Dear Pilot,

999 says that in her day, they didn’t do all these publicity stunts that started coming into vogue in the 20’s. As I’m sure you are wondering too, no, apparently breaking speed records or attending world’s fairs do not count. She means all the “circus antics” as she put it. I asked what specifically she meant, to give me an example, but she suddenly did not want to discuss it any further. I do wonder though if these “circus antics” didn’t come into style in the 20’s because we had just gotten out of a Great War and then stuck around because we went into a Great Depression. Maybe a birthday cake for a train – just as an example – would have seemed silly in the Gay 90’s, but certainly no one was going to say no to free cake in 1944.

It’s been a bit of a circus around here (and not just in the circus exhibit). We’ve had a lot of visitors over the past few months. Not just the usual kind, although we’ve had plenty of them too. We’re on track to break our attendance record again. Lots of famous people have come to visit us as well though and that always gets us in the paper and reminds everyone else to come see us. We had President Walter Scheel from West Germany last June and the Empress Farah Diba of Iran in July. She says she wants to make a museum like ours in her country.

Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones visited too when the band came to Chicago to play a concert last month. My guides were particularly excited about him! They even sang a little bit of the band’s music for me. I don’t really understand it, but they were having fun and that’s always good for the museum too.

I hope I didn’t seem like I was lamenting my articulation. I do think roundhouses and your barns sound comfortable and friendly, but being an outdoor engine isn’t so bad. It’s even sort of a… vote of confidence, let’s say. That you and I and all my yardmates are outside is because our minders know we’re still strong enough to bear the weather. Not bad for a forty-year-old engine! And it isn’t as though we articulates weren’t given our own privileges. We had wyes built at all our termini so we could turn around (there was some back and forth over whether it was termini or terminuses when there’s more than one, but my guide likes the sound of termini better). We also had our own maintenance yard with special equipment to work on us. They called it the Zephyr Pit. I hear it’s still called that, even though we don’t use it anymore.

The work your museum does is truly amazing, both in results and volume. 13,000 hours on one engine is difficult to conceive of, let alone on one that’s been retired. That 1630 is making the most of her restoration immediately shows she appreciates every second they put into her. And that her jumping right in frees up your Shay to get her turn in the shops; it’s very familial, isn’t it? Sort of like how Æolus would cover the Twin Cities Zephyr for Pegasus or Zephyrus when they were due for overhaul. It would have been strange to think of doing such favors for engines from other railways when we were in revenue service, but we’ve both found ourselves with new fleets built out of fellow relics from our fallen flags. And navies, as it were. (2903’s loud snorting suggests I am getting a little sentimental for his liking.) As for your Green Hornet, I’ve never seen one, but my guide describes them as “cute”. I’m sure she’ll make herself a nice compliment to your CTA twins once she’s compliant with safety regulations.

Your people are very dedicated. Ours are too, obviously, but it’s a little different here than there. We don’t really need maintenance here the way you do, but we still have a lot of different kinds of support for us. Taxes and donations and things, official contributions so they create a sense of obligation, if that makes sense. Your people are accomplishing so much just out of a passion for your preservation.

I’m really happy they found you and brought you home to their railway. And that you are going to get your share of the hours put in. It won’t be long now before you and your Goddesses are pulling more weight among your museum’s fleet too.

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pilot,

It’s wonderful to hear you are in such fine form. You and your train have come a very long way from the state you were in when you arrived at your museum. And to think, all of the work you needed was seen through to the end by volunteers. It gives one a sense of pride in our service to know they cared so much to do it all on their own time and resources.

I am very happy to know there is now a full set of stainless steel keeping the Way of the Zephyrs in operating service again. (Nothing against our brothers in California, of course, but not being fully stainless steel, I consider them more of a spiritual successor.) You must be such a shining sight to behold. I wish I could see. Maybe your volunteers will send me a picture once you’re all steam cleaned and repainted?

As for our operations here, while we are closing down our yard for the winter season, inside they are putting in an ice cream parlor (just in time for the cold weather, haha!). It’s to be attached to the Yesterday’s Main Street exhibit, which is a replica of a typical Chicago street in 1910.

