Dear Pioneer,

I’m glad to hear that my letters get to entertain the whole yard. It makes our letters a bit like a static display, free for everyone who happens to be around to enjoy! Just like a static display as well, everyone usually has something to contribute. When the Goddesses heard you were asking for a story about their history, they were very eager to move into the role of museum exhibit just for you. Some days on the wye are pretty quiet, but after your invitation they spent a good half a day deciding what story they were going to share.

Pegasus, they say, didn’t actually get to pull their train for very long. She had the same trouble you did, where your train would get too popular for you to carry all the people who wanted to ride. Since she could be detached from the train and more cars could be added on to their consist, Pegasus often got reassigned to a lighter train and one of the Æolus or later us E5’s would take over instead.

By the time they became the Nebraska Zephyr, Pegasus was more or less permanently reassigned to the general passenger pool for Chicago suburban routes even if no one had come out and said so. And since no one had actually said it wasn’t her train anymore, she would sometimes ask after them to see how they were if she hadn’t seen them in a while.

One time, though, 4001 was a little rude about it. It sounded like Pegasus asked, as a joke, how she was taking care of her train and 4001 said something snotty back about how it was hardly her train anymore. Apparently the uproar was cacophonous, which Venus says is when every car in a train is all shouting at once and the stationmaster comes outside to tell them off for it. They all told 4001 that they were more Pegasus’ train than hers and that she shouldn’t let getting to pull them go to her smokebox because she was also still in the general pool too and didn’t even have a name to herself.

Whether Pegasus thanked them or apologized for them is a matter of debate (maybe she did both; she sounds tactful) and then – with a bit of shunting from Venus and Vesta particularly – 4001 apologized too. That story is a good reminder that every job on the railroad (and in the museum) is important and we should all be respectful.

You know, your Rocket sounds quite similar to B-units, come to think of it! A good quarter of the E5 fleet were built as Bs – not transitioned into them later like Pegasus and some of the other shovelnoses were. They never got the chance to pull trains on their own, but many of our long trains would be much harder to pull without them. They were built to their purpose too, and all our jobs were easier for it.

I don’t think it’s embarrassing at all to want to keep working the rails rather than retire, especially since it sounds like you were in good enough condition to continue passenger service for a long time. I expect we would have felt the same if we’d been sent straight to retirement rather than spend a couple months hauling freight. It was tough, especially on the B-units. For your sake, I’m glad you didn’t have to help us with that, haha.

4 billion people is big news! My letter-writer read that number and I had to really think about it for a moment. She explained that a billion is one-thousand millions, which didn’t help much, haha. Some engines travel one million service miles or better in their lifetimes, but imagine having to do that a thousand times, and then four more times on top of that!

Our big news was the arrival of our newest acquisition, Norfolk and Western 2050 last month. She’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen, and she’s articulated just like you! She used to work in West Virginia hauling coal trains up in the mountains, so you can imagine how much power an engine needs to have to go up a steep grade with such a heavy load. It requires two different sets of cylinders, which is why she’s articulated.

I was a little nervous to meet her at first. When an engine that big rolls up into the yard, sometimes it’s hard to know what to expect, but she was so polite and soft-spoken! It turns out we have a lot in common.

Like me, she was moved to a scrapyard after retirement at the Armco Steel factory in Ohio, but just like me she was picked to do a little extra work. In her case, they used her as a portable boiler around the plant a few times. Having her around to help made the steel factory workers a little sentimental, so she got to stick around as a kind of static display inside the factory yard. The men loved her so much that they even wrote her a poem, which I think is sweet! It’s written right on her tender in chalk. It talks about death, which Vesta says isn’t very sweet at all, but Venus said no one’s ever written Vesta a poem. That made 2050 laugh so hard she scared some birds out of a tree.

Because the men at the factory liked her so much (and because she needed a lot of work done to be moved) Armco were reluctant to let 2050 go at first. Apparently two other museums wanted her too, but didn’t have the manpower or know-how to get her ready to move which would leave Armco footing the bill. That’s not a problem for our guys though, and eventually the IRM worked out a deal with the factory to do the work for free and give 2050 a home where she’d be loved as much as she had been there.

