Dear Pioneer,

Happy to provide more words for U-505’s reserve! Though I should really credit Venus since she’s the one with the vocabulary on my train. Vesta knows a lot of words as well, but some of her favorites are not fit for print. We don’t have to remind her not to use them in front of visitors, but I think it’s better to avoid teaching them in the first place. Of course, sometimes it can’t be helped. I bet U-505 could probably share just as many of those sorts of German words picked up from his crew.

It is nice for the engines at the IRM to be able to share their work history, those that have ones worth remarking on, but most of us here are like 2903. We’re not as famous as you or 999 or U-505, but our visitors know that already. Instead of coming to listen to our stories, they bring their own. Many of our regulars and volunteers are retired railroad workers themselves so they lend their knowledge to the operations and teach others about rail history. Every engine here, static or operational, helps by being a visual aid for learning or a reminder of the old days. It’s a different kind of entertainment, but our visitors seem to like it.

Of course, I’d be happy to share more about the VistaDome train! I only didn’t in the first place because I figured there wouldn’t be much to tell that you wouldn’t already know. I forget that your experience pulling trains is so different from mine. We pulled the VistaDome train a month after their debut in December of 1947, but the story of the dome cars actually starts a little earlier than that.

In 1945, the Q wanted to take advantage of the beautiful scenery their lines ran through, so they took a regular chair car named Silver Alchemy and sent her to Aurora where they added the glass observation dome on top and renamed her Silver Dome. At the time, they told me there was no other car like her anywhere and, boy, did she know it! I’d certainly never seen a car like that and most of our passengers hadn’t either. The dome car was so popular that they decided to build eight more to fill out the third Twin Cities Zephyr train, which is where I come in! They were a fun bunch on that train, very well-behaved for new stock. All of them were named for things the passengers might see as they looked out the dome windows, Silver Bluff, Silver Glade, Silver River, and so on.

It worked out well. The passengers enjoyed the views and it passed the time nicely on that route which – to answer your question – was indeed very scenic! It was so scenic in fact that they eventually started printing out brochures describing what could be seen from the domes. They made quite a few more of the VistaDome cars until the mid-50’s when passenger traffic started falling off, but I’m told they still run them on the California Zephyr and they’re as popular now as they ever were.

I don’t like to ask about other engines’ misfortunes since I don’t have that experience to share, but your mention of being partially rebuilt did remind me of something! They did actually rebuild Silver Inn after the Naperville wreck for the Kansas City Zephyr. Or I should say they rebuilt a Silver Inn. I don’t think it was the same car. What I mean is, they built a new car and gave him the name of the old car, but the new Silver Inn didn’t remember the wreck or anything before it. But your front end isn’t original, if I’m understanding right? And Silver Alchemy was the same after she became Silver Dome. That is, she remembered being Silver Alchemy before they rebuilt her. I don’t claim to know anything about rebuilding but I wonder how all that works, especially considering the new Silver Inn. I’m sure there were a few cases of mistaken identity there.

Speaking of which, it has been brought to my attention that my train decided not to tell me there were two Æolus because they thought it would be funny. They were leading me along for a while after my last letter, telling me how Æolus had been in service years before they pulled the Goddesses’ train and yet was newly built at the same time. Or that they were a modified S-4 Hudson and somehow also a completely custom component build. Venus finally gave up the gag when she thought the joke was played out (the rest thought they could have dragged it on for a good while longer.) Back in their service days, it was an open secret that there were two Æolus. Venus says an open secret is when everyone knows a thing, but they pretend that they’re not supposed to. It sounds like that just makes things complicated for no reason, but it’s supposed to be for fun. Although, actually, it was fun once I knew there were two too.

No. 4000 was an S-4 Hudson from the regular service pool who got picked to be made into Æolus because he was due for an overhaul at the right time. He’d been built in 1930 and was an experienced engine by the time he pulled their train in ‘37, although the Goddesses say he was stuffy about regulation and would get on to them for chattering in the station. To get him back, they’d call him “Alice” like the crewmen did. Juno says the railroad workers thought Æolus was too hard to pronounce. It took me a few tries to get it right, but the Goddesses have unusual names too so they think it is important to say them correctly (unless you are sassing your engine).

