Dear Pilot,
My yard is just as excited about your letters as yours is of mine. My yardmates mostly pretend to mind their own business when it’s being read. I think they are just trying to give me my privacy, but that seems to go out the window when it comes time to write back. I don’t mind if they listen or if they help reply though. It’s always a good day on our lawn when we’re catching up on our mail and I’d have less to say if they didn’t!
Venus is very kind with her compliments and Vesta is also right. I have been very lucky. Not only have I been given so many stories to tell, but I was also given many examples of how to tell them over my service life. If I am a good storyteller now, it’s because I got to learn by listening to all my friends telling other people about me.
It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but when I first came to the MSI, I didn’t really appreciate that I was being given a new job or how well prepared for it I’d been. When you talk about your last run… In ‘67, I’d have probably still been foolish enough to want to be there with you. Even now, it still makes me wish I could have lent a wheel, although I can at least say it’s because it sounds grueling and I’d have wanted to help a friend, not just because I’d be back on the rails too. I wouldn’t have been much use though. Even if you weren’t built to haul freight, that you did it at all is impressive to me.
As fortunate as I’ve been, to still be here to tell my stories, I feel even more so that you have as well.
Perhaps your train would like to try telling a story too? You know, we shovelnoses were custom built for our routes and so we didn’t really see much of each other once we were in service. Maybe they could tell me a story about Pegasus? They would have known her much better than I did and I’m always happy to hear about my siblings.
We’re just opening back up here in our yard now that the days are getting brighter, but it turns out, things happen at our museum when we’re closed too! My guides say there’s a big counter inside in the farm tech exhibit that says how many people there are in the world. Would you guess that there are four billion now? The counter just rolled over on the 27th last month. I imagine it would have been quite the spectacle, but it happened at night when no one was there to see it! By the time the museum opened the next day, a hundred thousand more people had been born. And we thought we were hatching chicks so quickly, haha!
My guides also think your Ely sounds very similar in spirit to our Rocket. I’ve mentioned him before and that I’ve never met him myself, but I did meet his brother at the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948. They’re both replicas of the original Stephenson’s Rocket so they have that same regal 19th century styling like Ely and 999 have. They’re so fancy even that they have crowns on top of their funnels! They have a third “half” brother too – or so our Rocket likes to joke to his visitors – who lives at museums in both New York and London because he’s been cut in half to show how he works. Apparently U-505’s guides mentioned the U-boat at the Deutsches Museum to the Rocket and he thought it was very amusing to have something in common with the submarine outside. U-505 didn’t have anything to say back though. Explaining why it’s funny might be beyond his English.
There’s actually a lot of Rocket replicas because they still have the original plans, but our Rocket and his brothers were made in the 30’s by the original Robert Stephenson & Co. works so they consider each other to be more brothers than the others. The one I met at the Railroad Fair was fully operational, steam and all, but our Rocket was always meant to be a stationary display that just demonstrates his movement. I say I was well prepared for preservation, but he was made exactly for this and has been doing it nearly as long as I’ve been around. I wish I could see him at work. I might learn something!
2903 and 999 are scoffing at the idea that an engine who’s never pulled a train could have anything worthwhile to teach one who has. U-505 defended him, though, saying the Rocket is “built to his purpose” which they didn’t have a response to.
Maybe U-505 understands his humor after all.
It’s great that people are going to get to see your museum and such a wonderful example of your stock on the television. Whenever the television comes here, people want to see us for themselves too. Picking a particularly eye-catching passenger car with a winning personality for the job is indeed very Burlington. As much as we engines have learned to entertain our visitors, our cars were “built to purpose” for charming people and making them feel welcome. Ely sounds like he was a particularly good choice.
Your visitors will know they’ve made a good choice too when they see you and all your yardmates and all the great things being done at your museum.
Your friend,
Pioneer