Dear Pilot,
U-505 wishes to thank you for your kind words and your understanding. I think he was impressed! He insists that this should not be taken as an insult though I don’t know how it could be. It’s just that he would not have expected an engine he’s never met to understand his position so well. Fair enough since none of us in his yard seem to get the finer points of it as much as he’d like. He wouldn’t go so far as to agree with you out loud, but I think he probably does imagine the world is a bit smaller for us locomotives, since we can only go where our rails let us. He is shifting a bit on his rollers, but I note he isn’t disagreeing with me out loud either. (He says it’s just the weather bouncing between hot and cold so much lately.)
He did wish to clarify though that he would not lay the entire responsibility for his preservation at Admiral Gallery’s feet. As the story goes, it was really more his brother’s idea who then spoke to Mr. Lohr and even that would not have been enough on its own. Lots of other people had to think moving him here was worth doing and then they had to figure out how to arrange it and collect enough money to have it done. If it were Gallery alone and not for our museum and the Navy and the people of Chicago’s donations, U-505 might not have found his way here.
Even now, he’s still amazed at how everything that had to happen for him to come here did.
“All of it, just to make two little diesel engines happy,” he says. He’s getting better at jokes, don’t you think?
It’s great news to hear another of us Budd builds have been preserved. 999 was less enthused to hear, although I don’t think it’s anything personal. Apparently the Pennsy is a difficult subject with New York Central engines. Displaying models of engines inside 4618 is an interesting idea though. She’ll be more of a museum exhibit than all of us that way, haha!
Models of the insides of we engines remind me of our museum’s exhibits about the inside of people and that debate about how that is science but the outside of people is art and doesn’t belong here. We have a new exhibit of “kinetic art” sculptures that are confusing people on that point again. My guide says kinetic means the sculptures move and Mr. McMaster says the mechanics of the movement – the physics, my guide elaborated – is what makes it science.
She showed me the enclosed picture of the sculptures, but the picture doesn’t move so I don’t think we can fully appreciate the art. They should invent a picture that does move. (My guide says that’s what television and film are, a bunch of pictures that move. They should make a television that can move out here to the yard then.)
I didn’t know that about steam engines needing certification to work. I bet they all feel spectacular to be certified. It’s not the same thing, of course, but it sounds a bit like having your papers properly signed over to the museum. This past Christmas, the famous actress Colleen Moore signed over the Fairy Castle dollhouse so it legally belongs to the museum now. Apparently she told the children a story about fairies living in the castle being worried about her taking their house back to California because they hate the weather there so she made it official that the dollhouse stays here. I think she made the part about the fairies’ complaint up because the weather in California is absolutely beautiful, but I remember being a bit relieved when the Q finally signed me over too.
By that point, I had been here ten years and unless they were going to put me back in service, I don’t think they’d have found a better place for me. Up to then, our train was just on loan though so if they wanted to, our railroad could have asked for us back. It was a relief to know for certain I wouldn’t have to move to a new display. I would miss U-505, 999, and 2903 if I’d been sent somewhere else. And all the moving U-505 had to do first would have been for nothing!
But you’re still in revenue service and raising fares at that! Maybe the money your museum saves not having to get you certified to work too is enough to buy a typewriter instead. If not, don’t worry. I remember how to read cursive.
Your friend,
Pioneer