No. 4001 was built fresh from components later that summer and though she and 4000 mostly looked the same once they had their shrouds, they were quite different to each other. Since 4001 was new and had improvements to 4000, she could sometimes be impatient and not listen to his advice. The Goddesses got along better with her than 4000 though (I’m sure you suspect why too). They didn’t see the Æolus that often, only when Pegasus was due in the shops. Otherwise, the two of them pulled the Black Hawk like you said.

Vesta was particularly excited to tell me that sometimes, if the Æolus’ shroud panels weren’t secured properly after being opened for maintenance, they might fly up and flap about when the train got up to speed. The crewmen would call this “lifting their skirts”. It looked very silly and was also very loud, which Minerva remembers as being a lot less funny than Vesta does. She says the noise startled the passengers and the train would have to stop for the crew to close the shroud panels properly. If she was embarrassed by the delay, I can’t imagine how the Æolus themselves must have felt!

Once the Zephyr trains had us E5’s to cover them, they took the shrouds off the Æolus, so they went back to being normal steam engines. Not being streamlined anymore must feel strange, but I think it’s nice that steam engines can take it on and off. It’s like a coat for them! Minerva says their crews were happy not to have to fuss with their shrouds anymore.

A few of our steam engines got new coats of their own last month. Coats of paint, that is. Work hasn’t slowed down at all in the steam shop; I can hear how busy they are all the way out here! Since we’ll be closing up for the cold season, Shay says the painting is just a matter of convenience. They all need to have their tenders emptied and their cabs cleaned out, and they might as well get their paintwork done while they’re there. The volunteers say that Frisco 1630 won’t be finished before Christmas, but that’s okay because they got so far along with her work that they’ll be ready to hit the ground running after the New Year. Venus and I have passed along our well-wishes with Tuskegee to send to her (long workshop stays can be dreadfully boring), but both Shay and Tuskegee say Frisco’s in high-spirits and looking forward to spending the winter in a warm barn. Can’t say I blame her!

The trolley department’s been just as lively as the steam workshop. 9553 and 9631 tell me the volunteers who maintain the overhead wires had a word with the company in charge of removing the bus lines in Chicago after trolley services shut down in March and they’ve come into all kinds of hardware straight from the old CTA lines. Our guys even helped them take down the wires in exchange for the parts! I don’t know if that’s philanthropy or not. Vesta called it ‘salvage’. Either way, the trolley bus garage has been slowly filling up as the new parts trickle in. 9553 joked that they’ll have to park 9631 outside if they run out of room indoors, which I don’t think he appreciated very much.

Thanksgiving is next week, which means the end of our operating season and saying goodbye to all the engines we see regularly for a few months. It’s not lonely with the Goddesses and there will still be volunteers who come in to do occasional work, but it’s definitely about to get a lot more quiet around here. Last year when the museum closed, I was still dealing with the broken valve spring and feeling very sorry for myself. This year I feel almost excited! Seeing all the hard work being done to improve the museum and meeting all our new stock, it’s hard not to feel like the future here is bright. Since it is almost Thanksgiving, I also wanted to thank you and your guides for the letters yet again! I think they’ve contributed to the future seeming as bright as it does.

Wishing you and everyone at the MSI happy holidays!

Your friend,

Pilot

Dear Pilot,

When you hear the sound of depth charges splashing in the water above, U-505 tells us, you will hear some of the most devout words right along with the filthiest. They were indeed in German though so he keeps those to himself. For once however, our entire yard agrees that certain situations not only permit – but perhaps even call for – some choice words not fit for the public.

That your visitors don’t expect to be educated or entertained… I enjoy talking about my revenue service and I don’t think I’d like it if no one asked to hear about it. Still, every now and then, someone who rode my train and remembers us will take over and guide a tour themselves. It sounds like your museum is more like that, by design. I always appreciate when a guest takes over because as I get further away from my last run, I find younger guests can’t really understand what my train was beyond what we are now. It’s one thing to tell them about your work yourself or for a guide to, but quite another to have someone among them enthusiastically going on about it instead. It’s like being introduced to them by an old friend then.

I hope that is what it is like at your museum too.

Of course, there’s obviously something to be said for filling in the gaps for them. No one person can know your entire history better than you yourself do. And sadly, as time marches on, it must get harder to come across someone who, for instance, rode in Silver Dome for that first run. It sounds like a wonderful trip and true to the Q, they made sure to capitalize on every part of it. It’s a story you should capitalize on now.

