International service (what little remains):

http://www.tallshipbounty.org/gallery/main.php/d/301-1/img011.jpeg

Cross-country service:

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/mikado/gn3020.jpg

Cross-country and over the mountains:

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/bomuseum/co1604-duley.jpg

Local service:

http://www.svry.com/photogalleries/2001fallfoliage/19_past_rock_cut.gif

Around town and about the neighborhood:

http://fishhook.ndsu.edu/~hawley/blackwood/Ndlngr%20Man%20Horse%20Buggy.jpg

Point being, all these technologies already exist. Thus we need neither assistance from space aliens nor some mystical
ability to "visualize sustainability" to survive the coming petro-apocalypse.

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/mikado/gn3020.jpg

Great Northern Railroad heavy Mikado type, wheel arrangement 2-8-2 built in the 1930's and capable of hauling 100 loaded freight cars weighing 100,000 pounds each. The Great Northern ran from Minneapolis to Seattle, including a long stretch of electrified service in Montana and Idaho. The most famous electric locomotives on the Great Northern were nicknamed "Little Joes" by the crews. They had been designed and built for the Soviet Union, but with the onset of the cold war were never delivered (I can't remember the details and I will see if I can find them) and the Great Northern bought them.

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/bomuseum/co1604-duley.jpg

Chesapeake and Ohio modern steam locomotive, built in the late 40's for coal service out of West Virginia, designed by the railroad's own shops. It is a unique design - the C&O named them the "Allegheny" type - and the last great steam locomotive built and the heaviest ever with the greatest tractive effort ever. It has a one-of-a-kind 2-6-6-6 wheel arrangement - two pilot wheels, six drive wheels, six more drive wheels, and six trailing wheels under the firebox - and is actually two steam engines built on a single articulated frame. The two sets of driving wheels under the bolier pivot independently to get this behemoth around tight curves in the West Virginia coalfields. Each pair of steam cylinders, one pair in front and one pair mid-locomotive, drove six massive drive wheels. The six wheel truck under the cab is uniqie, and is required to support the massive firebox - the largest ever built.

The challenge for the engineers designing this locomotive was to pack the maximum boiler size and firebox size into the existing restrictions in height and width imposed by the many tunnels and bridges, and to build it so it could snake around the many mountain curves. That led to the air pumps being placed on the front of the engine, the headlight moved down to a platform on the articulated pilot of the engine, long narrow airtanks bolted to the top of the boiler back near the cab, and many other innovations to get maximum use of the available space. Specially designed low profile smokestack and steam and sand domes are another interesting feature.

As late as the mid-fifties, these engines were still in service, and a single coal train sometimes had three of these monsters on the front end with a fourth locomotive pushing from the rear.

The 1604 appears to have been photographed outside of the 150 year old plus restored Baltimore and Ohio roundhouse in Baltimore Md. Another of these locomotives survives on static indoor display at the Henry Ford Museum outside of Detroit.


The ultimate locomotive on the C&O and one for which it will always be remembered is the simple 2-6-6-6 articulated H-8 class Allegheny type. It is the only steam locomotive to handle a 6-wheel trailing truck (because of its cavernous fire box), and sustained the highest instantaneous and sustained drawbar horsepower at speed of any steam locomotive. It was also the heaviest. Some say that if the C&O had used this wonderful machine right it could have routinely outperformed even the diesels. Sixty of these giants were built between 1941 and 1948. Two remain, Number 1601 at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI and Number 1694 at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, MD.

Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society (http://www.cohs.org/history/locomotives.htm)


In the early 1940s, the Chesapeake & Ohio needed new power on its Allegheny Division to move coal trains over the 80 miles of track from Hinton, WV east to Clifton Forge, VA. This run included a 13 mile .577% grade to the 2,072 foot summit of an Allegheny mountain and then a descent down a 1.14% grade to Clifton Forge. Its 2-6-6-2s were getting old and the 2-8-8-2s, delivered in the 1920s, (which used simple expansion because of tight tunnel clearances) were not up to the task.

In the 1930s, the C&O improved the railroad by boring new tunnels and enlarging others. The Class T-1 "Texas" type 2-10-4s also arrived in the early 1930s and seems to be the choice for the Hinton to Clifton Forge run. On the brink of ordering more 2-10-4s the C&O was approached by the Lima Locomotive Company with a new and more powerful locomotive design.

