Dear Pilot,
U-505 is taking the summer heat as valiantly as he always does. He says the heat expands his metal and can make him three inches longer than his specifications. Three extra inches doesn’t sound like much since he’s as long as he is already, but he says three inches is very big when it comes to keeping water out. He doesn’t need to worry about being watertight anymore, but they did have to build rollers into his concrete foundations for him to sit on top of. Otherwise, they would crack under him when it got too hot out.
999 and 2903 both wish to thank you for your compliments. 999 is quite used to being admired as she’s been famous since her first run. Still, I think we all are a little more grateful for the attention in our retirement. I’m sure I said something to the same tune about her shape when I met her the first time in 1948 at the Chicago Railroad Fair. She wasn’t sure what to make of me though since I was so modern, but she said something… tactful about how shiny I was and how she could see herself in my panels (and by the way, yes, The Flying Yankee is stainless steel too, just as silver and shiny as we are). We couldn’t know then that we’d end up in the same museum and both of us would be thought of as old engines!
2903 certainly had no idea he’d be preserved either. His service life wasn’t full of publicity stunts like mine and 999’s were so he wouldn’t have thought it likely. He’s had a perfectly respectable career, of course, but it’s hard to talk about it to guests here. They don’t appreciate routine but necessary work quite the way they do speed record runs or giant birthday cakes. It’s another thing entirely to have a working engine who knows what he’s looking at recognizing your utility though. 2903 got impressively puffed up about it for an engine who’s not been in steam for twenty years. We quite like him this way!
You know, at that Railroad Fair, I also met another engine named Pioneer. Just him; he had the name all to himself! He was a very old steam engine with one of those tall and wide spark arresting funnels. He’s famous for being the first engine ever to work in Chicago, helping to put the rails down for the rest of us. I had almost wondered if I might have been renamed after him because he also worked for the Q for a time. It was probably just a coincidence though or they would have made more of it. We never let a good story go to waste, especially not if there’s a lineage involved.
Speaking of, Injun Joe was the first train to have all his stock given names, but your Silver naming convention is even older than that.
Before me, the Budd Company worked with a French tire company called Michelin to make a stainless-steel railcar with rubber wheels. Budd made four of them: one for the Reading Railroad, two for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and one for the Texas and Pacific. They… were not very successful engines. They tended to derail and the T&P one ended up getting nicknamed “Silver Slipper” for it. They don’t talk about her because her design didn’t work very well, but without her model first, there’s no Burlington Zephyr, no shovelnoses, no E5’s, and no roster of Silver stock. They don’t say so, but all stainless steel equipment are named in her way, even if it was just a mean nickname. I’d be really proud of that if I were her. It’s an incredible legacy for an engine who only worked two years.
I hesitate to guess at what 9901 would say to being told he was special for not having a name though. I suspect his manners would have failed him.
He and 9902 were a little unlucky to be built when they were. They weren’t first so they didn’t get the benefit of it that I did and they came too early to be themed the way the Mark Twain Zephyr was. Then they got bumped from their route by Pegasus and Zephyrus’ larger, themed trains. Those two became the new Twin Cities Zephyrs and the original twins were given their own separate routes. 9901 wasn’t very happy about it because while he was getting his own route, this was also just after my train had been given our new name. I think most engines would be satisfied to have a named route at all, but with us Zephyrs and how many names we’ve all been given between us, it becomes a sticky subject if you’ve come out short. 9902 was just happy to be able to accommodate his demand again. He was always the more sensible of the two of them.
They were twins, but I do not think this is similar to having a B-unit. 9901 and 9902 only ever operated together on exhibition runs before they entered revenue service. The day before their christening, they did one with forty-four sets of twins riding their trains to Chicago, one half of each pair on each train. Once they were in service though, I don’t imagine they saw much of each other. They’d run the route from opposite ends twice a day, so they’d only have had brief passings.
After Pegasus and Zephyrus took over the Twin Cities Zephyr route, 9901 was sent to Texas to work on the Burlington-Rock Island to pull their Sam Houston Zephyr. From what I heard, he became much less crabby about names when he was actually working a route of his own. You’d hope it’d be the pride of having a named route all to himself that turned him around, but I wonder if it wasn’t actually because he got that special nose herald that said “Sam Houston Zephyr” instead of “Burlington Route”. You know how important identity is for Zephyrs, after all.
9902 got an “Alton-Burlington” nose herald for his Ozark State Zephyr in Missouri until they sent him down to the B-RI too. He and 9901 had to share routes again, but they had two between them so it wasn’t such a debacle as it had been when they were the Twin Cities Zephyr. One of them would be the Sam Houston Zephyr and the other would be the Texas Rocket, with nose heralds to show which.
Unfortunately, the B-RI wasn’t taking as good care of them as Burlington itself would have. From what I gathered over time (because you know how cagey our people can be when things go wrong), 9901 had a lot of oil build-up under his trucks and something set it on fire. They couldn’t get the blaze under control and 9901 was burnt inside and out, completely irreparable. I mentioned before that this was right after that FT smashed into 570. Because 9901 had to be stricken from the roster but his cars were only a little burnt, they thought to replace my observation car with his. They decided not to do that in the end and instead his cars were kept in storage in case I, 9902, or Injun Joe might need them on our trains.
After all that, B-RI ended up giving 9902 back to Burlington to replace 9901. And ironically, he ended up with a route named just for him! No one ever mentions it really, but he was given a route between Chicago and Ottumwa, Iowa and they called it the Zephyr 9902. When they moved him to the Chicago-Hannibal route, they renamed it Zephyr 9902 too so it was almost like it was his train that had the name. I think if 9901 had still been around for that, he’d have been so jealous he’d have gone up in flames again. But they also sometimes nicknamed 9902 the “Baby Zephyr” because of how big the Denver and California Zephyr trains were by then so maybe not!
I am being told that I have gone on very long about 9901 and 9902, but I almost feel obliged. They get overlooked, but how would we have known we needed a train as grand as yours for that route without their trains on it first? They had the same problem I always did, that our train became too popular to fit everyone who wanted to ride.
I would like it if you told me more about Silver Speed and Silver Power too. The Twin Zephyrs weren’t AB pairs, but I had later siblings who were. It seemed like the dynamic was different for every pair though. The way you speak about Silver Mate makes it sound like the job was so much easier for having him, but Silver Knight and Silver Princess seemed to have very different ideas about how a train should be run. It’s hard to decide whether I missed out or not, being an only engine.
I’m really happy to hear about your museum wanting to bolster its steam fleet too. We diesels were made in a sort of opposition to steam (and I’ve been blamed personally for the decline of steam in our country), but I’ve always liked steam engines. They’ve certainly rescued me from a spot a time or two. We even had steam engines to protect the Twin Cities Zephyr and Denver Zephyr – streamlined and shrouded in stainless steel to match us – and I consider them to have been every bit a Zephyr as we are. I bet your 1630 looks regal and stately on your line and she sounds like she’s going to become quite the attraction.
That trick with your museum arranging that your trolley buses would be notable for being the last to run by scheduling them so that they would be… it’s very Burlington of them. You sound as though you’re all in good hands, white lies and all.
Your friend,
Pioneer