You must have pulled all sorts of cars over your revenue service too. It wouldn’t have done to say so then, since being a flagship engine with a dedicated train is a great privilege, but I was always a little envious of the pool service engines when I was still running. I got to see a lot of the Burlington Route out of necessity because they kept having to reassign me when I couldn’t handle the traffic anymore. I even worked all the way down in Texas for a short while! I always had a regular route though; it would have been a waste of the name to move me around so much that people couldn’t expect me. So pool service always seemed exciting, not knowing what cars were going to be in your train or where you’d even be going that day. If I had been built for pool service I probably would have preferred the stability of my train as it was, but the grass is always greener on the other side of the track, isn’t it?

And the cars kept getting more specialized and swappable, once they let go of the articulation. They packed all they thought I needed into two cars and still had to add a third later. And that was before they started making sleeper cars and lounges and drawing rooms. Did your Texas Zephyr have a regular roster or did they switch them in and out a lot? What kinds of cars did you have for that route? You seem to remember your cars very well for having worked with so many.

You even remember cars that weren’t on your trains! It’s a little strange that they decided to build a new Silver Inn, but it makes sense that he wouldn’t be the same Silver Inn. That crash was so notorious and everyone heard about how he’d been wrecked. I have always wondered if we aren’t only who we are because we are known to be. That is, I could have my entire front end replaced but I’m still the Pioneer Zephyr because people know I am. Silver Alchemy can become Silver Dome quite easily with just a change of a nameplate. But Silver Inn? Everyone knows that’s a new Silver Inn.

My coaches disapprove of yours misleading you about the Æolus. They say it’s unbecoming and disrespectful to lie to their engine. I have gently tried to argue that it isn’t a lie to leave a detail out and that there’s some room for fun when there’s no schedule to keep. I had to be a lot less gentle when they said that maybe I do suspect why the Goddesses got on so well with No. 4001. I didn’t realize they’d neglected to say there were two Æolus when you first mentioned them though so I hope you didn’t feel silly about it when you found out.

I’m glad to hear you’re all being cared for so well, especially now that it’s winter. Like washdowns, it’s an undertaking to repaint us. Thankfully, stainless steel doesn’t need paint and U-505 was painted when he was delivered here. I doubt the steam engines would say no to a new slick of black though. It’s good that you’re keeping tabs on each other even when some of you are tucked up in barns. I still think, despite our differences, we here in our yard would be less content if any of us were moved out of sight.

It would be nice to have someone on the inside of the museum who could tell us what was going on in there. The guides mention things, but it’s hard to imagine without being able to see it yourself. Some of it I can guess at, but only because I’ve seen it before somewhere else. Like automobiles or airplanes or the Rocket replica they have in there; I’ve never met the one who works here, but I did meet another Rocket at the Railroad Fair. He belonged to Henry Ford, who makes automobiles out of Michigan. Our Rocket isn’t made to steam, only to show how his machinery moves, but Ford’s Rocket was and he performed in the pageant with me and 999.

The guides say there’s Christmas trees inside too. Lots of them! They fill the main hall with them and decorate them for different countries. I didn’t think I’d get to see it since we’re too big to go indoors, but the museum made a postcard of it! They brought one out to show me and to go in this letter so you can see too. The thing in the middle of the hall is a Periodic Table of Elements. They tried to explain it but I don’t think I understand. They say elements are what everything in the world is made of and every element is on that table. Like iron and aluminum and copper. I asked if stainless steel was on it; they said no. How can that be if we’re made of stainless steel?

They said it was “complicated”.

“Complicated” like your volunteers getting all those materials from the CTA might be? Or maybe it’s the same as a lot of the things we have here at the MSI. The museum opened alongside the Century of Progress in 1933 and when the fair ended, they convinced a lot of the companies who had displays to donate them here instead of scrapping them. Most of them weren’t needed after the fair so it didn’t cost the companies anything to give them to us. Maybe a nicer way to think of your new “salvaged” hardware is that it’s a donation. Or even more generously, as a Christmas present.

Your letters are sort of like a present too. The guides say part of the fun of Christmas gifts is knowing that they’re coming but having to wait for them. Waiting for your replies is like that, I think. I’m happy that anticipating mine helps make things more cheerful there.

Here’s wishing all of you at the IRM a restful holiday so you and your volunteers will be ready to sort through your new gifts and make use of them in your yard!

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pioneer,

Please thank your guides for the postcard! It’s found a nice home pinned up in my cab alongside the others you’ve sent me. I’m a bit envious of your Rocket, getting to see all those beautiful trees up close.

