Ogle Winston Link was a passionate train enthusiast and photographer from the mid-20th century.
He blended his two passions and was a pioneer rail photography as a hobby. He is particularly well known for his work in the 1950’s throughout the United States. There, he captured black-and-white images of steam locomotives before they were phased out of traffic, many which were replaced by diesel locomotives which were cheaper to run.
He also pioneered night photography at a time when it was not a popular pursuit and is well known for a number of his works. He was known to have preferred night skies and black and white as a medium due to the romance and drama. He also had a more practical reason in that the drab grey of steam from a loco would appear much more crisp and white in a black-and-white photograph.
O. Winston Link published a book of his works in 1987 called ‘Steam, Steel and Stars’ from which our ‘Steam under the Stars’ event takes its name.
Image credits for this page: Cameron Blake
