From March 12 to December 31, 2016, A Great Change in the Situation of Man: Lynchburg’s Railroads was on display at the Lynchburg Museum. The exhibit included railroad items such as signals, lanterns, uniforms, tools, historic and modern photographs, and layouts of model trains. The items were from the Lynchburg Museum collection, Manassas Museum, Virginia Museum of Transportation, C&O Historical Society, N&W Historical Society, O. Winston Link Museum, Amherst County Museum and Historical Society, Norfolk Southern Corporation, and private collectors.

Twenty exceptional photographs taken by famed railroad photographer O. Winston Link were also displayed, courtesy of the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke.  Link saw that the age of steam trains was ending and in cooperation with Norfolk & Western, took iconic images of the last days of steam railroading. 

Bill Arnold from the Link Museum kicked off the exhibit with a program on Link and his work on March 12, 2016. 

Museum Director Doug Harvey noted: “Railroads helped create Lynchburg, with three separate lines operating along the riverfront by 1860. The railroads also helped Lynchburg recover from the Civil War more quickly than many communities in the South.  Over the last 150 years, shoes, coal, pipe, car parts, munitions, tobacco, passengers, and more have ridden Lynchburg’s rails.”