They’re calling it Finnegan’s Ice Cream Parlor, after the drugstore all the fixtures came from. There’s cabinets with glass doors and a big counter and a set of stained glass windows. They’ve all been preserved with the same kind of dedication and care that we have, all the way back from 1911 when they were first installed through to 1970 when they were donated to us. It’s a wonder too because all these things they’re putting in have changed hands and been moved to new locations and repurposed, but have been kept together all this time. There’s also a big collection of ice cream parlor tools and mementos they’re putting in the cabinets. Visitors will be able to look at all of them while they enjoy their ice cream in an authentic turn-of-the-century parlor.

I do wonder how much ice cream visitors will want to eat when it gets below freezing outside, but they do keep it comfortable indoors so who knows! If it’s not popular now, it will be in summer.

All of us in our yard send our congratulations on your train’s fantastic Members Day run and look forward to hearing about so many more that you’ll get tired of telling us.

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pilot,

You and Ceres were right; despite the colder weather, the new ice cream parlor has been quite popular. I’m told it’s given Yesterday’s Main Street renewed interest. It looks quite dark in the postcard, but the ice cream parlour is bright and inviting. There was a picture in the newspaper of it that my guide thoughtfully clipped for me to send to you.

When we were new, everyone was so concerned with modernization and leaving the old behind. Give them thirty years though and now they are preserving not just us, but whole rooms and even entire buildings. Maybe since modern life goes at hundred miles per hour, it’s all people want to sit down, have some ice cream, and actually wait for a train.

As for the MSI’s holiday plans, there are too many to recount. All the trees for Christmas Around the World have been put up, of course. We’re also hosting a lot of cultural programs and dinners this month. Most of these are for countries represented by our trees and some nights more than one, but there was also one for Girl Scouts since they came in to decorate the American tree for us. Later this month, there’s going to be a lot of choral performances from local schools too. There’s so much happening indoors all at once that my guide says it’s a bit of a relief to come outside, even if it is cold.

We engines do look magnificent in the snow. In those early years, they used to shovel big piles of it onto our tracks for us to run into at speed. They called it “busting snow” and they would take pictures because they thought they could sell our shovelnoses as being good as snowplows. I’m not sure if we were really much better at it under less staged conditions, haha. We looked good at it though. There’s a really nice photo of one of my brothers with the snow bursting in front of him and flying out off his windows. It’s very dramatic and striking. I wish I knew which one he was; people often mistake that photo for me.

With our yard closed for the season, though, the guests only get to see the broad side of me and my train from the parking lot. Not my best angle and stainless steel can sometimes get lost in all that white, but at least U-505 serves as a backdrop for us to stand against. 999 and 2903 are looking much more picturesque with a nice dusting of powder. Their black liveries contrast so well against snow. They looked like a picture in a storybook together last week.

Snow used to feel very final to me. It marked the end of our working season, when they close off our yard for the year. My last run was on a snowy day too, you know. I wanted to go as fast as I could since I knew it was my last chance to, but also to draw it out as long as possible. My guide says people think of their lives in terms of seasons too and winter is the ending for them as well.

Ever since I’ve started asking about what goes on inside though, the cold weather doesn’t feel like an end at all. Things are still happening at my museum all through the winter and will be at yours when the new year starts too. As busy as it is, it’s nice to think of your winterized steam engines all buttoned up in their shed. Everyone has worked so hard this year, it’s nice to know you’re all getting a moment to sit and wait for spring too.

I’ll try then to appreciate the same in my own yard, but anticipating your next letter does help pass the time.

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pilot,

Who knew seeing our ice cream parlour would be so aspirational for your Goddesses? If I remember right, your cars had beautiful interiors. I’m sure your volunteers can get them looking brand new again, inside and out. Vesta shouldn’t worry about her age; I’m sure a little reupholstery and a good shine would have all your cars looking like the day they were delivered.

I like to think me and my train were holding up well when we retired. People still wanted to take pictures, at least.

It was a funny thing actually. I had two last runs, revenue and a special. The funny thing though was that a few years earlier in ‘57, they announced I’d be retired and I don’t think anyone had any designs to make any sort of fanfare of it. One newspaper even supposed I might be scrapped and sent to “a roundhouse in the sky”. (I’d hope not; I’d have to lose my cars to fit in it.) They reconsidered though and put me on a local between Lincoln and St. Joseph instead.

