O. Winston Link Show

Hotshot eastbound at Iaeger Drive-in. (Photo by O. Winston Link.)

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday, January 18, 2009) I took my friend Art Dana to George Eastman House to see the O. Winston Link show of train photographs.
Constant readers of this here blog, if there are actually any at all, will recognize Art as the retired Transit bus-driver with fairly severe Parkinson’s Disease.
Art and I drove Transit bus many years, and my approach to the job was essentially gleaned from him: go-with-the-flow.
Art and I have almost identical interests: cars and trains and airplanes. Particularly harnessing massive power outputs from combustion engines; engines that burn fossil fuel.
The George Eastman House is the mansion of George Eastman in Rochester.
Eastman is the founder of Kodak, who made photography accessible to common folk.
His mansion has been made into a museum of photography, although doing so required considerable building and expansion.
Eastman’s mansion is therefore kind of secondary, although they still give mansion tours. (We did that long ago.)
Eastman’s mansion was all there was for years; the expansion is kind of recent.
Eastman House also has a massive collection of old movies, archived; and it built a theater to show them.
Old movies and photographs deteriorate, so a lot of what George Eastman House does is restoration.
O. Winston Link is probably the premier railfan photographer from the late ‘50s.
He chronicled the end of steam-locomotive operations on the Norfolk & Western (“N&W”) Railroad.
N&W was the final holdout for steam locomotion; primarily because steam-locomotives burned coal, and N&W mainly shipped coal.
Norfolk & Western was a beast of a railroad. It crossed three mountain ranges, and twisted and turned and climbed all over.
But it served the fabulous and prolific Pocahontas coal region.
To do so it had to thread the hollers of the Appalachian mountains. Tunnels galore were required.
It was shipping rivers of coal from the Pocahontas coal region to ocean tidewater at its Lamberts Point transloading facility in Norfolk, VA.
N&W developed its own steam locomotives, and built them themselves in Roanoke.
They kind of like had to — its line required special designs.
They ended up designing and building some of the greatest steam-locomotives of all time; e.g. -1) the mighty “J” 4-8-4, and the “A” 2-6-6-4 articulated, that could cruise efficiently at high speed.
Years ago I rode behind “J” #611 at 70-75 mph.
Years later it derailed its train, and was thereafter limited to 45 mph. (The railroads were no longer built to safely transport a “J,” and the “J” was capable of 100 mph.
It used roller-bearings even in its side-rods.
#611 has since been retired.
We also rode behind “A” #1218.
There are four things I remember:
—A) It was so heavy they couldn’t take siding. Opposing freights had to take siding themselves, so the “A” could stay on the main.
—B) The front driver-set often slipped on its own. The two driver-sets weren’t carrying equal weight, so the front driver-set would start spinning. It only had one throttle, so the only way to catch a front slip, was to shut everything down.
—C) No lineside water-tanks any more, so the only way to water the poor sucker (and a steam-engine requires water to make steam), was from a fire-hydrant. We had to back 89 bazilyun miles on the Conrail main to access a fire-hydrant (single), and then a simple firehouse pumper-truck pumped the water from the hydrant to the two tenders. Took three hours.
—D) Then the poor thing ran outta coal. Diesels had to rescue us. Excursion ended at 3 a.m.
#1218 is also retired.
Yet N&W was very successful with the “A.” It was very efficient, and could go like the dickens.
Link apparently wrote Norfolk & Western management, and sent some sample pictures. He wanted to chronicle the end of steam-locomotive operations on the railroad.
Management, bless ‘em, was interested. They went along with Link’s proposition, mainly to take photographs at night, requiring 89 bazilyun flashbulbs and related wiring.

At the Hawksbill Creek swimming hole, Lemay, VA. (That’s a 2-8-8-2 “Y” on the bridge pulling a coal-drag.) (Photo by O. Winston Link.)

The lead pik is the classic O. Winston Link image: “Eastbound hotshot at Iaeger Drive-in;” “A” #1242 is on the point.
That’s Link’s ‘52 Buick convertible in the foreground, and the couple snuggling therein were friends of Link, and eventually married.
This image was very trying, and what he ended up doing what could have been easily done with Photoshop®, but Photoshop wasn’t around then.
The flash was so bright it washed out the movie-screen, so Link took a picture of that at first.
It was a Korean War movie, so that’s an F86.
Then he took the flash-image, which obliterates the movie-screen — the one with the passing train.
To get the final print he had to expose first the flash-image with the screen section blocked; and then just the movie-screen image, with the flash-image part blocked.
Everything had to be in perfect registration — his earliest tries failed.
When he finally got everything right, he took a picture of his final print, and that’s what the final print (this picture) is made from.
What you see is a Photoshopped scan of a magazine print — okay, but not the actual photograph. Detail and shading get lost, and you have to “despeckle” the scan, to offset the dot-matrix of a magazine print.
Art and I looked at this photograph, and I immediately began naming all the identifiable cars therein. Link’s ‘52 Buick, a ‘55 Dodge station-wagon, a ‘55 or ‘56 Pontiac, a ‘56 Chevy Two-Ten four-door, and a ‘53 or ‘54 Dodge or Plymouth at the left.
“Keep going,” some lady said.
“That’s another ‘52 Buick, and I see a ‘53 or ‘54 Pontiac. Beyond that, everything else is too obscured,” I said.
“I’m old enough to have been around when all this stuff was extant. Hey Art; that may be a Shoebox Ford Custom next to Link’s Buick!”
“Not only was Link a great photographer,” Art said; “he also had excellent taste in cars.”

