six-record collection titled Sounds of Steam Railroading.
Many photographs that make up the collection are renowned throughout the community of historical photography. “Hot shot eastbound at Iaeger, West Virginia” is a wildly popular print that is the result of perfect timing—a landscape of cars fills a drive-in movie theater, the couple at the end of the lot embrace in the driver’s seat while watching a filmed airplane seeming about to fly off the screen and into the steam trail left behind from the passing train.
Link’s photos admirably document the ending of an era and the transition to the modern American way of life. A gas station attendant fills a pristine 1950s car in “Sometimes electricity fails, Vesuvius, Virginia.” The couple in the car remains fixated on the feeding tube of the vehicle, all while a massive hunk of steel and steam roll on by.
The Last Steam Railroad in America was Link’s life work. In 2004, all of his rail photography was compiled and put on permanent display at the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Va. Altogether enchanting and historical, Link’s exhibit is one to be cherished by generations past, present and those that will one day see the rise of the rail once more.