I suppose a lot must have changed in three years. When they decided I was really, truly going to be retired in ‘60, they had all these ideas about putting me up somewhere. In the 50’s, they started displaying retired steam engines in parks and next to train stations. There was this one the Sante Fe put up in a park in Atchison (2903 says he thinks it was No. 811) who had apparently become a bit of an attraction and St. Joseph particularly wanted me for that. Our railroad also thought I might look nice outside of the headquarters. There was even talk of the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (but they had to settle for my original engine).

I’m happy to have ended up at the MSI though. A park wouldn’t have had room for anyone but me and my cars. I’d have missed out on such wonderful company.

Once they decided that’s what was to be done with me, they announced my last revenue service: February 20th, 1960. That run was fairly uneventful, snowy as well. Mr. Ottens, my engineer for my first revenue service, came out to see me one last time though. He was there waiting right as I pulled into Lincoln. It was quite nice of him, really. He said it was hard to quit the railroad after so long and I certainly knew what he meant.

I had to go to the shops in Aurora to be refurbished before I could come to the MSI. Mr. Able, the assistant general passenger agent back then, arranged for the trip to be a special run so people could take one last ride with me. (It was also a way to sell tickets on a trip I’d have otherwise been deadheading. Burlington to the last.)

It was March 20th, Lincoln to Galesburg with stops in Omaha, Creston, Fairfield, Ottumwa, and Burlington. We left at 8:00 AM.

I didn’t know it when we set out, but two of our passengers had rode with us on our first revenue service and another had been on our Dawn-to-Dusk run. I had 50 passengers starting out and more boarded as we made each of our stops. Since 500 had been removed from our consist, we didn’t have enough seats for all of them as more people got on. They had set up chairs in 505 to accommodate them, but it was less comfortable. I remember her being quite vocal on the subject, wishing she still had her seats and buffet grille. 570 and I were both a bit short with her about it, which I regretted later. It’s only natural to want your last run to be ideal, but we didn’t want to ruin it by focusing on how we wished things were. The feelings were complicated for all of us that day.

As we crossed the state line, we stopped before the bridge in Plattsmouth so the passengers could get out and take pictures. No snow busting this time, but I remember a particularly lovely photo of my cars just as we’re rolling onto the bridge; 570 in the foreground and 505 behind her, bright white snow all around (I was behind a sign, but I think a picture of the end of my train for the end of our run is rather poignant). We made another short stop on the bridge itself so they could take more pictures and then we carried on into Iowa.

My engineer that day, Mr. White, was blowing my horn through all the towns we passed through. It was so similar to the horn abuse on my Dawn-to-Dusk run that I wondered if I might not lose speed. Not that I would have particularly minded. I at once wanted to go as fast as I could because I knew I’d never get the chance again, but I also wanted my last run to last as long as possible. I would obviously never wish for a malfunction, but if I had to stop and stay on the rails a little longer, it wouldn’t have been the worst thing to happen. My horn worked fine with no loss of power but we did get up to the speed limit a time or two, which is as good a bargain as I could have asked.

We arrived a bit early in Ottumwa so people waiting for other trains at their station had a spare minute to inspect me one last time, while my own passengers got out to stretch their legs. They came back to tell me that there was a steam engine displayed on the other side of the station, No. 3001, who sent along her congratulations and admiration for my service. I found out later that she was one of the first Æolus’ sisters. She’d been set up on the other side of the station the past Labor Day. I wish I could have spoken to her directly or at least returned her well-wishes, but there wasn’t time to send someone back around to the other side of the station by then.

When we arrived in Burlington, they wanted to take more photos on the Mississippi River bridge. They had us do a staged run on it where we crossed over it, let everyone off, and then backed up so they could take photos and film of us approaching. It made the last shots of us in motion look especially dynamic.

The final stop of the run was Galesburg. There was one last crowd waiting for us. 5:30 P.M. on the dot and that was the end of our revenue service. We were to stay there for the night before heading to Aurora the next day, but as for our passengers, the California Zephyr and Kansas City Zephyr were there to take them the rest of their way. They were so tall, just like Silver Bullet. It was comforting to hand my passengers off to other Zephyrs. I could trust any Burlington engine with them, of course, but to have it have be Zephyrs was more meaningful. I knew they wouldn’t just be carrying our passengers to their destinations, but carrying on our service as well.

When I first came to the MSI, I didn’t think of my last run as a happy memory. Even – or maybe especially – when we are to be preserved, I don’t think any of us are ready to quit. I realized that I was very well cared for in my last day of service. Most engines don’t get such a ceremonious end to their working lives. It was all done because even if it was time for us to retire, they wanted us to know we weren’t going to be forgotten.

