Day 5 - Roanoke

One of the key reasons for coming to Roanoke was for Paul to see the transport in this region and the many supporting galleries and museums. The guide books don't really promote all the great things to so but but we have found it to be friendly and loads to do.

Roanoke

I first went to the Taubmans Gallery that features modern American art.

Taubmans Gallery

In the afternoon we visited the Virginia Transportation Museum that houses some famous steam trains and some iconic cars that you might be familiar with.



Ford Grand Torino from TV's Starsky and Hutch show



Then we visited the Raymond Loewy exhibition. He was an industrial designer responsible for many iconic designs such as the logos used by Shell and BP, Lucky Strike cigarette packets and the Coca Cola bottle. He also designed transportation items such as the Greyhound Scenicruiser bus and the Pennsylvania railroad locomotives GG1 and S-1.

Then we saw two photography exhibitions.One of Paul's favourite photographers is  O. Winston- Link, who pricipally took  black and white photos of Norfolk and Western Railroad steam engines, usually featuring a human interest element. It was a great exhibition that included a 30 minute movie "What a great picture I took".

The museum which was formerly a railroad station building, also housed a black and white photography exhibition ' Photographs of the Great Depression'. It featured photos by a number of photographers who were employed by the Farm Security Administration and took over 80,000 photos from the great depression. The most famous photo is 'Migrant Mother' by Dorothea Lange, who took a photo of Florence Tompson in 1936. Florence regretted having her photograph taken as she became a representative became for farm workers and thought the photo depicted her as victim.

We lunched on some local fare at the tiny Texas Tavern.We met Matt, who is he great great grandson of the founder. Matt loves rugby and is looking forward to watching the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. He had a couple of guys from Wellington and Dunedin playing in his team. His chili and burgers are very good. It is a a great place to meet the locals.

Matt serving his famous chili in the Texas Tavern..... a long standing Roanoke institution