It’s not quite as festive around here. Instead of holly and lights for decoration we have overhead line equipment and trolley parts! The volunteers’ goal is to get all the equipment we got from the CTA last year sorted, cataloged, and stored in the trolley bus garage before operations begin in March. This is on top of trying to build a wye out in front of the building so the cars can turn around. You can imagine the noise coming from the other side of the property.

Normally we would spend January taking it easy, but it’s been harder to rest with all the hustle and bustle going on. (Do you get the holiday season off? My letter writer says your museum is open almost every day, but I have to imagine you must get a small break.)

I’m not complaining about us being busy, mind! There’s always someone here on the weekends to keep us company, sometimes even during the week. Juno can see the garage better than the rest of us so she keeps the whole train updated on the goings-on. It’s entertainment for the Goddesses at least and keeps them from being too restless after spending better than a year sitting idle. I do wish Vesta wouldn’t speculate about when we’re going to get a diesel garage though. I told her it wouldn’t make much sense to have a whole building for just one engine. “Maybe if we get some more diesels!” I said. She just sniffed and told me our train is worth one building all on its own. Venus scolded her, but I think Vesta meant it as a compliment in her way.

I was told, in so many words, that my last few correspondences were getting a bit long. Between my letters and the Rail & Wire, they were starting to run out of typewriter ribbon! To keep things short (and not take any more time away from the Line Department), I’ll sign off here. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year!

Your friend,

Pilot

Dear Pilot,

My guides were more subtle about it but suggested the same thing; that if these letters got any longer, they’d have to put more stamps on them. They were nice about it though. Letter writing is something that people are taught in school as children. You and I are behind the curve, but they’re amused by how well we’ve taken to it. Too well, apparently!

It does remain busy inside during the holiday season, but it’s too cold for guests in the winter so they close our yard to them for the season. One cannot see everything at the museum in one day so if the visitors are going to forgo an exhibit in winter, it would probably be ours anyway. Even if we were still open then, we’d probably still not be working as much.

Since we’re not, 2903 likes to spend his days off sleeping. He spent about a decade in storage before coming here so he’s in the habit of sleeping in. The rest of us try to be quieter to let him, but it makes for a dull day.

Inside, I’m told, they only get Thanksgiving and Christmas off because there’s so much to be done over the holidays. Then once they’re over, the Christmas trees have to be taken down and all the decorations packed up. My guide says that the trees are perfectly enchanting up to about a week into January, when they then become a very large task to be done. When they started Christmas Around the World though, they just had one big tree that they redecorated every night for a different country. Having fifty separate trees that stay up all month seems more efficient even if you have to take them all down at once.

Once the trees were out of the way, they set up a Mexican-American Art Fiesta exhibit. Did you know singing and dancing are also art? I’d never thought about it before, but they had different performers come and there were a lot of school field trips to see them. That exhibit finished up on the 2nd, and now we’re hosting science fair projects from the local schools. And that’s all just since New Year! I’d never thought much about what happens indoors, but since you’ve been telling me about your shops, I’ve found out that the inside of my museum changes all the time, much more often than the outside does.

Are you the only diesel at the IRM? I suppose that’s not surprising, but I guess I just thought there’d be more of us there. Then again, when I was preserved, there was certainly… debate about the merits of it. I had the benefit of a notable local history to bolster the argument (and being a former Century of Progress exhibit makes you particularly appealing to the MSI), but diesels are still very new. But we get older every day! And if your museum started out as only for interurban cars and now they have steam engines and trolley buses and you, I’m sure more diesels will find their way there too.

They’ll be lucky to have such a singular engine to welcome them.

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pioneer,

It never occurred to me that people would need to learn how to write letters just the same as you or me. They take to lots of things so well, I just thought it was one of those things they were built knowing. It’s not that the volunteers here weren’t nice about it, they’re just busy with other important work that helps everyone at the museum, not just me. The days we write the letter together are always a highlight, but I also know that the days the volunteers inspect the interurban cars or work in the trolley garage are highlights for the other stock here too. It’s important that everyone gets the time and attention they deserve. And when it’s not my turn, I can always sleep.

It’s easy to take mine and the Goddesses’ abundance of free time for granted now. Remembering being in service with only as much downtime as the schedule allowed, I can’t think how we used to get by without sleeping for days at a time. If 2903’s trains were as frequent and tightly scheduled as the Zephyrs’ were towards the end, I can understand why he’d use your slow season to catch up. It’s nice of you to let him do that too. Can you at least whisper to U-505? What do you talk about?