Despite how conclusive snow feels, everything does become new again once it melts, doesn’t it? It marks the start of a new year and all the things that start in it. I took my last run in snow and found I still had service waiting for me once it cleared.

It only makes sense that the second generation of Zephyrs should have emerged from snow too.

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pilot,

My yard is just as excited about your letters as yours is of mine. My yardmates mostly pretend to mind their own business when it’s being read. I think they are just trying to give me my privacy, but that seems to go out the window when it comes time to write back. I don’t mind if they listen or if they help reply though. It’s always a good day on our lawn when we’re catching up on our mail and I’d have less to say if they didn’t!

Venus is very kind with her compliments and Vesta is also right. I have been very lucky. Not only have I been given so many stories to tell, but I was also given many examples of how to tell them over my service life. If I am a good storyteller now, it’s because I got to learn by listening to all my friends telling other people about me.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but when I first came to the MSI, I didn’t really appreciate that I was being given a new job or how well prepared for it I’d been. When you talk about your last run… In ‘67, I’d have probably still been foolish enough to want to be there with you. Even now, it still makes me wish I could have lent a wheel, although I can at least say it’s because it sounds grueling and I’d have wanted to help a friend, not just because I’d be back on the rails too. I wouldn’t have been much use though. Even if you weren’t built to haul freight, that you did it at all is impressive to me.

As fortunate as I’ve been, to still be here to tell my stories, I feel even more so that you have as well.

Perhaps your train would like to try telling a story too? You know, we shovelnoses were custom built for our routes and so we didn’t really see much of each other once we were in service. Maybe they could tell me a story about Pegasus? They would have known her much better than I did and I’m always happy to hear about my siblings.

We’re just opening back up here in our yard now that the days are getting brighter, but it turns out, things happen at our museum when we’re closed too! My guides say there’s a big counter inside in the farm tech exhibit that says how many people there are in the world. Would you guess that there are four billion now? The counter just rolled over on the 27th last month. I imagine it would have been quite the spectacle, but it happened at night when no one was there to see it! By the time the museum opened the next day, a hundred thousand more people had been born. And we thought we were hatching chicks so quickly, haha!

My guides also think your Ely sounds very similar in spirit to our Rocket. I’ve mentioned him before and that I’ve never met him myself, but I did meet his brother at the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948. They’re both replicas of the original Stephenson’s Rocket so they have that same regal 19th century styling like Ely and 999 have. They’re so fancy even that they have crowns on top of their funnels! They have a third “half” brother too – or so our Rocket likes to joke to his visitors – who lives at museums in both New York and London because he’s been cut in half to show how he works. Apparently U-505’s guides mentioned the U-boat at the Deutsches Museum to the Rocket and he thought it was very amusing to have something in common with the submarine outside. U-505 didn’t have anything to say back though. Explaining why it’s funny might be beyond his English.

There’s actually a lot of Rocket replicas because they still have the original plans, but our Rocket and his brothers were made in the 30’s by the original Robert Stephenson & Co. works so they consider each other to be more brothers than the others. The one I met at the Railroad Fair was fully operational, steam and all, but our Rocket was always meant to be a stationary display that just demonstrates his movement. I say I was well prepared for preservation, but he was made exactly for this and has been doing it nearly as long as I’ve been around. I wish I could see him at work. I might learn something!

2903 and 999 are scoffing at the idea that an engine who’s never pulled a train could have anything worthwhile to teach one who has. U-505 defended him, though, saying the Rocket is “built to his purpose” which they didn’t have a response to.

Maybe U-505 understands his humor after all.

It’s great that people are going to get to see your museum and such a wonderful example of your stock on the television. Whenever the television comes here, people want to see us for themselves too. Picking a particularly eye-catching passenger car with a winning personality for the job is indeed very Burlington. As much as we engines have learned to entertain our visitors, our cars were “built to purpose” for charming people and making them feel welcome. Ely sounds like he was a particularly good choice.

Your visitors will know they’ve made a good choice too when they see you and all your yardmates and all the great things being done at your museum.