This design was a six-coupled, single-expansion articulated with 67" diameter drivers for speed, a 9' x 15' firebox with a very large boiler for steaming and 778,000 pounds of locomotive weight to assure tractive effort. The large fire box was placed behind the drivers and required a six-wheel trailing truck to support it. This gave the design a wheel arrangement of 2-6-6-6. With four 22.5" diameter x 33" stroke cylinders, a 260 psi boiler pressure and the 67" diameter drivers it could exert 110,200 pounds of tractive effort.

The C&O placed an order for ten of these 2-6-6-6 locomotives and Lima delivered them in December, 1941. They were designated Class H-8 and assigned road numbers 1600 through 1609. With a new wheel arrangement came a new name. The C&O selected the name "Allegheny" for the mountain range that this new locomotive would do its work.

The tenders for these new locomotives were of the largest type used on the C&O, with a 25,000 gallon water tank and a 25 ton coal bunker. In order to keep the overall length of the locomotive and tender within the limit that existing turntables could handle it was necessary to make the rear section of the tender higher, thus causing more weight to be at the rear than the front. The tender had a six-wheel leading truck, but an eight-wheel trailing truck was needed to carry the weight in the rear.

In operation, one "Allegheny" leading and one pushing could move a 140 car loaded coal train up the mountain from the Hinton terminal. At the top the pusher would be taken off, turned around and sent back to the Hinton terminal. The single leading "Allegheny" could handle the decent down the mountain to Clifton Forge where it would be turned around for a return trip with a train of empty coal cars.

The C&O had 23 of its "Alleghenies" equipped with steam heat and signal lines for passenger service, but they were used sparingly, pulling an occasional heavy mail train or a troop train during World War II. The "Allegheny" may have been the ultimate freight locomotive. They were able to achieve a very impressive record even though they were used in a manner for which they were not designed. The Allegheny boilers were capable of delivering up to 8000 HP! This was far greater than any other reciprocating steam locomotive could develop. However, the C&O used the H-8s in "coal drag" service where they were unable to realize their full potential as high speed locomotives. The C&O Alleghenies were designed to haul 5,000 tons at 45mph, but unfortunately were used to haul trains of 10,000 or more tons at 15mph. C&O's 2-6-6-6s were very impressive locomotives. However, they were never used to their full potential. The "Allegheny" was truly magnificent in its role, but as good as it was it could not win the battle with the diesel. The C&O's "Alleghenies" were taken out of service beginning in 1952 with the last fire dropped in 1956.

C&O "Allegheny" Locomotives

The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway took delivery of ten 2-6-6-6 locomotives between December, 1941 and January, 1942. These locomotives were designated as Class H-8 and were assigned road numbers 1600 through 1609. They were the first of a new wheel arrangement, the 2-6-6-6, and were given the name "Allegheny" for the mountain range that the C&O crossed.

The Lima built "Alleghenies" were assigned to "coal drag" duty in the Allegheny Division and were used heavily between the Hinton, WV terminal over the mountain to the Clifton Forge, VA terminal. The C&O was so impressed with the performance of its new "Alleghenies" that ten more were ordered with delivery of road numbers 1610 through 1619 coming in September and October of 1942.

Another twenty-five (road numbers 1620 through 1644) "Alleghenies" arrived in 1944 with a final Fifteen (road numbers 1645 through 1659) delivered between October and December of 1948.

The C&O began to replace its fleet of sixty "Alleghenies" with diesels in 1952 and by 1956 all Alleghenies were gone. Fortunately two survive today and can be seen at the B&O Railroad Museum or the Henry Ford Museum.

After 1601 was retired, she was steamed to Detroit under her own power, and placed in storage inside (indoors) the Henry Ford Museum. Having been stored indoors has kept 1601 in immaculate condition. She is still leaking lube oil!

Upon retirement, 1604 was sent to the scrap lines behind the diesel shops at Russell, KY. It was donated to the Roanoke Transportation Museum circa 1969. At Roanoke, 1604 was displayed next to N&W 1218. On November 4th, 1985, it was partially damaged in a flood (N&W 1218 was gone by this time). During that flood, it almost turned over when the ground was washed out from under it! Fortunately, it was leaning up against an overhead bridge pier which prevented it from falling any further. The NS did a cosmetic overhaul on 1604 at the Roanoke Shops before for it was sent (around 1987) to Baltimore to be displayed as the centerpiece of the Mt. Clare Junction shopping center which was adjacent to the B&O Museum. The shopping center was literally built around 1604. In 1989, the failing shopping center decided that 1604 was too big and decided to donate her to the B&O Museum. 1604 was moved from the mall onto B&O Museum property in early 1990 by SW-1 Pere Marquette 11. During the early 1990s, there was a rumor going around that the CSXT was considering starting their own steam excursion program. They reportedly sent some mechanics to check the condition of 1604 to see if it was feasible to restore it to operating condition! Today, the cab has been cosmetically restored and lighting has been placed in the firebox so that it can be viewed.

