#illinois zephyr

[transit-fag]

Missouri has applied to open 3 new routes in Missouri and add a 3rd daily RT to the Missouri River Runner. The 3 routes would be Kansas City-Springfield, Kansas City-St. Joseph, and Chicago-Hannibal

[aryburn-trains]

February 2, 2024 Illinois Zephyr #380 Quincy to Chicago Amtrak The consist includes a BNSF SD70ACe, a SC44, two Siemens coaches and an Amfleet I business class cafe. Once again, the new Siemens chargers need rescued. What's new? The gifs used were made by Jack, Ken and myself. They can be found at the link below. My gifs have my name in the description. http://kenstransitgifs.com/gifindex.html

[guerrerense]

Elegance of an E5 por Mark Ratzer Por Flickr: Illinois Railway Museum's EMD E5, part of the CB&Q Nebraska Zephyr consist, shows her elegant lines as she waits for departure time on the museum's demonstration railroad. 7/20/14

[mrsmoose54]

Further Planning in Progress 2023

I shared recently plans to visit three more States on my next visit to America. These states being Utah, Nebraska and New Mexico. My excitement about using Amtrak was going to result in many hours of my holiday travelling in a coach seat at a very reasonable ticket price. Further ideas flooded into my mind with a simple realisation that as I have visited California albeit not recently there was…

[railwayhistorical]

Outbound Illinois Zephyr

It’s late afternoon or early evening in Chicago. Knowledgeable people in the rail enthusiast community tell me this train is most likely the Illinois Zephyr, and I will defer to them.

The GE P30CH locomotive on point here was just over a year old at this time. Amtrak was still unsure of its longevity, and so were in the habit of buying large locomotives (such as the SDP40F) that could be sold to freight railroads if it went down. Somehow it’s still holding on fifty-three years after its inception.

One image by Richard Koenig; taken from Roosevelt Road on September 5th 1976.

[monstroso]

This one's been in the works for longer than the 727 design but I finally got around to finishing it last night.

Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe 2903 is the largest steam engine preserved in IL, and before he lived at the Illinois Railway Museum with Silver Pilot, he lived at the Museum of Science and Industry alongside the Pioneer Zephyr, making him a fun character to do things with, as he gets to have interactions with both museums casts!

[djangodurango]

for the WIP ask game... The Future Is Still Silver and Black? (original train fiction from you two sounds really interesting!)

So last year, I went up north to visit Ray. Ray lives in Chicago, which just so happens to have the largest railway museum in the United States, the Illinois Railway Museum.

At the IRM, we saw the Nebraska Zephyr, which is a streamlined stainless steel articulated trainset. Each of the cars in this train are named after Greek/Roman goddesses. Venus, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, and Juno. It's really quite striking. And the train is pulled by an EMD E5 (the only surviving E5 in fact) named Silver Pilot.

The next day we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. There we saw the Pioneer Zephyr, the first of the Burlington Zephyrs.

So after we get out of the MSI, we're sitting in the Metra station, waiting for the train, and we're doing Independent Research on our phones. Because the concept of the Nebraska Zephyr is great, right? Five beautiful cars all named after goddesses. And that is when we learn that Silver Pilot did not originally belong to this train.

"Those aren't even his bitches," Ray said to me.

So over the next few months, we did more Independent Research. And every new piece of information we found about Silver Pilot just made his story even better. The whole thing is fuckin' wild and we had to DIG to find almost all of it. It's insane because the engine has this amazing story - a story that Ray often points out would sound contrived if it wasn't true - and apparently no one has cared until a pair of fucking cunt dorks went to the train museum.

Comparatively, the Pioneer Zephyr was easy to find more about. Its history is extremely well-documented and lots of people in the past have been fucking cunt dorks about that train. The thing about the Pioneer Zephyr though is that it was made in the early 30's, right? And Burlington promoted this train in a way almost... vaudevillian. It broke the land speed rail record on its way to its debut at the 1934 World's Fair (outdoing its competitor from the Union Pacific, M-10000 only a couple months after it broke the record), it went on an exhibition tour, there were commemorative letter covers given for its service milestones, there was a ride-on children's toy made of it, it starred in a movie!

So me and Ray were now thoroughly enthralled by these two separate but related trains and how different their service lives were - and continue to be - when we get an idea.

We'd considered the idea of trains writing letters to each other before, but it's a little human for them in general, particularly for working engines who are busy. Although I was quite pleased when I was able to report to Ray that there was indeed an episode of TTTE where Thomas sends Percy a postcard.

But these guys are both preserved and while Pilot still works, the IRM is only really open on weekends. They got time. They have people with hands who can read and write who also have time.