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pilot,

Please tell your Goddesses I enjoyed their story very much. We shovelnoses didn’t really get to see each other much, but I suspect Pegasus probably was quite tactful if she could defuse an argument like that so easily. There’s always some mudslinging in the yard, but it slides right off stainless steel in my experience. I think your Goddesses’ loyalty to her despite her necessary absence is quite admirable too. We should all be so lucky to have trains like that.

The Rocket has his defenders as well, though I’m not sure he realizes. Word is, someone from his gallery heard about what the steam engines said and that someone made sure that it’d be heard out here that The Rocket runs and our steam engines don’t so his wheels have probably turned more times than both of theirs combined at this point.

As for retiring in good condition, I actually still run too. Not my wheels, of course, but they run my engine for a few minutes once a week to keep everything primed. I’d need a little… spring cleaning first, but mechanically, if the need arose I could go right back into revenue service tomorrow. U-505 also still runs and he’s much louder about it! Obviously he couldn’t go back to work, but they put all that effort into getting his parts replaced, it only makes sense to keep them operational. People come to study him sometimes so it’s important that he can actually demonstrate his mechanics for them.

It turns out that U-505 has a poem too. One of his guides heard about the part in your letter about poems and brought the book Captain Gallery wrote about him to read U-505’s poem to us. He was quite modest about it and said he didn’t recall having a poem. I think I would remember if someone wrote me a poem, but then again, he was very new and being sent off to war so I suppose it could slip his mind.

It was written for him on his commissioning day by all the visiting officers from his sibling ships, verse by verse, sort of like a little song. It tells a story about ten British ships and each new line added would be about U-505 sinking one. He started getting bashful about it nearer the end and interrupted to say that most of the ships he sunk weren’t British at all, that the poem really wasn’t really accurate to his history and was just meant to wish him well. We actually never got to hear the end, now that I think of it, because we got off on a tangent about how it wasn’t really so important if it was accurate since it was them guessing about the future when 2903 snorted really loudly and said, “Big deal, everyone’s got a poem.”

Well, I’m sure if you had a poem, you’d have mentioned it. Certainly I don’t have one and I said as much. I asked 999 if she had a poem then. “Not to my knowledge,” she said.

I guess 2903 thought most of us preserved engines get a poem written about them at some point… because someone wrote a poem about him too! He says it wasn’t very long – four lines or so – but it was published in the newspaper. Someone saw him on a drive during his move and wrote a little bit about how he used to run fast but now he was inching to the MSI.

He didn’t really like his poem because it called him old; something about being from “a bygone day”. He’s the youngest of us in the yard and he would have only been 18 then so I could see how he would take offense. Still, not every engine gets a poem written about him. I think he has a new appreciation, knowing that neither of us “famous engines” has one (and I think U-505 was grateful for the distraction from his anyway.) I hope your 2050 is enjoying her new poems much more.

I asked about how many people the counter says there are now, but my guide says the counter goes so fast that as soon as she would have checked, the number would be much bigger by the time she got back out here to tell me. People are born very frequently these days which is actually part of the point of the counter. Seeing the number go up so fast is to make the number hard to conceive, just how you experienced it.

I am glad to hear that the population at your museum is growing too and that so many of you are also being kept in running condition as well. Please give my warm regards to 2050 and well wishes to Shay in her overhaul. And you! Hopefully your “peskiness” can be sorted out and you can help keep your rails busy in Shay’s absence.

Your friend,

Pioneer

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

Dear Pilot,

I’m not sure how much of a city engine I really am, haha. My routes were mostly between the smaller cities and even now, my museum is somewhat removed from the skyscrapers to the north. I expect your Green Hornet would consider me a bit of a hayseed compared to her, interested as I’d be to hear about her service life too. As you’d know, since we operate to and from, we never really get to see the city up close like she would have.

I hope your D.D. was not too embarrassed to derail like that. If it would be any consolation to her, people sometimes enjoy when things go wrong during a performance. There’s a kind of suspense to seeing if things can be put right or worked around while letting the show go on. They really like when they get to see something more than they were promised. That your crane got to save the day too? It’s great theatre and sounds like an excellent Members Day all around. (999 is teasing me about talking “like a show engine” as if she did not perform in the same pageant I did.)

