Dear Pilot,
For as mysterious as our trains can be – your letter has got my cars giggling between themselves too – engines can be just as much of a puzzle. 999 was also rather… moved by the topic. None of the rest of us understood why it should be so funny though and she got huffy when asked to explain it so we let the topic drop. It’ll just have to stay a mystery then.
I must admit, I’m often (pleasantly) surprised by people. Just when I think I know a thing about them, they turn around and make a fool of me! People would certainly have complained about a lack of air conditioning when I was in service. I’m happy to hear they understand what a rare treat it is to get to ride your train, even without it. With any luck – and it seems you have some to spare – it’ll be less rare and cooler in the future. Maybe you could serve ice cream until the air conditioning is fixed? As our ice cream parlor has proven, despite my best guess, people will eat ice cream regardless of the weather. I do still think I’m right that they like it better when it’s hot out (now my guide is laughing at me).
They would have complained about higher prices too, but it sounds like they understand that we need money to keep us running (even those of us who don’t go anywhere when we do). It’s one thing to understand it’s necessary, but that they want to pay the admission is surprising as well. My guide says it feels better to give money to a museum than to a business because then you are contributing to something so everyone can enjoy it. That makes sense, doesn’t it? I don’t think I would have understood that before I came here though. I hadn’t learned about philanthropy yet.
One thing that I’ve been here long enough not to be surprised by is that your visitors would be happy to read about you on their own. While we have our guides here to help our visitors learn more about us, we also have signs to tell them about us too and stairs so they can look at our cabs and in my cars. It follows from the interactivity idea, that a visitor doesn’t have to have someone with them all the time and can explore things on their own. Since our museum is so old, I expect a lot of your visitors have been here too. So it might not seem so strange to them to guide their own tour, especially if everything is set up to follow neatly. The idea of your stock arranged into trains sounds lovely.
As does all your electrics getting to sing for the bicentennial! It’s perfectly fitting that your electric cars got to do the honors in celebrating the founding of the country, since they’re the founding stock of your museum.
We’ve actually been celebrating the bicentennial here at the MSI for two years now and will continue for another year yet. I had the vague idea of it, but as I’d only starting asking about what they do inside to fill out my letters to you, I didn’t really understand how big it actually was.
The MSI has been hosting “America’s Inventive Genius” since the beginning of 1975. It was a large honor because our museum’s exhibit is part of the national observance. There’s people from the capital who are in charge of arranging these type of things all over the country and they picked us to do the exhibit on science. So it’s not just Chicago’s or even Illinois’ exhibit but the entire country’s! It’s a lot to consider, but it must be a very good exhibit if they’re running it for three years.
It’s so big too that it has to be shown in parts. The first part is about all the big scientific inventions and advancements that we’ve made since 1776. (I asked if streamlined electric diesel trains were included; they said I was representing that, which I suspect means no). The second part is about how all our major industries’ science and technology make American life richer and better for everyone. The last part is a series of plays and movies, “Milestones in American Science and Industry”, about all the science Americans have come up with in the last 200 years. On top of all that, there’s also a new exhibit specifically about Illinois’ scientific discoveries and lots of traveling exhibits from other countries to complement the big national one so it stays fresh over its long stay.
Lots of people have – and continue to – come from all over the country and all over the world to see it. In fact, just this week, we had some visitors from Norway. They were naval cadets and they came on their tri-masted sailing ship Christian Radich to perform in a sailboat parade for the 4th in New York, but now that it’s done, they are touring the Great Lakes and made a stop here. While they had come to America for the festivities, I think they came to the MSI mostly to see U-505.
None of us speak Norwegian so we did not know at the time, but we learned later from the newspaper that they thought U-505’s bunks were too small and it made them more grateful for the cabins on their own ship. The article had a picture of Christian Radich too; he’s a very handsome ship, even with his sails drawn in a black and white picture taken at night.
One of the ships U-505 sank during the war was a Norwegian tanker ship named Sydhav. After the cadets left, he told us they reminded him of Sydhav’s crew and of his own and how young most of them were. He says it’s a great privilege to send them off knowing they are learning their trade in peacetime. He went on to say it’s a privilege to send another ship’s crew off to a next voyage in any event, but especially one this friendly. He seems quite pleased with himself that he made them appreciate their beautiful ship more too. He thinks it will help stave off Blechkoller – “tin can disease”. I didn’t know cans could get diseases.
Now U-505 is laughing at me too. He’s trying to stifle it at least, but I should probably close out this letter before I say anything else foolish.
Your friend,
Pioneer