Since she lived in Ohio, that meant the work had to happen slowly over the course of several months. Every few weeks a team made up of our guys would make the trip to Middletown to do the work of cleaning, degreasing, regreasing, repairing, and restoring her so she’d pass inspection. Ohio isn’t a short trip, especially if you’ve been sitting still for over 15 years!

In April, everything was finally cleared for her to move. The hope was she’d be hitched to a Conrail freight train and sail up to Chicago and from there make her way home. As you surely know, even the best laid track can often bend awry. First off, the diesel moving her out of Armco’s yard broke down and a second mover had to be called to get her off the property. Then, once she started moving, the crew found that her axles would run hot and she had to be stopped every 20 miles to make sure they weren’t damaging her.

It was slow going, but eventually she made the rest of the way here late last month. She said that final freight train from Chicago was a rough ride at 40mph, but that she was happy to be in a new home that wasn’t on the doorstep of a scrapyard. I said I couldn’t blame her for that!

She’s over in the steam yard now, so we haven’t chatted much since she arrived, but I expect Tuskegee and 1630 will keep me posted about her when they start running more regularly on the main line.

In celebration of 2050 finding a new place to stay, one of the factory workers wrote her two new poems to go with the one on her tender. These talk about ‘new friendships’ and ‘renewal’, which sounds much nicer than ‘steam condensed in death’. Even Vesta couldn’t complain about those!

Shay is back in the shop for what looks like the rest of the year. They want her in the best shape she can be in after how popular her double-header was with 1630 on Member’s Day. It must be difficult being an iconic engine for our museum! I myself will be having some work done as well, though not nearly as much as Shay. They said they want me to do a couple runs this summer, and hopefully another feature on the Member’s Day roster for me as well!

Whew! That was a long one. I hope it kept you and the yard entertained! What number is the counter at now? I can’t wait for your next letter. It’ll be a nice distraction while I’m getting tuned up for the summer.

Your friend,

Pilot

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 Pioneer,

Your comment about the Goddesses being the very model of a loyal and hardworking train was quite well-received as you might imagine. Almost as well-received as the news that your engine still runs! Can’t say why they were so excited about it, but that bit of news got the whole train aflutter. When I asked them about it, all I got was laughter and something about, “not so static after all”. Trains can be loyal, but they can also be very mysterious. They’ve started laughing again as I dictate this.

I’m not an expert on poetry by any means, but I think it’s pretty amazing that 2903 has a poem! I certainly don’t have one and the Goddesses don’t either, as previously mentioned. My letter writer says people who write poems usually do so because they’re moved by something. Not every person can write a book or paint a beautiful picture– just like not every engine can pull a logging train or be a yard switcher – but almost anyone can write even a small poem just like any engine can be appreciated. I think it’s nice!

Speaking of moving people, we’ve been taking passengers again! I figured I’d better not bury the lede this time, since we’re obviously all very excited. Our runs serve a similar purpose to getting your engine turned over once in a while, I imagine. Keeps us in good working order should we be called upon (for Member’s Day or otherwise). That and the passengers just love being able to ride the train that’s been sitting static in plain view for so long, haha. They don’t even seem to mind the occasional noise or lack of air conditioning. Sometimes it’s just about seeing us move, as your Rocket might attest!

Our visitors have been getting a lot of that sort of moving lately as well. Museum members voted this year to charge an admission fee for the museum grounds (25¢ for children and 50¢ for adults) which went into effect in June. In order to make it worth their while, Yard 1 was rearranged so that all the cars which had previously been sitting by themselves are now part of a few complete trains. Each car is getting a description board as well, painted orange so they stand out and visitors can read about their histories while they explore the train.

It’s a different approach, but it means our visitors can support the museum while getting to learn more about us. There’s not always a guide available to answer questions, so the signs serve to get people interested in the stock they’re looking at. And my letter writer tells me that the policy has actually been received favorably. That wasn’t necessarily a guarantee, but it turns out people are happy to support us any way they can!