You must have a lot of volunteers and guides to get fifty trees taken down so quickly! We can get wires hung and track laid as fast as you like, but it requires a lot of effort and everyone working together so we can’t do it all the time. The Art Fiesta sounds quite lively, especially if there’s singing and dancing! I expect your visitors will be surprised and delighted to find art at their science and industry museum. I would never have guessed that your exhibits change so frequently, but I suppose industry is also always changing, so it makes sense that the MSI has to keep pace.

As for being the only diesel here, I don’t mind it so much. That I’m here despite not being or doing anything particularly special means that there almost certainly will be more diesels preserved in the future, whether they end up here or at places like the MSI. Because it’s just me, the IRM can’t really show off how we’re different from steam or electric power right now. That might change if we were to get some new arrivals, especially if they just retired. It’s a little exciting to think about, if I’m being honest!

More immediately exciting is that March means we’re officially open for the season! Illinois Terminal 415 has been doing regular circuits on the loop since reopening. She’s an old hand at this (being the first car to actually run at the IRM all the way back in 1966!) and the visitors love her for it. I’m always amazed at the versatility of our interurban fleet. The cars are so small, but just as robust as any railroad engine. 415 didn’t even complain about the heat during her first run of the year when it was nearly 80 degrees out, which made her unique among the cars that I spoke to that day.

And with that I’ve started an argument on my own train, so I’ll leave it there. Hope it’s not so hot by you!

Your friend,

Pilot

Dear Pilot,

People – my guides were quite delighted to inform me – aren’t born knowing anything at all! It’s why they have schools and museums. I suppose that makes some sense. Locomotives are built all at once so we mostly know what to do as soon as we leave the shops, but for people it’s a process that takes years. There’s even an exhibit about it inside! They don’t have a postcard of it to show us (they say it doesn’t make for a pretty photo to send in the mail) but the exhibit shows that people start out so small that you can hardly see them at all and then they get bigger over time. At first, they can only cry and eat and sleep, but they start learning things like how to walk and talk very quickly. When they get big enough, they go to school and learn how to do science fair projects and write letters. Then the schools bring them here to learn about how they were once too small to know anything, haha!

U-505 and I do talk quietly to each other on our days off. Ours is the same as any yard, where we talk about the same things over and over. On Thanksgivings, I always like to ask him what he’s grateful for. I mostly mean it as a joke since U-505 thinks he’s been rather unlucky (I disagree). Thanksgiving is an American holiday so he always tries to argue with me that it’s not any German machine’s place to intrude on our celebrations. I think he is really just avoiding the question. With enough goading though, he usually will admit to being grateful for “American hospitality”, which I suspect is him joking back even if he says it with total seriousness.

On our Christmas days off, I ask U-505 to tell his Christmas story. He just has the one because he was only in service for two years and he was in dock over his first Christmas because he was being repaired after that airplane attack. It’s a funny thing though. U-505’s very proud of the story, but it’s also a little embarrassing so he’ll only tell it if he thinks 2903 isn’t listening. I can only ask him to tell it on Christmas then.

The guides say that you and I are both products of the Great Depression and this is why we are more given to appreciate our lot in life and even the lots of others. U-505 and 2903 are both wartime builds and maybe that is why they do not get along.

415 sounds like a very dedicated, hard worker. I imagine all of your engines in operating condition are determined to give your visitors a solid ride. I always kept an ear out for complaints about heat from cars though. If cars are hot, the passengers probably are too. They’d be used to having air conditioning now so they’re more sensitive to heat. Has there been any progress on repairing your cars’ air conditioning? My guides say that stainless steel reflects the sun’s rays, rather than absorbing it like dark paint would, so they should be cooler than a lot of other stock in your yard.

Maybe we come out of the shop knowing how to do our jobs, but we’re still learning new things all the time, aren’t we? And it’s another thing to be grateful for! I don’t think it’s too terribly hot yet, so it must be working like they say. We also get nice breezes in from across the lake too.

2903 and 999 are agreeing loudly about their paint absorbing sunlight, but they don’t mind. It’s nothing to a hot firebox. U-505 mentioned to me that he was painted all black once for his war bond tour, but he says now that he was also still in the water then so he doesn’t know if it makes much of a difference for boats.