Sometimes the electricity (to the adjacent pump) fails. (That’s Link’s ‘52 Buick, and the gas is “Amoco.”) (Photo by O. Winston Link.)

Of interest to me were the Link photos in some lady’s living-room.
They had their house right next to the railroad, so Link took a photo in the living-room; dog and child resting before the crackling fireplace; and right outside the living-room window was a HUGE Norfolk & Western steam-engine.
“I don’t know about you, Art,” I said; “but I could never live in a house like that. I’d be up all night watching trains.”
The show wasn’t that great. About one-fourth of the images were like I’ve flown, yet the others were all railroad employees; the fireman, the engineers, the dispatchers, the shop-men, the mechanics; i.e. the common-folk that actually run the railroad.
As such it was kind of boring.

STORY-TIME........
Art may be slightly worse; although perhaps not — I noticed things that may have been pertinent earlier that I didn’t notice then.
-1) He had difficulty with zippers — shaky hands.
“I wouldn’t put this curse on anyone,” he said.
-2) I also noticed his Toyota Camry was in the same place in the driveway it was last summer; only difference being the layer of snow on top. —Poor Art may not have driven it for some time. It’s a brand-new car, and languishes undriven.
-3) I noticed the decrepit ‘60 T-bird, that occupied the second slot in the garage adjacent to his custom ‘49 Shoebox, is gone.
“There’s a story about that, Hughsey,” he said. “It wasn’t my car. It belonged to Johnny” (his sister’s live-in boyfriend). “Johnny bought it, planning to restore it.
It sat untended for months, so my sister began fishing for having it removed.
Johnny’s response was ‘nothing doing.’
So finally my sister said ‘either that thing goes, or ya both go;’ so now it’s gone. Some guy will list it on ‘Craig’s List’ for sale. It’s not our problem any more.”
So now his sister’s Hyundai occupies the space the T-bird once held.
After returning from the show, I was taken into the cellar, where Art is constructing two tables for -a) a model railroad layout, and -b) his model racecars.
“Haven’t told my sister yet,” he said.
Well good luck, Art. It’s probably her house, and here a guy with Parkinson’s is planning to build two model layouts.
The model railroad layout would be 4X16, and the racecars would be 4X8.
“You sure are one tough cookie, Hughsey,” he said, probably because I recovered from a stroke.
“Well, so are you, Art,” I said. “As I’ve said hundreds of times, ‘I think the reason is because we drove bus.’”
“Yep,” Art said. “Survive that job, and ya can survive anything. I don’t know how I did it that long!”

“Iaeger” (capital I-a-e-g-e-r; “ee-YAY-grrr;” I think) is a small town in West Virginia.

“Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.

“We” is myself and my wife of 41+ years, “Linda.”

The “Pocahontas coal region” is a large area of Virginia and West Virginia and Kentucky underlaid with a massive coal-seam.

“Roanoke,” VA.

An “articulated” steam-locomotive has one driver-set hinged to the other, so the locomotive can bend through sharp turns (e.g. crossover switches). One driver-set (the rear) is attached to the boiler, but the other (front) is hinged, so it can angle off-center. (“Crossover switches” are switches between adjacent tracks that permit a train to “cross over” from one track to the other.)

The driving-wheels of a steam-locomotive are all connected by “drive-rods.” The piston is only driving the second or third driver-set. The others are driven by the connecting-rods (“drive-rods”). They all swing up-and-down as the drivers rotate. The “rods” are usually forged steel. “Roller-bearings in its side-rods” is roller-bearings at the horizontal drive-pins in the wheels. Usually it was just “plain” bearings lubricated by grease. Roller-bearings were often also installed where the drive-axles contacted the locomotive frame. Usually they were “plain” greased bearings, but roller-bearings rotated easier, allowing the locomotive to generate more pulling power.

“Take siding” is what usually happens when two opposing trains, or faster and slower trains in the same direction, approach each other on a single track. The inferior train is diverted to a side-track, to allow the other train to pass.

The “main” is the primary track of the railroad. There are single-track mains, and two or more tracks. Multiple track mains have more capacity. —Inferior trains get diverted to another track, or side-track, so a superior train can pass.

“Conrail” is a government amalgamation of east-coast railroads that went bankrupt pretty much at the same time as Penn-Central, a merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central. Conrail included other bankrupt east-coast railroads, like Erie-Lackawanna and Lehigh Valley; but eventually went private as it became more successful. Conrail has since been broken up, sold to CSX Transportation Industries (railroad) and Norfolk Southern railroad. CSX got mainly the old New York Central routes, and NS got the old Pennsylvania Railroad routes. The section of Conrail we were on was ex New York Central. Norfolk Southern had a parallel route (ex Nickel Plate) adjacent to the Conrail line, and we had to use Conrail to -a) turn around, and -b) back up to a fire hydrant. There was another route we could have used, but it was too tight curvature for the “A.” (“Nickel Plate” is the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad, called the “Nickel Plate” long ago by a New York Central executive because it was so competitive. The railroad eventually renamed itself the “Nickel Plate.” Norfolk & Western Railroad bought the Nickel Plate years ago, and N&W has since merged with Southern Railway, to become Norfolk Southern. Nickel Plate never actually attained New York city; it stopped at Buffalo.)

1949-‘51 Fords were known as “Shoeboxes” among hot-rodders. That was because of their squarish styling.

Art’s “model racecars” are raced on a slot-car track.