Specifications for Class H-8

Wheel Arrangement: 2-6-6-6
Length: 125' - 8"
Drivers: 67" dia.
Weight on Drivers: 504,010 lbs
Locomotive Weight: 775,330 lbs
Tender Weight: 431,710 lbs
Locomotive & Tender Weight: 1,207,040 lbs
Grate Area: 135 sq ft
Cylinders: (4) 22.5" dia. x 33" stroke
Boiler Pressure: 260 psi
Tractive Effort: 110,200 lbs
Tender Capacity: 25,000 gals. of water and 25 tons of coal.

www.steamlocomotive.com/allegheny/ (http://www.steamlocomotive.com/allegheny/)

Point being, all these technologies already exist. Thus we need neither assistance from space aliens nor some mystical ability to "visualize sustainability" to survive the coming petro-apocalypse.

Another point - the transportation infrastructure, built at great expense to the public and with near slave-labor of Chinese and Irish immigrants with much loss of life, has been intentionally and systematically dismantled since WWII for the benefit of a few private interests, including the oil companies and the automobile companies.

My favorite of all steam locomotives is the Norfolk and Western Y6, mammoth 2-8-8-2 road engines built in the N&W's legendary Roanoke Shops for the railroad's mountain division (aka Pocahantas Division). During my childhood we lived in Roanoke for about two years, also in Stollings, West Va. for a much shorter period, and seeing these great locomotives at work -- often from only a few feet away -- inspired my first serious choice of occupations, this from age 5 until about age 10: steam locomotive engineer.

Tried hard to post an image of a Y6 but after literally hours of effort gave up; even obtaining a working link to an individual photo turned out to be impossible, obstructed by the site itself. Here's the site on which the images appear (the picture I was trying to post was the Y6 taking a break at Wilcox, West Va.):

http://www.retroweb.com/nwsteam.html

And then finally, if there's any electricity left -- that is, if precious-metals thieves haven't stolen all the transmission wire (a ruinously crippling problem once commonplace only in the Third World but now rapidly spreading throughout the U.S.) -- there's the modern variant of this:

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/bomuseum/prr4890.jpg

This is the GG1, the standard passenger locomotive throughout the electrified Northeast until the mid-1980s:

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/GG1/

My favorite of all steam locomotives is the Norfolk and Western Y6, mammoth 2-8-8-2 road engines built in the N&W's legendary Roanoke Shops for the railroad's mountain division (aka Pocahantas Division).

This is the GG1, the standard passenger locomotive throughout the electrified Northeast until the mid-1980s.


Two of the greatest locomotives of all times. Both the N&W and the Pennsy built their own locomotives in their own shops - N&W in Roanoke, as you say, and the Pennsy in Altoona, Pennsylvania. N&W was still building new steam locomotives from the ground up as late as 1957.

Here is a Y6 in "pusher" service - coupled to the end of a coal train to assist in getting it over the mountain. Controlling a train in mountainous territory with locomotives at both ends, all "set of the pants," was an art form.

http://arrts-arrchives.com/images/qq207r3.jpg

Y6 pulling a coal train.

http://www.kohs.com/images/Y6b/y6b%202173%20a%20tank%20150.jpg

Double-headed Y6's taking on water.

http://www.kohs.com/images/Y6b/y6b-12_150.jpg

Y6 being completed in the Roanoke shops. You can see that the boiler is being lowered onto the drive wheels.

http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/vahist/03VT/screen/03NS0015.jpg

"A" class locomotive being built in the Roanoke shops.

http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/vahist/03VT/screen/03NS0008.jpg

"J" class high speed 4-8-4 passenger locomotive on the turntable.

http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/vahist/03VT/screen/03NS0010.jpg

From Trains magazine...

Norfolk & Western's Roanoke Shops created the first of fourteen magnificent streamlined 4-8-4s in 1941, designed for mountain passenger service. Along with New York Central's Niagaras, N&W's 4-8-4s were among the finest examples of the type ever built.

Designated Class J, they ran until the end of steam on the N&W, and one, No. 611, put in twelve post-retirement years in excursion service, from 1982 to 1994. The last 4-8-4 built was N&W J No. 613 in 1950.