“If it did,” he says, “it was less than three inches.”

Everyone is being so agreeable about it. It might not be too hot to argue there, but maybe it is here!

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pioneer,

I wonder why a baby exhibit wouldn’t make a good postcard? People seem to love taking pictures of babies.

It seems like I learn about a new exhibit at your museum every time I write. When they told me your museum was in the city, I could only picture the warehouses and tall buildings I used to see from the rail yard. You can imagine my surprise when your guides sent that postcard and I saw you and U-505 outside with the museum in the background! I suppose it makes sense for the MSI to have so many exhibits with a building that big to keep them all in. Do you know how many exhibits you have all together?

I was told a long time ago that the IRM used to be in the city too and it shared the grounds with the Chicago Hardware Foundry. Originally they were called the Illinois Electric Railway Museum, and were founded to preserve just one interurban car, Indiana Railroad 65. Apparently creating a museum was the best way to save her from being scrapped. And they didn’t stop with her, either, they started acquiring lots of cars! Eventually they got so many that they had to move the museum all the way out to the country to hold them all, which is why we’re in Union now.

IR 65 is like our founder in a way! Without her, none of us would be here. I’ve never met her myself but from the stories I hear, she seems nice and not at all stuck-up, even though she’s a bit of a yard celebrity. When she was built in 1931 (even earlier than you!) she was very modern, comfortable, and quiet which made her very popular and must be why the man who worked with her wanted her to be preserved. She gets some special treatment from the staff and volunteers for being the IRM’s first car, but even she’s not operational yet. It just goes to show that no one’s playing favorites when it comes to restoration, I suppose!

The weather’s nice enough now that we’ve started running our steam engines again! CE 5 is handling the bulk of the work, since the price of oil means keeping Tuskegee 101 in steam is a little too expensive. They said the high price of oil might also be why we’ve seen fewer visitors too, as it affects gas prices. Probably a good thing I’m not operational right now! Tuskegee 101 said she feels a bit guilty when they do take her out. None of us wants to be a financial drain.

CE 5 has been doing a great job though. Lower ridership means shorter trains, but it also means we get to spend more time with individual visitors and answer their questions when they have them. The Burlington heavyweight cars are a little cranky about the lack of riders because it means they don’t get to hit the main line as often as they’d like, but Vesta just sniffs at them and tells them at least they get to run. That usually cuts off the complaining pretty quickly.

No word yet on the Goddesses’ air conditioning, but there’s talk of trying to get us running before Members Day again this year. That’s a ways off yet and there’s a lot to do before then and not just on our train, so I’m not counting my chickens – to use a country expression. Venus calls this being ‘cautiously optimistic’.

If the weather is as nice by you as it’s been here, maybe your visitors can walk to the museum?

Your friend,

Pilot

Dear Pilot,

I’m learning about a new exhibit every letter now too, now that I have a reason to ask about what’s inside!

For instance, when my guides read your last letter to me, they explained that babies don’t look very cute before they’re born. The ones in the exhibit aren’t done yet so they look gross, but children sometimes enjoy when things are gross so the babies are still quite popular despite that! It seems they’ve also recently become controversial though so it’s another reason not to have a postcard of them. I don’t really understand why exactly, but I was controversial when I was new too so I’m sure it’ll blow over in forty years or so!

There’s too many exhibits at the MSI to count, especially since many of them aren’t permanent and get switched out for new things. Even with such a big building, the museum doesn’t have room to keep everything it displays forever. Having new exhibits coming in all the time gives people a reason to come back so it’s good that they swap things out.

It’s funny you mention that your museum used to be called something different. Mine did as well! Our building was first built for the World’s Columbian Exposition, the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. It was called the Palace of the Fine Arts then and they showed art from all over the world in it. Because we had that big famous fire twenty years before, the other countries sending art would only do it if the building was fireproof. All the other buildings for the Fair were not built so sturdily so when it was over, the rest of the White City got torn down or fell apart… all except our building! (999 was also built to show at the Columbian Exposition and is just as resilient!)

The museum went through more name changes before they found one they liked. There was a lot of back and forth over whether it should be named for the man who donated the money to found the museum. His name was Julius Rosenwald and everyone wanted to call it the Rosenwald Industrial Museum in honor of his civic contributions, but he insisted that the museum shouldn’t have a donor’s name on it. If it wasn’t named after him, then it would belong to the people of Chicago and he thought that was right since the people pay taxes to support us. He wanted instead to name it the Museum of Science and Industry and everyone eventually came around to his way of thinking.