In a similar show of support, all the electrics got to sing for us on the 4th of July. At 2 o’clock, every electric car with a working horn on the property honked for two whole minutes to celebrate the bicentennial. Apparently people all over the country were celebrating similarly, which sounds very noisy indeed. 200 years is a big birthday. There aren’t even any engines that old! I guess if folks can be moved by us engines just simply doing our job, it follows they’d be moved by such a significant milestone. Did your museum do anything special for the 4th? Our visitors tell us everything in town is red white and blue right now, I expect you’d have a pretty good view of that from where you’re standing!

I hope your summer operations are going as well as ours. It’s been nice to settle in at the end of the day after doing a run and thinking about your letters. Sometimes I’m so tired afterward, I fall asleep thinking about what you’ll write next! …Hmm, the Goddesses are laughing again. Ah, well.

Your friend,

Pilot

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 Pioneer,

When we started exchanging letters, they told me it would be something for me to look forward to during downtime and while I was in the shop. But with all the laughing, I’m beginning to think they get more out of it than we do!

I kid, of course. If I didn’t have your letters, I wouldn’t get the chance to hear about things like your Norwegian visitors and their boat. Our visitors are all mostly local, so we don’t get international visitors – or ambassador naval vessels – out here. It’s exciting to hear about how far the celebrations for the bicentennial have carried. All the way across the ocean, it seems!

My letter writer had to explain to me and my train (a blind spot in their worldliness for once!) what a tri-masted sailing ship was and why one would be visiting Chicago. She said that the same way people love and want to learn to drive old engines, there are people who love and want to learn how to sail old ships. Chrisitian Radich is just the maritime version of those of us at the IRM, in a way. Only he gets to take his crew across the Atlantic to visit your museum and your boat!

It might still look like July around here, but it is in fact September, which means we celebrated Members Day this month. It’s my second in a row and third time overall so I’m getting to be, as they say around here, an “old hand” at this. Since I am such an expert now, I figure I can tell you everything I’ve noticed so far about our big year-end event.

We call it Members Day, but it’s more like a Members Weekend since it usually runs two days – one for electric operations, and one for steam. Each department is in charge of its own itinerary for the day. You might notice there isn’t a day for diesel or gas electrics. Well, the steam department and their most generous engines let us operate alongside them on their day, which we’re very grateful for!

On steam (and diesel) day, we had a similar lineup to last year with Tuskegee and Frisco taking the lead in the morning and me and my train doing trips throughout the afternoon. We did have one new addition to the roster, though it was somewhat accidental.

Pullman 1792 (they call her D.D.’s Delight) is a gas-electric switcher who works around the property sorting track materials and moving cars around for better viewing. She’s as historic as the rest of us, but small and not particularly accustomed to being fawned over by visitors. She’s happier doing work than sitting around being admired, in other words.

Well, the weekend before Members Day, D.D. had derailed and resisted traditional manpowered efforts at being set right. The guys knew our big crane, C&WI 1900, would be out for Members Day and figured he’d be able to sort her out and that it would make a fun viewing experience for our visitors. Not only were they right – a big crowd gathered at the end of the line to see Tuskegee pull 1900 to the rescue site – but then stayed to watch as D.D. hurried back down the line to the yard. A museum in motion, indeed!

Electric Day was not quite as eventful as all that, but Green Hornet made her debut as the belle of the ball and was quite popular with guests, which doesn’t surprise me at all. Since she’s been operational, I’ve overheard visitors talking about her, and they love her stories about her service life in Chicago and how it compares to here.

Having my own window into the exciting life of a city engine, I can’t say I blame them.

Your friend,

Pilot

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 Pioneer,

It would never have occurred to me to call you of all engines a hayseed! We considered the earliest Zephyrs – and you in particular – much more cosmopolitan than those of us who came later. I remember you mentioning that you spent most of your service life on smaller routes, but you seem so worldly all the same.

Happily, D.D. recovered quite well from her Member’s Day debut. As a matter of fact, my letter-writer tells me that she and 1900 have become fast friends after the whole thing. I think it was just a lot of excitement all at once for an engine not used to being the center of attention.