I am, of course, most happy that you and your train got to feature even if there’s no specific day for diesels. I do hope eventually your museum finds enough of us to make a showing one day, but I’ve always found steam engines quite gracious and willing to share with us. Even early on, when they were saying diesel might replace steam, all it really took to resolve the tension with a steam engine was having a breakdown they could assist with. It’s hard to feel worried about being replaced by an engine you are having to haul into an event he’s late for and I think getting to see such a marvelous (or humorous because there was definitely laughing) sight made up for the delay. As I say, people sometimes like it when things go awry, even if it means they have to wait.

As to the goings on here, we are starting to wind down for winter in our yard, but inside is busy as ever. There’s the Industrial Research 100 exhibit where they show the top hundred new technological developments this year and a new one about clean water. Most exciting though is there was a dragon in the West Pavilion!

It’s not a real dragon, but it still sounds quite impressive! It’s eighty feet long and covered in sequins, those sparkly things that ladies’ dresses have on them sometimes. It was here from Taiwan as part of the Republic of China’s exhibit for the bicentennial. My guide says it’s a costume for eight people to share. They all stand under it and hold it up and move together, following wherever the person in front goes.

“Like a train,” she says. I imagine the dragon can take curves much more sharply than we can, but she says all the dancers have to work together to make the dragon move convincingly. Each of them is important to make it work right, which does sound very much like a train. They have to practice the dance a lot because messing up ruins the illusion that it’s a dragon. And because if you trip, you’ll take seven other people down with you, haha!

I thought comparing our train to a dragon was strange at first, but then 505 reminded me that the artists on The Silver Streak set drew us as a dragon once as well. It was a gift for our driver to thank him for helping us perform our stunts in the movie. They seemed to think we’d be more bendy as a dragon too. We’re very fortunate dragons aren’t real or we all – steam, diesel, and electric – might be out of work!

The dragon left on Tuesday because it’s due to perform in Chinatown on Sunday. I wish it could have performed here too because it’s still sort of hard to imagine how it works. It’s another one of those things only the city engines get to see, I guess! Maybe your Green Hornet has seen something like it before?

We here in our yard, guides and engines alike, all look forward to hearing what is happening in yours. We get a great deal out of your letters as well.

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pilot,

I suppose restoration is never really complete if you count maintenance, but at that point, you’ve got the boulder to the top of the hill and now you’re just rolling it over every so often so it doesn’t grow moss. Which is to say, I think your caretakers will have better luck getting your train back to full glory than Sisyphus did getting up his hill.

And I should think they’d be quite motivated, seeing how successful Green Hornet’s restoration has been. It was even in the paper! My guides cut it out to read to me. A man wrote into the Action Line column to say he liked old trains and streetcars and wanted to know where he could see some. The newspaper replied and told him to go out to see your museum (once you are open again of course). They even mentioned Green Hornet and IT 415 by name, as well as a streetcar called the Red Rocket? I don’t think you’ve mentioned them yet. With a name like that, I think I’d remember!

They went on to list some more places who are preserving engines like us too. Railway preservation is really taking off, it seems. The MSI was mentioned, but there’s also a place out in Elgin called the Relic Railway too. They specialize in collecting trolleys, the way your museum started with electrics. The newspaper also recommended the Chicago Historical Society who apparently have the other Pioneer, the one me and 999 met at the Chicago Railroad Fair. I’m glad to learn he’s being kept nicely, though my guides say his tender was misplaced at some point. I suppose he doesn’t need it anymore, haha.

999 would like to point out that being a movie engine and being a show engine are very different things. (She’s right, although I think she is just making the point because she is offended at the notion that she doesn’t need her tender just because she doesn’t need coal. I suppose that was an unsympathetic thing to say). I’m not sure how she knows exactly, since she hasn’t been in a movie as far as I can recall, but she has been to far more fairs than I have.

Being a show engine is, for the most part, a lot of standing still and being admired. It’s actually not that different from being a museum engine at all, which is part of why she and I were so lucky to end up here together. People come to inspect you and many of them even want to talk, so you have to have good manners and know your history very well. Thinking about it now, I suppose she and I are also lucky in that we had been made to do this our whole service lives. Every time we did something notable or attended an event, we’d know to remember it because we might be asked about it later.

I do think the Wheels A-Rolling pageant was very similar to being a movie engine. Although to 999’s credit, I actually think it was a little harder! Engines – even show engines – aren’t exactly used to performing for an audience as part of a large production in that way. When you think about it though, it’s basically the same as things we do in our regular service lives. You have to move on cue across the stage and stop on your mark, which isn’t that different to arriving and departing at a station. There were fewer stunts in the pageant than there were in the movie, but in the movie, if I didn’t get it right, we could try again. In front of a live audience, you have to try very hard not to mess up because you only get one chance each show.

