January 1976

Dear Pioneer,

Thank you for the postcard and the newspaper clipping! Our letter writer walked down the whole train with both to make sure the Goddesses got a good look at them. Ceres was very interested in the photo of the ice cream parlour in particular.

Some old railcars on static display get turned into restaurants, so she was curious about what a stationary dining establishment would look like. Vesta was not particularly kind about it and said old cars still look like old cars no matter how you dress them up, but the rest of the train was impressed anyway.

The Goddesses are looking forward to their own restoration, so I think seeing the inside of something old polished up and made to look new again is exciting for them. When they restore us engines, interior work doesn’t usually look pretty to most people (unless you count our mechanics, haha). Interior work on a car is a different proposition, especially high-end passenger cars like our trains. They have to look nice! It’s art vs. science all over again.

I’ve heard of busting snow! We never did it as a staged thing, or really at all if we could help it (passengers don’t find it as appealing as people looking at pictures do) but sometimes the bigger engines who ran ahead of the snowplows would brag about the size of the drifts they’d busted. Mate never really believed them, but it was harmless siding talk so I never minded if it was really true. I should have liked to see a slant-nose do it though! Burlington always went out of their way to make their stainless steel equipment look good, and I’m sure those promotional photos were no exception.

There’s been a little activity around the museum as the guys from the shop take stock of what needs doing in the coming year. They didn’t stop by our spot on the wye for very long, but that’s not unusual. Being outside means work on us has to wait until it’s properly warm and there’s less of a chance of everyone getting rained on. Every engine and car under-roof will be getting a visit from the shop guys very soon though. They tell me they’re planning on getting Green Hornet ready for the summer months and everyone’s very excited for her!

It’s funny that you mentioned snow feeling like the end. Us E5s did our first runs in the January snow, so to me the cold always reminds me of a fresh start. What was your final run like? Was it regular service or a special event?

The thought of everyone in your peaceful yard looking like a little Christmas storybook was a nice one, especially during those particularly dark and dreary days at the tail-end of the year. Please send New Year's greetings to everyone from me and my train!

Your friend,

Pilot

February 1976

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 Aelous’ 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

March 1976

Dear Pioneer,

Have I said recently how much the yard looks forward to your letters? Of course it goes without saying that I always do, but it only occurred to me that everyone else loves getting them just as much when our letter-writer brought the last one out to us and seemed excited that there were two whole pages to read. My train have been keen on your longer letters recently (I think they’re hoping for another submarine story) but after the line about being reupholstered it took about a minute before everyone was quiet enough to continue listening, haha. Once they did though, I think they enjoyed it as much as any submarine story.

When you talk about your history, I feel like I’m there. Is that strange? Venus says that’s the mark of a skilled storyteller. Vesta said it was the good fortune of a famous engine to have stories worth telling. Personally, I think you could probably make a day in the yard sound interesting, but then again Mate always said I was too easily impressed. But can I help it if it’s easy to imagine seeing you fly over the rails in the snow? Your passengers and all the people in the towns you passed must have thought you were the grandest thing running! And being so close as to catch a greeting from an already-preserved engine feels… Well, it feels a bit like finding out that the Pioneer Zephyr– who lives in the city nearby– wants to be pen pals. Fortunate indeed!

Having two last runs isn’t dissimilar to what happened to us on the C&S in 1967, oddly enough. Maybe it’s an unofficial Zephyr tradition? They didn’t mean to give us two, but when we were retired in October, the railroad realized they didn’t have enough engines for all their trains and we were called back up into service for a few more months pulling drag freight. I wish our second retirement run was as grand as yours, but by the time we were headed up to McCook, we were all just tired. None of us wanted to quit, like you said, but being re-geared to haul miles-long freight trains was not what we’d been built for. In a way, a rest sounded nice regardless of what came next.

Usually this is where I would say that March is still considered part of our slow season and we’re waiting for the weather to get better before anything of note happens here, but last month something very interesting happened! The news wanted to do a special feature on local attractions, so they came to our museum to talk to the staff and volunteers about their work on one of the private cars, Ely.

Ely is very special, so I get why they wanted to do a feature on him. He’s a private railcar built during the 1890s for special guests of the railroad to travel in comfort. The camera crews from the television studio came out and took some film of his beautiful Gilded Age exterior; red and gold and very intricate. Not very much like streamliner, but lovely all the same. Apparently he took very well to the attention! You’d never know he was built before television was even invented with how he preened for the camera.

The staff here were very excited about the news program. Not only is being featured on the television good for Ely and his restoration, but it’s good advertising for the museum too! A few years ago we did spots on the radio telling people about coming out to visit us. The folks here say the TV is like that but even better because people can see what we have to offer with their own eyes. It’s no Silver Streak, but still very Burlington!

But it’s not all lazing about for the film crews around here. Illinois Terminal 101 is starting her restoration soon, and I’ll be getting ready for some test runs myself! It’s looking to be quite the busy season ahead of us. I hope your spring season is looking just as eventful.

Your friend,

Pilot

April 1976

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

May 1976

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 Aelous 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

June 1976

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

July 1976

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

August 1976

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

September 1976

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.

Davenport 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

P.S. I spied our Rail & Wire photographer with a camera on the platform. If they publish any pictures of us, I’ll be sure to send them along.

October 1976

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

November 1976

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

December 1976

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.

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

To be continued.