1900 is a big crane designed for lifting whole engines, and D.D. is so small that when she arrived last year she was driven in on the flatbed of a truck. It was definitely a “performance” in the sense that using 1900 to rerail her was probably excessive, but the visitors absolutely loved it! Part of being a museum of operational equipment is getting to see us do our thing, which includes cranes and shunters. In that way, we’re all performing a little bit every day I suppose!

What was it like being a show engine? I’d be curious to hear from you and 999 about it, since most of the time our “performances” just look like standard operating procedure. I can’t imagine what being on a movie set or in a railroad showcase would be like, so I’d love to hear if you all had any stories.

As always, the end of summer means it’s slowed down quite a bit over here. This is just fine, as it gives our guys time to do the less glamorous work out of the public eye. We’ve acquired a good stock of materials for the tracks thanks to the Commonwealth Edison Company (the namesake of several of our engines!) taking out all their track at the plant this year and offering to donate it to us, provided we did all the hard work of course, haha. As much as our guys pride themselves on being able to handle most jobs with museum equipment, they wanted to get the rails moved before the weather turned. They rented five semi trailers to get it all hauled out here in just two weeks! Next step is the ties and spikes. This should keep us in trackage for a good while. The tractors and trucks on the property certainly haven’t wanted for jobs to do, even as the operating season comes to a close.

Meanwhile, Green Hornet’s enjoying a nice cozy spot in the newest carbarn on account of her restoration being such a resounding success. None of us begrudge her the spot, since she brought in so many eager visitors during the summer and even did a special run late last month for higher-ups from the RTA and CTA who came out to enjoy our roster of operational Chicago equipment. Our elevated cars and Surface Lines engines did a great job of course, but Green Hornet was the belle of the ball, so-to-speak. Apparently the transit officials were so impressed with her that they shared their compliments with the staff and crew after the ride!

These kinds of visits improve the museum’s relationship with possible donors, so it’s important to show off a good restoration like Hornet’s to prove that the IRM is a good home for retiring engines and cars. It’s flaunting for a good cause! Very Burlington.

As for the Goddesses and myself, we’re hoping for a quiet winter and a chance to show off ourselves next year. Restoration is an ongoing process. Venus called it ‘Sisyphean’. She would know, I suppose!

Your friend,

Pilot

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 Pioneer,

I hope you and your yard have been managing alright in the snow! They tell me this has been the coldest January on record, and I believe them. My axles almost hurt! Hopefully this letter will take our minds off the cold, at least for a little bit.

This month marks the arrival of some parts we sourced from a trolley museum in Wisconsin. That’s not unusual by itself – we’re always strapped for parts – but these were essential for one of our cars. CA&E 321 is an old wooden interurban car from 1914. She’s been here for even longer than I have (can you believe it’s been six years?) but was not in the best shape. The guys have been in talks to have her scrapped to make room for some equipment that could be made operational, but scrapping is a final decision and requires hard work and shop space.

East Troy trolley museum had CA&E’s sister cars, 318 and 319. When 318 joined them several years ago, the IRM suggested that 318 might be able to provide parts for her sisters to be fully restored, but East Troy wanted a working pair and weren’t ready to give up on 318. Well, news came down last year that the restoration would be too expensive for both cars, so our guys offered to buy 318 to fund the restoration of 319 and acquire parts for 321, saving them both. Our guys drove up to Wisconsin to get the parts and left only her wood exterior behind, since that was the only part 321 wasn’t missing.

Without 318, all three cars might have been scrapped, but through 318’s sacrifice, her sisters can go on to be preserved. But it gets more interesting! After our guys came back with the parts, rumor reached them that 318’s wood body wasn’t taken to the scrapyard, but had been driven off on a flatbed to go live on someone else’s private property. The Goddesses say that’s ridiculous, but I lived off-property for some time myself, so I know it’s not impossible. Either way, 318 will always be a part of 319 and 321, which is a nice thought all on its own.

Anyway, I don’t want my letter-writer to be out in the cold for too long and I’m sure your letter-reader feels the same way, so I tried to keep things brief. Luckily she has a cozy spot to retreat to in our new Technical Library! More on that and some other additions soon, assuming the weather gets better. Please stay warm until then!

Your friend,

Pilot

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