Dear Pioneer,
I’m glad to hear that my letters get to entertain the whole yard. It makes our letters a bit like a static display, free for everyone who happens to be around to enjoy! Just like a static display as well, everyone usually has something to contribute. When the Goddesses heard you were asking for a story about their history, they were very eager to move into the role of museum exhibit just for you. Some days on the wye are pretty quiet, but after your invitation they spent a good half a day deciding what story they were going to share.
Pegasus, they say, didn’t actually get to pull their train for very long. She had the same trouble you did, where your train would get too popular for you to carry all the people who wanted to ride. Since she could be detached from the train and more cars could be added on to their consist, Pegasus often got reassigned to a lighter train and one of the Æolus or later us E5’s would take over instead.
By the time they became the Nebraska Zephyr, Pegasus was more or less permanently reassigned to the general passenger pool for Chicago suburban routes even if no one had come out and said so. And since no one had actually said it wasn’t her train anymore, she would sometimes ask after them to see how they were if she hadn’t seen them in a while.
One time, though, 4001 was a little rude about it. It sounded like Pegasus asked, as a joke, how she was taking care of her train and 4001 said something snotty back about how it was hardly her train anymore. Apparently the uproar was cacophonous, which Venus says is when every car in a train is all shouting at once and the stationmaster comes outside to tell them off for it. They all told 4001 that they were more Pegasus’ train than hers and that she shouldn’t let getting to pull them go to her smokebox because she was also still in the general pool too and didn’t even have a name to herself.
Whether Pegasus thanked them or apologized for them is a matter of debate (maybe she did both; she sounds tactful) and then – with a bit of shunting from Venus and Vesta particularly – 4001 apologized too. That story is a good reminder that every job on the railroad (and in the museum) is important and we should all be respectful.
You know, your Rocket sounds quite similar to B-units, come to think of it! A good quarter of the E5 fleet were built as Bs – not transitioned into them later like Pegasus and some of the other shovelnoses were. They never got the chance to pull trains on their own, but many of our long trains would be much harder to pull without them. They were built to their purpose too, and all our jobs were easier for it.
I don’t think it’s embarrassing at all to want to keep working the rails rather than retire, especially since it sounds like you were in good enough condition to continue passenger service for a long time. I expect we would have felt the same if we’d been sent straight to retirement rather than spend a couple months hauling freight. It was tough, especially on the B-units. For your sake, I’m glad you didn’t have to help us with that, haha.
4 billion people is big news! My letter-writer read that number and I had to really think about it for a moment. She explained that a billion is one-thousand millions, which didn’t help much, haha. Some engines travel one million service miles or better in their lifetimes, but imagine having to do that a thousand times, and then four more times on top of that!
Our big news was the arrival of our newest acquisition, Norfolk and Western 2050 last month. She’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen, and she’s articulated just like you! She used to work in West Virginia hauling coal trains up in the mountains, so you can imagine how much power an engine needs to have to go up a steep grade with such a heavy load. It requires two different sets of cylinders, which is why she’s articulated.
I was a little nervous to meet her at first. When an engine that big rolls up into the yard, sometimes it’s hard to know what to expect, but she was so polite and soft-spoken! It turns out we have a lot in common.
Like me, she was moved to a scrapyard after retirement at the Armco Steel factory in Ohio, but just like me she was picked to do a little extra work. In her case, they used her as a portable boiler around the plant a few times. Having her around to help made the steel factory workers a little sentimental, so she got to stick around as a kind of static display inside the factory yard. The men loved her so much that they even wrote her a poem, which I think is sweet! It’s written right on her tender in chalk. It talks about death, which Vesta says isn’t very sweet at all, but Venus said no one’s ever written Vesta a poem. That made 2050 laugh so hard she scared some birds out of a tree.
Because the men at the factory liked her so much (and because she needed a lot of work done to be moved) Armco were reluctant to let 2050 go at first. Apparently two other museums wanted her too, but didn’t have the manpower or know-how to get her ready to move which would leave Armco footing the bill. That’s not a problem for our guys though, and eventually the IRM worked out a deal with the factory to do the work for free and give 2050 a home where she’d be loved as much as she had been there.
Since she lived in Ohio, that meant the work had to happen slowly over the course of several months. Every few weeks a team made up of our guys would make the trip to Middletown to do the work of cleaning, degreasing, regreasing, repairing, and restoring her so she’d pass inspection. Ohio isn’t a short trip, especially if you’ve been sitting still for over 15 years!
In April, everything was finally cleared for her to move. The hope was she’d be hitched to a Conrail freight train and sail up to Chicago and from there make her way home. As you surely know, even the best laid track can often bend awry. First off, the diesel moving her out of Armco’s yard broke down and a second mover had to be called to get her off the property. Then, once she started moving, the crew found that her axles would run hot and she had to be stopped every 20 miles to make sure they weren’t damaging her.
It was slow going, but eventually she made the rest of the way here late last month. She said that final freight train from Chicago was a rough ride at 40mph, but that she was happy to be in a new home that wasn’t on the doorstep of a scrapyard. I said I couldn’t blame her for that!
She’s over in the steam yard now, so we haven’t chatted much since she arrived, but I expect Tuskegee and 1630 will keep me posted about her when they start running more regularly on the main line.
In celebration of 2050 finding a new place to stay, one of the factory workers wrote her two new poems to go with the one on her tender. These talk about ‘new friendships’ and ‘renewal’, which sounds much nicer than ‘steam condensed in death’. Even Vesta couldn’t complain about those!
Shay is back in the shop for what looks like the rest of the year. They want her in the best shape she can be in after how popular her double-header was with 1630 on Member’s Day. It must be difficult being an iconic engine for our museum! I myself will be having some work done as well, though not nearly as much as Shay. They said they want me to do a couple runs this summer, and hopefully another feature on the Member’s Day roster for me as well!
Whew! That was a long one. I hope it kept you and the yard entertained! What number is the counter at now? I can’t wait for your next letter. It’ll be a nice distraction while I’m getting tuned up for the summer.
Your friend,
Pilot