That aspect of it had me a little nervous the first few times we did the show, but once I had my part down, I realized it wasn’t asking much. My role was to show how sleek and smooth streamliners were so all I had to do was glide down the track out from the right wing of the stage to my mark the left.

I remember 999’s part came earlier than mine though and she always looked so amazing charging over from stage left. She was reenacting her speed record run, so she had to go much faster than I did. She nailed the run every time though. Watching her, you’d get the impression that she treated every day on the Empire State Express as that kind of performance so she was right at home on a stage.

The Chicago Worlds Fair also had a pageant like that that 999 performed in. I wish I could have seen that, but I was only at the fair a few days before I was off on my exhibition tour and then put in service.

Over time, my event attendance waned, but hers was quite steady. First Streamlined Electric-Diesel Passenger Train in Revenue Service is a… qualified distinction that lost some of its note over time. First Engine to Go 100 Miles Per Hour? That’ll always draw a crowd. 999 says her schedule was less demanding as passenger service engines became more advanced so she had more value to her railroad as an exhibition piece in her later service years. Even when she was meant to be retired finally, they sent her on another exhibition tour so everyone could get a last look before they sent her to her eventual home… which they had not yet determined and were touring to stir up interest. But it worked, didn’t it?

And so it is that now we’re all enjoying our well-earned winter retirement while the inside of our museum is busier than ever. All the usual Christmas festivities are happening, the trees, visitors coming to show off their countries’ holiday customs, local students coming to sing. It’s quite serene out here on the lawn comparatively.

All of us here on the east lawn hope you and yours are resting up just as much for your coming new year.

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pilot,

We are finding it colder than usual this winter, U-505 especially.

Last month, his guides came outside to tell him that Admiral Gallery had passed away. U-505 doesn’t talk much about him usually. I’ve always assumed it was because he didn’t have much nice to say, and so felt it better to say nothing. He told us though (well, he told me really, but 999 and 2903 have tried to be mindful too) that it was more complicated than his English permitted before. He didn’t want to risk being misunderstood in his feelings and so kept them “classified”, as he put it.

Preservation is difficult for most engines, particularly at first. Even 999 and I, who have spent much of our careers doing what we do now, left revenue service still wanting. But she and I got to retire as monuments to the accomplishments of our railways and even our country. It’s always been much more difficult for U-505 because he serves instead as a trophy to our victory in the war and Gallery’s success in particular. There is indignity to his disposition (though he was quick to assure our guides that the museum keeps him very well and it was nothing they could help.)

Had he been given the choice, he would have preferred to be scrapped or scuttled as part of Operation Deadlight, along with all the rest of Germany’s naval fleet. It was agreed after the war that all of the German ships surrendered to the Allies would be sunk or broken up. Gallery argued that since U-505 hadn’t been surrendered by Germany, but had been captured before the war ended, he was exempt from the operation. The navy agreed that he was right on a technicality, but they didn’t know what else to do with U-505 so it wasn’t long before they started talking about using him for gunnery and torpedo practice anyway.

U-505 would have preferred this to preservation as well. I’m sure it’s just as shocking to you to read this as it was for us to hear, but he says this would have been an honorable end of service for a military unit. He tried to explain it to us. He says that the purpose of machines like him is to fight until a victor emerges and the conflict is resolved. Once peace is restored – whether his side wins or loses – he should be obsolete. And so, being destroyed in either event is an honorable exit, one that all of his allies and enemies alike were given.

I do follow what he means, but I think I am not drawn to really understand it the way he does.

Unbeknownst to U-505 though, Gallery was already working on getting him another stay of execution. Almost as soon as the navy agreed U-505 would be exempt from Deadlight, Gallery’s brother, a pastor here in Chicago, supposed that U-505 might make a good war memorial. They were both Navymen and had noted that there were many war memorials around the country for land battles, but not many for ones at sea. Reverend Gallery happened to mention this idea to Mr. Lohr, the museum president at the time. The museum had wanted a submarine from the start since the Deutsches Museum had one, so he thought bringing U-505 here was a great idea.