The Northern was arguably the finest North American steam locomotive design. It was rostered by over thirty railroads and 1,125 were built. There was a natural relationship between the dimensions of the grate area, heating surfaces and cylinder size, contributing to the engine's balanced design. In short, there were no poor 4-8-4s built!

I had the privilege of seeing the 611 in action several times.

"J" class being built in Roanoke.

http://www.trains.com/ctr/objects/images/4-8-4_northern_3.jpg

"J" class pulling the "Powhatan Arrow" - N&W's luxury passenger train - near Bonsack, Va.

http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/F1/NS4069.JPG

Y6 pulling a high speed merchandise train along the New River.

http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/full/NS3013.jpeg

Loren, have a look at these.

OK, I found some examples of the work of O. Winston Link online. Back in the 60's and 70's, when I became familiar with him and his work and had the chance to meet him, he was only known in railroad circles, but later his work became widely recognized.

Link's passion was the Norfolk and Western railroad, and in the late 50's he travelled all over Virgina and West Virginia photographing the last days of steam power.

His photographs are spectacular, and I am going to put a few in this post.

http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/images/link_show/Link_Self_Portrait.jpg

O. Winston Link
Self portrait
"Steam, Steel & Stars"


Renowned critic and former Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, John Szarkowski, once called O. Winston Link "one of nature's noble men, and a legitimate American genius and nut."

Self taught in photography, O. Winston Link (born 1914) built his own enlarger while still in high school, and helped to process film and enlarge prints for a local photo store in Brooklyn, New York, where he was born and raised. Shortly after graduating in 1937 from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn with a degree in civil engineering, Link accepted a job as a photographer for Carl Byior and Associates, one of the country's largest public relations firms. During World War II, Link worked on a Columbia University research project that developed detection equipment used by low flying aircraft to locate enemy submarines. Following World War II, Winston became an independent, freelance photographer specializing in industrial subjects.

In late January 1955, Link went to Staunton, Virginia on assignment. He had always loved steam locomotives, and was aware that the Norfolk and Western Railway, which passed through nearby Waynesboro, was the last major American railroad to operate exclusively with steam power, so he went to check it out. Completely enamored with what he saw, Link came back the next evening with his flash equipment and on January 21, 1955 made his first photograph of the N&W at night. He received permission from the company to make photographs on its right of way and Link decided to create a project showing how the railroad worked at night (although this idea expanded greatly as he work on the project, and he eventually worked at all hours of the day). Over the next five years Link made about twenty trips to the N&W's tracks in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland, producing about 2,400 images, most of them on 4x5 sheet film, using a tripod-mounted view camera. Trained as an advertising photographer to photograph people doing interesting things, Link created some of the most spirited and memorable images of rural American life ever captured on film. Viewing himself as more of a preservationist than artist, Link devoted himself to capturing images of the trains, the workers, and the communities that would fade away once steam locomotives were replaced with diesel locomotives which required less work to maintain. He financed the entire project himself, spending about $125,000 in today's dollars, at a time when there was no proven demand for such pictures.

Link kept detailed notebooks illustrating his meticulous preparations for making photographs at night. He planned them using one of the basic laws of physics; that the angle of incidence of a light source is equal to the angle of its reflection. He would angle the lights back toward the camera to produce highlights on the locomotives and railroad cars moving through the darkness. Camera angles, lighting unit positions and exposure settings were all carefully recorded. He had special flash reflectors built, one of which could hold up to eighteen bulbs, for lighting huge areas. He used a power supply which he designed and built that could fire sixty flashbulbs at once, while at the same time tripping the shutters of three cameras, all perfectly synchronized together. Electrical cable connected the flash unit's cameras and power supply, and Winston carried thousands of feet of it in a trailer towed behind his car. Photographs could take from several hours to days to set up, and there was only one opportunity to get the shot as the train sped by, sometimes at sixty miles per hour.

The last of the N&W's steam locomotives were taken out of service in May 1960, and Winston returned to New York to continue his work as a commercial and industrial photographer. Link's railroad photographs went largely unnoticed for more than twenty years after the completion of the project. In 1983 several museums in England and the United States organized exhibitions of the N&W photographs, and dealers began to sell them as well. It was shortly after this time that Link closed his studio in New York City and moved to a home in rural South Salem, a small town about fifty miles north of New York City.

