Prints by Famed Railroad Photographer O. Winston Link to be Auctioned to Benefit Locomotive #1385 Restoration

The Mid-Continent Railway Museum, located in North Freedom, Wis., will be auctioning three original 16 x 20 inch photographic prints by O. Winston Link, signed by the late photographer. The prints have been donated to the museum to help raise funds for the continuing restoration of Ex-Chicago & North Western steam locomotive #1385.

The prints, donated by Thomas H. Garver of Madison, Wis., a former assistant to Winston Link and a lifelong friend of the photographer, are from Link’s massive five year documentation of the last years of steam railroading on the Norfolk and Western Railway and were taken in Virginia and West Virginia in 1956-1958.

Winston Link is best known for his remarkable night photos of steam-powered trains, made with synchronized flash on a huge scale, using equipment he invented himself.

The donated photos include two images taken at night. One of these, “The Birmingham Special Gets the Highball at Rural Retreat, Virginia,” was created in 1957, and is one of the most popular and highly collected of the images Link made along the railroad at night. Another, “Coal Train Passing the Station, Panther, West Virginia,” was made in 1958, on the railroad’s Pocahontas Division, the place where steam power lasted longest. A third photo, “Train 202, Northbound, Passing Keller’s Field,” is in color. It was made in the fall of 1956, and documents one of the N&W’s ancient Abingdon Branch trains which moved through farms and mountains from Abingdon, VA, to West Jefferson, NC. It was Link’s favorite part of the railroad because all of the equipment was so old and the landscape was so spectacular, particularly in the fall.

The auction of these prints will be conducted on eBay, and will start in late April, with each image being offered at a starting price well below the current retail value of Winston Link’s photos.

eBay auctions will be listed at Mid-Continent’s eBay page HERE. The start date for each 7-day eBay auction is:

• May 4 – Train 202, Northbound, Passing Keller’s Field
• May 11 – The Birmingham Special Gets the Highball at Rural Retreat, Virginia
• May 18 – Coal Train Passing the Station, Panther, West Virginia

NOTE: The original listing for “Coal Train Passing the Station” was ended early due to a mistake in the listing. We sincerely apologize for this error. The print will be listed again on May 18th.

Winston Link (1914-2001) was a New York based advertising and industrial photographer who took on the job of recording both the sights and sounds of the last years of steam power on the Norfolk and Western as a labor of love and commitment to preserve a record of this quickly vanishing mode of transportation. His technique, developed through years of creating appealing images for advertising use, was so effective that a museum of his railroad work has been created in the old passenger station in Roanoke, VA, in the heart of the area in which he worked. Tom Garver, the donor of these photos was the organizing curator for the O. Winston Link Museum. It is the only museum in the United States devoted to the photographs of a single artist.