DJ: Oh, what if they send each other letters? Ain't like they've got anything else going on. Ray: c2c. I was thinking about them being pen pals. Especially since they live so close, the letters don't take long to arrive. They can be short and sweet. DJ: Gives them something to look forward to. Ray: You can send some a few times a year and not be overwhelming with the information.

Which was all well and good, but then I found something practically serendipitous. A sign that this was the way to go.

So remember how Pioneer had all these publicity stunts and events done for it? On its tenth anniversary, they made a six foot birthday cake and rigged up an eight-foot-long knife such that the train could pull forward, break a ribbon, and cut its own birthday cake.

Most of this cake was given to veteran and child hospital patients, but individual pieces were also sent off to each of Pioneer's "brothers" and a hundred-ish other fellow streamliners across the country.

With a letter.

DJ: Raymond. There's a train letter IN the Pioneer Zephyr book. FROM the Pioneer Zephyr. About his birthday party. Although he does say in it that he only has brothers. Ray: OH MY GOD. How did we know??? Are we just that fucking good???? Do we just know and perceive the truth THAT well. DJ: It's too fucking cute. Ray: The fact that he is a he and also says he has brothers is revolutionary. That almost strains the limits of credulity, knowing how Train Guys are about calling engines "she". But I know you would not lie to me about this. Can you scan it?????

The fucking train actually, canonically, wrote a letter.

So yeah, the trains are pen pals. And they write to each other about their past and but moreso about their present. Because as it happens, their history post-preservation is interesting too (as I'm sure you can relate) and there's far less said about it already.

The first batch of letters are done, we're just getting some other materials together before we can publish.

EDIT: people are reblogging this again so just editing to add that you can read the train letters here.

[littlewestern]

Are there programs (like Pioneer’s letters) to keep the engines from getting into boredom-induced mischief? Or are they expected to entertain themselves?

Not in an official capacity. Generally both of the museums' exhibits keep themselves out of trouble well-enough that it's not necessary. Most of these guys had a full service life and are just happy to be enjoying a retirement that affords them the luxury of relaxing over a game of cards, talking about their day, and maybe getting ice cream if time allows. (RIP Finnegan's, you will be sorely missed.)

At the IRM there's nearly always a new arrival to introduce yourself to and learn about, or if you get REALLY bored you can see if someone wants to organize a pickup game of frisbee golf or some other non-contact game that 2903 will have to mediate and break up because no one actually knows the rules and someone's probably going to start an argument about it. That's about the extent of the mischief anyone gets up to around here. Even then, most of the time engines at both museums are happy to play nice. Even Stuka and Spitfire keep their roughhousing down to a dull roar and make sure not to involve anyone in the crossfire who hasn't been explicitly invited to participate. (Spitfire keeps asking Pilot and he keeps turning him gently down.)

Pilot and Pioneer's impromptu letter exchange program was more the result of a bored guide than a bored engine. Pioneer is quite content in his little yard at the MSI in 1962, but he's so bright and well-read, it seems a shame not to let him get a little more socialization. The news about a new acquisition of a Zephyr trainset by another Illinois museum that seemed to be making something of a name for itself all the way out there in farm country sparked the interest of an enterprising individual at the MSI who made the connection. The penpal idea was floated to Pioneer under the pretense that he'd be welcoming a fellow Burlington engine into a new kind of service life, and that it would be nice for him to reach out and answer any questions this newbie might have about preservation, something that - up to this point - was highly unusual for recently-retired diesel engines. Pioneer agreed to it under those conditions, but it was always something they intended to benefit Pioneer as well. And it did! That Pioneer is inherently charmed by the romanticism of the post is what kept it from being a one-off, and is the reason he alone is a good candidate for having a penpal. As mentioned, other engines don't find this kind of thing nearly as entertaining as he seems to, but they like when Pioneer gets a letter and the guides read it out loud in the yard. Then they get to heckle him while he dictates a response while he laughs along with them about it, as is his nature. In that way, it's actually enrichment for the whole yard!

Great questions! Thanks so much!

[elipheleh]

hi rwrb enjoyers. i’m currently writing a series where we learn about the things referenced in the book - we’re learning together, some things i know about but lots more i don’t until i research them to share - and i need help!

so far, i have 2 posts uploaded and 3 more queued to go up.

i was tentatively hoping to be able to have one every day leading up to the film release, but at the moment i can’t get enough ideas!

so this is me crowdsourcing for things you might want to learn more about. come talk to me! give me ideas? anon is on, and if you ask i won’t publish asks publicly.

under the cut i’ll list the ones already on my to do list.

the waterloo vase (uploaded), stonewall (uploaded), scotus decision 2015 (queued), walt whitman (queued), illinois & sodomy laws (queued), white night riots, paris is burning, image ‘if i die of AIDS’, v&a statues (zephyr, narcissus, pluto and proserpine, jason (argonaut), samson slaying a philistine), james I & george villers, santa chiara; proverb; david & jonathan, thisbe & pyramus

(10 days worth of posts left, there are 18 days to fill)

[greatwesternway]

tfissabposting so i was looking through old rail & wires and apparently the museum just. buried three tank cars to use as septic tanks in 1969???? from rail & wire 55

I'm just as happy to field questions as Ray is but for IRM/Rail & Wire minutiae, Ray's really gonna be your better bet. I write Pioneer's letters so I'm in charge of knowing all that kinda stuff about the Museum of Science and Industry, the Century of Progress, the Chicago Railroad Fair, basically anything that's more Pioneer's (or his MSI yardmates') business than Pilot's.