Link's railroad photographs gained additional attention when they became the center of a bitter divorce and criminal case in the mid 1990s. Link became the victim of a plot by his wife, Conchita Mendoza, and her lover, Ed Hayes, a man Link had previously hired to rebuild his prized steam locomotive. The criminal investigation and court case following the divorce lead on to Mendoza's arrest and conviction of grand theft in the first degree stemming from her theft of approximately 1,400 photographs. She was subsequently sentenced to six to twenty years in prison. She served nearly five years in prison for this 1996 conviction. O. Winston Link suffered a heart attack and died near a train station in South Salem, New York on January 31, 2001, while attempting to drive himself to his doctor's office.

In May 2003 Mendoza and Hayes, now her husband, where arrested during a sting operation as they tried to sell some of the stolen prints through a popular Internet auction site. Shortly thereafter a storage unit containing several hundred of Link's signed enlargements and over 1,000 4x5 signed contact prints was discovered near her home in Pennsylvania. Mendoza and Hayes spent a year in jail awaiting trial. They both pleaded guilty to possession of stolen property. Hayes was released for time served, but Mendoza was returned to prison for almost another year for her part in the crime. The prints were returned to the O. Winston Link Trust where a few have since legitimately found their way on to the market.

O. Winston Link bio (http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/artists/link_bio.html)


http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/images/link_show/Electricity_Fails.jpg


"Sometimes the Electricity Fails, Vesuvius, Virginia"
Negative Date: 1956

http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/images/link_show/NW723.jpg

"Norvel Ryan and Son herd cows as The Pocahontas barrels by, near Shawsville, Virginia "
Negative Date: circa 1956

http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/images/link_show/Porch_Swing.jpg

"Porch Swing, Lithia, Virginia"
Negative Date: 1955

http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/images/link_show/The_Popes.jpg

"The Popes Watch the Last Steam Powered Passenger Train, Max Meadows, Virginia"
Negative Date: 1957

http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/images/artistpages/link/linkHS_Lrg.jpg

Hot Shot Eastbound at the Iaeger Drive In, Iaeger, West Virginia, 1956

http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/images/link_show/Luray_Crossing.jpg

"N&W 2nd 51 at Luray Crossing, Luray, VA"
Negative Date: 1956

http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/images/link_show/Ghost_Town.jpg

"Ghost Town, Stanley, Virginia"
Negative Date: 1957

http://www.soulcatcherstudio.com/images/link_show/Maud_Bows.jpg

"Maud Bows to the Virginia Creeper, Green Cove, Virginia"
Negative Date: 1956




One lesson Winston Link learned from his father was how to tell a good story. His skills at weaving a tale were transposed into his photographic vision as well. He was able to see an image in his mind that would exist in reality only for the split second it took for the flashbulbs to ignite and record the event on film. He often worked in all but perfect blackness, on occasion spending days to make a single photo all for the benefit of adding a page or chapter to his story of this steam railroad.

Like a good story teller Link was also willing to wait until his audience was ready for the tale. He made little effort to have his railroad work seen, beyond publication of a few photos reproduced in railroad magazines, until the mid 1970s, and it was not until 1983, almost thirty years after he started the project, that these photographs received their first museum exhibition. Since that time they have been widely exhibited and published, and many people who otherwise would have no interest in photographs of railroads have warmly responded to them. The reason for their wide appeal must lie in the breadth of the project's conception, and in the care taken in its execution. These photographs are period pieces, bits of another time and place, but they are also images created with deep respect for the people photographed, the places where they lived and worked, and the splendid machines they operated.

Carolina Arts magazine


O. Winston Link Museum - The Collection (http://www.linkmuseum.org/collection.html)

Here is some more of the work of O. Winston Link. These are not the best scans. I have seen original prints, and they are crystal clear sharp. I have been in love with this man's work all my life, and I hope you can get some idea of his work from these digital images.

http://www.linkmuseum.org/images/collex/NW-659.jpg

http://www.linkmuseum.org/images/collex/NW-1292.jpg

http://www.linkmuseum.org/images/collex/HAWKSB~1.jpg

http://www.linkmuseum.org/images/collex/monty-_U.jpg

http://www.linkmuseum.org/images/collex/NW-1-Waynesboro.jpg

http://www.linkmuseum.org/images/collex/NW-114-Damascus.jpg

http://www.linkmuseum.org/images/collex/NW-648.jpg

http://www.linkmuseum.org/images/collex/OWL-03-48-11-17.jpg

http://www.linkmuseum.org/images/collex/OWL-03-48-10-17.jpg