Railroad Passenger Stations: A Retrospective
 Photographer Susan Lockwood says her objective for the exhibition was to create a body of work consisting of a series of photo essays showcasing railroad passenger stations throughout Roanoke and southwest Virginia. The show is limited to Virginia passenger stations still standing, those converted to other uses and stations near extinction. Most importantly, the purpose of the project was to document and preserve this vanishing landmark of our American transportation heritage.
Railroads have played an integral role in the development and growth of the region. Current plans to restore passenger service to the Roanoke area provides added significance for the proposal. From a historical and cultural perspective, this project would complement the programs and services of the Virginia Museum of Transportation and the O. Winston Link Museum.
 It was timely that such a project be initiated and completed before these architecturally unique historical railway icons disappear completely from our landscape. Even now, many train stations have been converted for other uses. Janet Greenstein Potter, author of “Great American Railroad Stations,” comments, “Society so often allows masterpieces of architecture ... to be destroyed or altered as though real estate ownership supersedes any other value system...”
Some 13 years ago, Susan Lockwood transitioned a 20-year corporate career in public relations and marketing to photography. She says she learned on-the-job and via workshops after completing one basic photography class, and by 2000 had begun conducting her own composition workshops attended by both photographers and painters. Susan’s work has been featured in 15 solo exhibitions since 1998 and is in the permanent collections of Johnson & Johnson Corp., the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, the Roanoke Rescue Mission, McGuire Woods Richmond law firm, the Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley and Carilion Health system as well as national and international private collections. Select honors include three Best in Show awards and numerous first place awards, including first place -- all fine art -- awarded at the 2008 national juried Williamsburg show, “Art on the Square.”
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