That said, one of the things I've been working on lately is adding notable IRM acquisitions and activities to the timeline. At present, I'm just working-smarter-not-harder by taking Aaron Isaacs' IRM timeline from Illinois Railway Museum In Color and cross-referencing with the IRM's own website to confirm details and Hicks Car Works' deaccession list to navigate items that were scrapped or traded. Once these things are on there, I'll start reading the Rail & Wire's to put more specific repairs and works on the timeline.

All this to say that the letters undergo edits every time we update because we're constantly learning new info. Like that three tank cars were buried on the property to make septic tanks.

I suppose what you're really asking is how they feel about it.

I have to figure if they weren't already only just clinging to sentience by that point, they'd be ready to give up the ghost at that announcement. Generally, it's very easy for us to decide if an engine is "alive" or not. They're scrapped or they ain't. But... there is some room for nuance.

The Flying Yankee, for instance, we'd consider to still be alive, but it's not that good a life. He's been gutted, taken off his trucks, left to the elements. The reason he's still "alive" though is because he still has the possibility open for his disposition to improve. Similarly, The Mark Twain Zephyr sat in the same conditions for decades and is now being restored quite nicely.

But if you've been buried? Might as well be dead too, right?

It's not as tragic as all that though. 'Cause see, nearly everything at the IRM is common stock who would have had no expectation of preservation and for whom the end of one's usefulness and eventual scrapping would have been seen as an inevitability. (Indeed, being preserved when you hadn't any reason to expect to can sometimes be troublesome itself, as with 2903, or when perhaps you might have preferred not to be preserved, as with U-505).

And even once a piece of equipment gets to the IRM, it's still possible that you're too far gone to be restored, even as a static display. That can be disappointing, for sure, but I'd say it's similar to Pilot and Mate getting briefly recalled from the scrapyard to pull grain cars. If you didn't ever expect to be preserved, then it turning out to be a stay of deaccession isn't surprising. Generally, you'd probably know how much work you'd require and if the guys are being realistic about it ever getting done. One does not count themselves preserved until they actually are.

But I do also think that engines value usefulness above all else and tank cars aren't exactly in any position to be picky about their work to begin with. So being made into septic tanks and buried isn't the worst thing in the world, as long as they don't actually have to be sentient for it.

It's not every piece of equipment that gets to continue being useful after deaccession and I think we'd all agree they're doing very important and necessary work.

[transit-fag]

Round 1, poll 18

Some forgotten trains leaving Chicago

[aryburn-trains]

Nebraska Zephyr Observation Car at Union Station. Chicago, IL 1963

[guerrerense]

CB&Q 9911A and the Nebraska Zephyr with GE U30C BN 5383 in tow heading back to the Illinois Railway Museum. Train seen here heading west at Elgin IL on Aug 15, 1994 © Paul Rome por Paul Rome

[alightinthelantern]

Parlor-Observation car "Juno" on the Nebraska Zephyr, a daytime passenger train operated daily by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) between Chicago, Illinois and Lincoln, Nebraska. Beginning operation in 1947, the train was typical of streamlined trains of the postwar period in that its carbodies were built of stainless steel and featured an all-silver exterior, the trademark of the Budd Company, but it was also notable in that it continued the CB&Q's unusual tradition, which began in the 1930s, of articulated, unified trainsets, with all passenger cars in each consist sharing bogies (wheel-trucks) and permanently coupled together.

The Nebraska Zephyr operated once-daily in each direction, with Westbound #11 departing Chicago at 12:45 PM and arriving in Lincoln at 10:30 PM, while Eastbound #12 departed Lincoln at 11:00 AM and arrived in Chicago at 8:45 PM. The 551-mile (887 km) trip took 9 hours and 45 minutes, and its average speed was 56 miles per hour (90 km/h) including stops. Service utilized two trainsets which each operated one direction on day and the opposite direction the next. One trainset's cars bore the names of Roman female gods, and was nicknamed "the train of the goddesses" (Venus, Vesta, Minerva, Psyche, Ceres, Diana, and Juno), while the other trainset's cars were named for male Roman gods, and was nicknamed "the train of the gods" (Apollo, Mars, Neptune, Cupid, Vulcan, Mercury, and Jupiter). The trainsets were in fact built by the Budd Company back in 1936 as the second pair of Twin Zephyrs, for CB&Q service between Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, making them some of the first stainless-steel trainsets built by Budd, and as such they initially bore the same style of locomotive as the other CB&Q Zephyrs from the 1930s, of a smooth, semicircular front curving seamlessly into the roofline at its top, but these locomotives were later replaced with the stainless-steel-bodied, shovel-nosed diesel locomotives of the 1950s which all the CB&Q's Zephyr trains later received.

