The Last Steam Railroad in America: From Tidewater to Whitetop - Hardcover

Garver, Thomas H.; Photographs By O. Winston Link

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9780810935754: The Last Steam Railroad in America: From Tidewater to Whitetop
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0810935759 ISBN 13: 9780810935754
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 1995

Synopsis

Between 1955 and 1959, Link traveled up and down the Norfolk & Western's divisions, taking pictures of the trains, towns, and people who worked on the railroad and lived beside it. Published here for the first time are photographs he made in daylight, as well as at night and on the branches of the railroad not covered in his first book, Steam, Steel & Stars. 124 photos, 100 in duotone, 24 in full color.

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Reviews

From 1955 to 1960, commercial photographer Link devoted all the time he could to the Norfolk and Western Railway, which ran four lines in the upper South from its hub in Roanoke, Virginia. With the company's cooperation, he recorded what made it special--it was the last U.S. railway to operate with steam engines. Moreover, as Thomas H. Garvey imparts in the generous accompanying text here, Link worked in ways then as rare as steam locomotives--with large, tripod-mounted view cameras and, because he preferred working at night when he could exert more control over lighting, he used scores of flashbulbs that were set off precisely at the time calculated to allow for a particular exposure. One album of those night images, Steam, Steel & Stars (1987), has appeared, and more of them are here, along with many daytime views and a little sampling of the few color pictures he made (including the only two color shots taken at night). Technical marvels, they are also aesthetic miracles, charged with human feeling because Link cared for the communities that lived along the NW and for the railroad's employees more than for its gigantic machinery and buildings and because he is a master of natural-looking dramatic lighting. His pictures are as lyrical as they are powerful, as numinous as they are romantically materialist: masterpieces. Ray Olson

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Publisher
Harry N. Abrams
Publication date
1995
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0810935759
ISBN 13 
9780810935754
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
144
Rating
  • 4.64 out of 5 stars
    55 ratings by Goodreads