Dear Pilot,
Minerva is very wise! That’s exactly why I was controversial at first. Even after the Century of Progress, there was still a lot of talk that diesel was just a novelty and wouldn’t catch on. Steam engineers especially liked to say this, although I think they just didn’t like anything that might put their engines out of work. There always seemed to be plenty of work for all of us though. If I’m being honest, a steam engine like 999 is stronger and can do more things than I could. She’s worked practically every job there is to do on a railway, even despite being built for express passenger service.
If her record is to be believed – and I think it is – she’s also half a mile per hour faster than me. She is very modestly telling me now that that’s only under perfect conditions. World’s Fairs do seem to make an engine famous, but breaking a speed record was often how you got to be notable enough to be exhibited at a World’s Fair first.
My guides say they are learning a lot about the history of the museum in order to help me reply to your letters, since we are both so suddenly interested in it. Most of the first exhibits here at the museum were displays left over from the Century of Progress that companies donated since they were just going to throw them out otherwise. So the museum seemed like a World’s Fair inside at first.
It was actually meant to be very much like the Deutsches Museum in Germany though. There, all the exhibits let you touch the buttons and operate the machines and devices. They call this “interactivity” and it’s what made that museum special because this was a very new way to think about museums at the time. Before that, museums would put everything behind glass and you could only look at it. After seeing the Deutsches Museum and how well people liked interactivity, it was decided that Chicago should have the first museum like that in our country.
The Deutsches Museum also had a mine exhibit so when they were thinking of how our museum should be, they knew it had to have a mine too. That was the first thing they started building, even before they thought to ask for leftover things from the fair. Ours isn’t a real coal mine, but it is meant to look exactly like one called the Old Ben No. 17 that used to operate in southern Illinois. They even took all the old machinery from the real mine and put it in the replica they dug out under the museum.
Leave it to diesels to know nothing about coal, but at least we’re a little less ignorant about it now. You were right; the mine is too big to fit on one postcard, so they have a few different ones with smaller parts of it. My guides will enclose these so you can see.
The coal mine was our museum’s first exhibit and until U-505 arrived, it was the most popular one too.
As it happens, my guides say too that even if they had named the MSI after the World’s Fair, U-505 might still have made it here. The Deutsches Museum has a submarine so of course the MSI had wanted to have one too. It’s unfortunate everything that had to happen in order for our museum to get its submarine, but it’s also very fitting in the end that he should be a German one, since we get so much else of our Ways from the Deutsches Museum.
As to the baby chicks, when they’re about a week old they get sent to the Lincoln Park Zoo. They have a Farm-in-the-Zoo exhibit there where people can pet the animals. We have a farm exhibit here too but aside from the chicks, our animals are just models or robots. Apparently, though, some parts of the farm exhibit had to be put behind glass. The baby chicks are in a glass case because they are small and could get hurt or lost. The cow milking exhibit has a glass wall too because people kept twisting the tails off the model cows. That’s not the kind of interactivity they had in mind!
Your new flagman sounds like a great addition to the authenticity of your museum. Stopping to wait for your L cars to pass is very interactive. You’re also right about wax: wax would just dull stainless steel. I’m sure your cars shine just as brightly as mine do without it (you’re catching up, haha).
Your friend,
Pioneer