Each of the Nebraska Zephyr's two trainsets consisted of several coaches and parlor cars, a coach-dinette, dining car, cocktail lounge, and parlor-observation car. The parlor-observation car on "the train of the gods" was named Jupiter, while its goddess counterpart was named Juno. The locomotives were named Pegasus (CB&Q #9904) and Zephyrus (CB&Q #9905). The trains were generously appointed and provided comfortable travel throughout the 1940s and '50s, and the high level of service was maintained until 1963, when the cocktail lounges were removed in favor of additional seating. In 1966 the dining cars were rebuilt as "cafeteria cars" with vending machines for additional cost-cutting. The aging trainsets were retired from service entirely in 1968, although CB&Q continued to operate the Nebraska Zephyr train with other rolling stock until 1971, when the newly-birthed Amtrak took over all remaining passenger rail service in the US.

[themarginalthinker]

I came across you saying Charlie has a Minnesota accent. Had to look it up and I'm crying.

What accents do the other nossies have.

Also pls do fenster hanging with Jen doodle. Have you ever considered a size chart aswell?

lmaoooo yep, Charlie is born-and-bred Minnesotan, eh? Though not quite that strong, and she plays it up for the joke sometimes.

The others all have a mismatch of accents from all over.

-Alfred has perhaps the most ambiguous, having learned over two hundred years both how to cover his accent, and then it just slips away with so much time spent away from its land of origin, England. He tends more towards what I've heard referred to as 'Queen's English' when he's relaxed and with people he trusts and can speak freely with.

-Blue has a very flat accent, coming from the lower midwest, Indiana and Illinois, western Ohio. Sometimes he'll use vernacular that's a bit more 'countrified', like 'yall' or a double 'ain't' in a sentence, but has learned from Alfred how to mask it.

-Tweak is....all over the place. Whatever he's picked up from all the people he's met over the years - if you spend enough time around him, he'll eventually start parroting phrases and words from you. He knows a bit of Spanish, French, and Italian, though it's mostly conversational and slang. If you dig, though, and listen closely enough when he's speaking without trying to make himself sound a certain way, he tends to default to something vaguely Northeastern, possibly in the New England area.

-Zephyr tends to have a something a little closer to Canadian, but on the other side of the country than Charlie. Think Pacific Northwest, Cascadia for Zeph, though it's fairly muted. Her voice is also pretty raspy, and she has a pretty flat-affect, even when she's more emotional. Overall, pretty run-of-the-mill voice out of all the cast. She likes to blend in.

-Jen has perhaps one of the strongest accents in the cast of the Warren, hailing from the boondocks of Deep Appalachia itself. He always sounds like he's talking around a cigarette - which, to be fair, most of the time he is lol. When he gets angry, the accent really comes out, and he'll weave a word tapestry of some of the most obscure, unintelligible cussing you've ever heard this side of the Atlantic.

-Fenster ... I haven't decided whether I want him to be from Wales or Southern Ireland, so his accent would likely be from a region there, but that gives you a rough idea of where to start. The more I consider him, the more I lean towards Welsh. As for how he talks, he's a pretty easy-going person, who, much like Alfred, can mask his accent when he wants, but will do so much less frequently.

-Bobbin is a little tricker to pin down, despite her actual accent being fairly easy to pin-point of them all. She sounds like she's from the heart of the midwest at the turn of the 20th century, being Embraced (I believe? Correct me if I'm wrong, Berd) in the middle of the 20s. Chicago, St. Louis, all those big, swinging cities. The only issue with actually hearing it in her voice, however...is that the Embrace did some nasty things to her vocal chords, and she sounds, for lack of a nicer way to put it, like someone tearing sheet metal, like nails on a chalkboard.

So, that's about everyone in the main group with a notable accent!

As for drawing Jen and Fen, oh I definitely will have to, as well as the others. (I may or may not play favorites with my four main cast lol...) The problem is that I'm currently on vacation with my family and have left my tablet at home :T So, next week! I have also considered doing a character line-up as well! Perhaps when we get a little further into the story and they have been established as characters. Thank you!!! <3

[charring58]

#Zephry#museumscienceindustry

@msichicago The Illinois Zephyr is a descendant of the Kansas City Zephyr and American Royal Zephyr passenger train routes operat