It took them nine years to figure everything out and make arrangements. All the while, U-505 sat moored waiting and expecting to be blown up. It all finally started being put in motion in 1953 and he only then realized what must be happening when museum staff started coming to inspect him. The finer points of that part of the story were… colorful and he does not wish us to commit it to print. To put it shortly, he had never been more dismayed, not even when they prevented him from sinking in the first place.

But, he says, all of this was Captain Gallery’s right as victor. And disappointed as he was at the time, U-505 has come to think of his disposition as a fair trade.

As mentioned before, U-505 is not just a captured war prize put on exhibit, but also serves as a memorial to American seamen lost at sea. Often – and especially at war – when a ship sinks, she takes her crew with her to the bottom of the ocean. No ship knows this better, U-505 told us, than the U-boat. Near the end of his service, he and his crew thought it was all but an inevitability that they would never return home. Nearly three out of four German submariners died at sea.

But U-505’s crew didn’t.

It’s a funny thing (an ironic thing, which is a type of humor I find U-505 is partial to) that in capturing his crew and taking them prisoner, Captain Gallery very probably saved their lives. More to the point, as far as U-505 is concerned, Gallery didn’t have to rescue them and did anyway. In fact, it was both a very large imposition to take on 58 prisoners and it also meant they’d be violating the Geneva Convention and committing a war crime because they couldn’t tell anyone about it if they wanted to keep U-505’s capture a secret. In doing so, U-505 suspects that Gallery was actually showing off. Observing prize rules as he did when capturing a submarine is also ironic, since submarine warfare is why those rules were abandoned. But it remains that all but one of U-505’s crewmen survived the war, thanks to Captain Gallery’s orders to rescue them.

U-505 would have preferred any of the less permanent dispositions Gallery made it his business to deny him, but things having shook out as they have, he says he would serve as he does “58 times over”. I was obviously happy to hear this from him after all that talk of him being blown up! For as much as he sees Gallery’s interventions as missed chances at an honorable end of service, I selfishly can’t help but think how lucky I am to be in a yard with him now. I hope one day he’ll see his service here now as being as noble as rusting away at the bottom of the ocean would have been. In any event, we both have reason to remember Admiral Gallery in gratitude. (U-505 is scoffing at me now, but I don’t think he dislikes what I said.)

The story of your CA&E 321 and her sisters lingered about the yard for a while as well. Scrap is a strange subject around here. Though we’ve all ended up preserved, we’ve each been confronted with the possibility of being scrapped. Whether it’s preferable to preservation has proven to be a question for every engine to answer alone. The idea that our parts could go on after us to keep another engine, especially a sibling, in service was a new possibility we’d never thought of though. Melted down and rebuilt into something else entirely like the City of Salina or replaced entirely by another piece of equipment like 525 almost was, sure, but being broken up and used to repair other engines? It’s obviously a done thing – it’d be wasteful otherwise – but it hadn’t occurred to any of us. U-boats just didn’t end that way usually, 999 and I are so specific to our builds, and yet 2903 had enough siblings that he doesn’t think they would have bothered.

Having considered the idea though, it has its appeal if scrap were inevitable. It is a nice thought that 318 will be a part of her sisters now. And more than that, as long as 321 and 319 are preserved and in service, then 318 will remain Useful too long past her own service life. She’ll be remembered and appreciated for it forever.

Speaking of continuing Usefulness, there’s an art exhibit about another preserved ship here presently. They are showing a collection of paintings and drawings of the USS Constitution. They call her “Old Ironsides” even though she is a wooden sailing ship because her hull was so thick that cannonballs just bounced off it. U-505 sounded quite impressed by that and I asked him if he would like a thick wooden hull. He still has holes in his, but he says he wouldn’t have been able to dive if he was made of wood.

They tell us the actual USS Constitution is still in service, the oldest commissioned warship still afloat in fact! She has a museum in Boston all about her, but she still goes out for events. She even led Operation Sail, the bicentennial parade that Christian Raddich had come to America to perform in. Small world!

Imagine being built in 1797 and still leading parades? I can’t even imagine 1797 itself! 999 was built in 1893 and she says the world was so different then even compared to the 30’s. The 30’s seem so different compared to now and that’s only 40 or so years. It’s incredible to think a ship could still be around and still in service after almost two hundred!

Soon enough, they’ll say the same thing about all of us. Maybe they already do and just don’t let us hear it, haha.

Your friend,

Pioneer