When they finally settled on the name though, people didn’t quite understand how a museum could display industry. They even wrote letters to the newspaper about it. They must get it now since that’s the name that stuck. Your museum only needed two tries to get it right, but I’m glad they changed it to be broader. We wouldn’t have got to be pen pals if they only wanted your IR 65 and cars like her. But then, if you go to the trouble of founding a whole museum for one car, you have to find other things to display with her. You can’t have a museum with just one exhibit; everyone would only visit the once!

It sounds like we here in our yard are lucky that we don’t need fuel or coal anymore. The visitors can take the train and then walk to the museum to save gas, although it is a bit of a trek from the station. Our lawns are quite vast. We’re still getting plenty of visitors though. It helps that we don’t charge admission except for certain things. U-505 is making money on his tours. There’s a coal mine under the museum that costs extra to see too. I thought to ask if maybe we could send your steam engines coal since we have the mine, but my guides say it’s not meant to actually produce coal, it just shows visitors how it would be done. That’s how you display industry.

While we’re on the subject of counting chickens before they hatch though, you can do that here too. There’s an exhibit inside where you can watch baby chickens hatch from eggs right in front of you. Chicks are also kind of gross when they’ve hatched, but they get cuter real quick like babies do once they’re born. New chicks hatch here every day so keeping count of them after a few days would be difficult.

We cannot send your museum coal from our mine, but we have plenty of safely hatched chickens to count on your return to working order.

Your friend,

Pioneer

Dear Pioneer,

Venus had to explain what “controversial” was before we got too far into your last letter. She said it’s when a lot of people are in disagreement about something. That was easy enough to understand, but I’ll admit I had a hard time picturing you causing any kind of disagreement, even unintentionally. Minerva said most new inventions are controversial for a little while because change can be hard to adapt to. (Babies aren’t exactly new though, so I’m still not sure what that’s about…) It made sense when she put it like that, but I can’t help but think that the people who weren’t sure about diesel engines at first must have changed their minds when they saw how fast and brilliant you were! I’m sure premiering at the Century of Progress probably didn’t hurt either.

Seems like that’s the way to become a famous engine if you and 999’s histories are anything to go by. I didn’t realize how many World’s Fairs Chicago had or that the MSI was kind of like its own exhibit at one! They could easily have called the MSI the World’s Fair Museum instead. I’m glad they didn’t though, otherwise 2903 and U-505 wouldn’t be in your yard the same way I wouldn’t be at the IRM if they’d only stuck with preserving electric cars. Being about science and industry lets them have more exhibits anyhow, and switching them out means the MSI can still show art and fiestas and things! It’s still a Fine Arts museum, in a sense. All this to say, the MSI sounds wonderful. I’m so glad to have a friend who lives there!

It was very thoughtful of you to offer to send us coal from the mine! I passed along your message through CE 5 and he just laughed. He was delighted to report back that the whole steam fleet now considers you to be a regular comedian. I think they must know more about where coal comes from than we do. Or maybe they just think coal from a museum sounds silly. Either way, CE 5 seemed interested in the idea of a mine inside a building. He asked if I had a postcard of that too. I said I wasn’t sure how they’d fit a whole mine on one, but I told him I’d ask. Personally I’m more interested in the baby chickens. If there are new ones hatching every day, you must be overrun! …And now my letter-writer is laughing at me. I guess we’re both comedians.

We started weekday operations last month so it’s been a bit busier! Ridership is still down compared to what it was last year, but it’s not stopped the L cars from having a good time. They reopened operations on the west end of the line and installed a flagman at the street crossing, so on Sundays the Chicago Rapid Transit cars 1808 and 1024 can speed through without having to stop. The staff here are very pleased with the arrangement, since it’s much more in line with how they used to operate when in service. The visitors like an authentic experience! 1808 and 1024 are in agreement that it’s just more fun not having to stop for cars for a change.

The local summer festival, Schwabenfest, is at the end of the month and we’re all expecting a big turnout regardless of gas prices. IR 65 got a coat of wax for the occasion and the Goddesses are a little jealous. I told them they don’t need wax to look impressive, they’re magnificent enough as it is! (Am I getting better at this?) It’s too hot to expect someone to wax our whole train anyway. Stay cool by the water for us!

Your friend,

Pilot

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