#silver pilot

[monstroso]

Attention passengers! The mail has arrived from 1974.

It's been a hectic couple of months between work obligations and DJ's real-life move to Chicago, but the latest update to The Future is Still Silver and Black is live!

We have a few major updates to the site this time around. DJ spent the better part of her off-hours working on the Timeline feature introduced in the last update. It now covers all the Illinois Railway Museum's acquisitions, significant events, and projects (that we're aware of) from 1953 to 2024. We've also added some gorgeous art for NYC 999 and the U-505 submarine to the Engines, Etc. page, once again courtesy of the amazing @ferlost!

To everyone who asked about updates, sent in questions, and gave our old letters a reread in the meantime: Thank you for your patience. You are what keeps this train rolling forward. On to 1975!

[djangodurango]

Ray and I went to visit our trains.

[littlewestern]

What was your design process for Pilot? I really like the little detail of the silver leaves on his collar.

Sure thing! So Pilot's design is an ongoing, evolving thing (as all my designs inevitably are) but he's existed for over a year now and I've drawn him so many times since then it's a little hard to remember what the idea at the beginning was like, but I will do my best!

Before we get to the outfit, I do want to talk a bit about his basic character and how I worked it out because it's a little amusing. I remember thinking very strongly at first that I wanted to lean away from the sleek, silver, speedy streamliner personalities I'd seen elsewhere. Coming from ttte, the fast engines in that series tend to be haughty and overly proud of their speed as if that were the only measure of an engine's usefulness. I wanted to turn the wheel hard away from that type of characterization so I decided right away that I wanted Pilot to be humble, down-to-earth, and well-aware of his limitations. (This turned out to be a great instinct, as it fits extremely well with the engine's backstory, though I didn't know that at the time.) So right off the bat I knew I wanted something that communicated a certain level of approachability and... almost a guilelessness, I suppose. Someone who you could play for a fool, but why would you when he's so sweet?

I had also decided that Pioneer would be silvery and old-fashioned, so I wanted to go in the opposite direction for Pilot, dark hair and eyes to offset Pioneer's lighter appearance.

I had also just come off binging House MD.

I think this is a great example of why its important to become familiar with your own creative process and how your influences manifest in your work as an artist. This won't help you avoid the embarrassment, but at least you can get out ahead of the cringe accusations lol.

Anyway, once I had a firm template in mind for the type of character I was writing, then I could drill down on the specifics. I leaned into the Robert-Sean Leonard look hard and started pulling from other actors who had once been cast for their boyish good looks but were starting to age out of them.

(Left) More Robert-Sean Leonard and that breezy flyaway hair he's just a little too old to be rocking. I also definitely stole Pilot's furrowed eyebrows from him, but this was mostly because the way the E5 windows lean, they always look mildly worried!

I was also enchanted by Tom Hulce's (right) open but slightly world-weary and harrowed look, and I nicked those deep under-eye bags for my train too. Pilot's nose is based on the E5's impressive snoot, but also mine, which bows out in the middle and I think gives my face... personality! The silver streaks in his hair came from the idea that all Zephyrs, given enough time, will go completely grey. Pilot hasn't gotten there yet, and he'll probably be able to stave for a long while. Service life keeps you young, and Pioneer went grey prematurely.

Okay, with that out of the way: On to the outfit.

The E5s are a great class for their distinctive, themed names. Silver Pilot and Silver Mate are... Well, in retrospect, they're probably based on naval terminology (Why not 'Captain' & 'Mate'? I don't know). I didn't know that at the time, and honestly lacking his B unit, it doesn't super matter. He's an aviation Pilot now, although through the inevitable design drift and desire for quicker sketches, this often gets lost or forgotten, but that's on me. The idea of his uniform is still canon unless I change it, I'm just lazy and I like to draw him in casual outfits!

You can see the aviation influence right away. I didn't want to use a specific airline's uniform, so I kept most of the design elements vague. I opted not to go for the doubled-breasted coat, as it felt too formal and I had given Pioneer a double-breasted already, though he's since lost that as well (I gave it to the submarine instead lol). I also hadn't yet designed the Zephyr pin that would later show up on Pilot and Pioneer's uniforms in later drawings, so the double-wing pin was ad-libbed. It looks like this, and is based on the old Zephyrus Burlington logo.

The leaves on the collar are laurels, and are a nod to his train's Greek and Roman mythology naming, even though by the time of the E5s it had mostly been lost. Pioneer also has them, being the first of the Zephyr trains.

Also note their nose herald pins. I actually own this pin myself, because I didn't realize it existed as a real pin you could buy when I drew these. The three stripes below the tie are a visual nod to the E5's distinctive black nose stripes, red in the 60s but corrected to their original 40s black sometime in the 90s when Pilot started doing excursions off IRM property.

A few changes I've made since these drawings I made in 2022: In retrospect Pilot's sleeves should have four stripes, not three. Also, his cap is gone from most of my later drawings, but Pioneer also has a cap he just doesn't wear often. Hats are warm, easily lost, and generally not worn indoors. I envision the cap to be for special museum events.

All this old art is making me cringe. Here's a more recent sketch to show you how far we've come.

Thanks for the ask!

[w4y2dawn]

SORA!!!🗣️GET IN THE GUMMISHIP🗣️🗣️🗣️

[littlewestern]

*points* THOSE ARE MY TRAINS!! They look so happy here. :D

I'm at a loss for words, DJ and I are beyond delighted. Thank you so much for the fanart and for reading and engaging with our work. 🤍🖤

One last drawing before my iPad died for the night. Silver Pilot and Pioneer Zephyr, stars of The Future is Still Silver and Black by @littlewestern and @greatwesternway.

[kenchann]

cant wait for book 7 igni interaction lmao and also everyone getting outfits/cosplay

[evilspiritweek]

RC9GN Pilot got leaked lol

Actually super glad that the full pilot got leaked lol For those not familiar, a sample of the storyboards got posted online a few years back, so it's nice to see all the context wrapped up into one video:

There's a lot I want to say and compare, but finals are coming up, so might have to put a pin in that lol. Here's some of my first thoughts:

Most of the voice actors seem to be the same with the exception of Randy (and maybe Bash). Not a hundred percent confident, but I'm thinking that it might be James Arnold Taylor (whose most well known for being Johnny Test)

I love the addition of Cranzky (I think that's how you spell it?) I just think the addition of not only more villains (also women ones) would've been neat.

Not a hundred percent confident on this, but I think the character designer for this might be Stephen Silver (Kim Possible, Danny Phantom) Most of the characters don't really fit his style, but eh way Viceroy was drawn makes him look straight out of Kim Possible haha

As an aside, be sure to check out his work here!

That's all I can think off the top of my head right now. Hope all ninja show fans eat good tonight!!

[emdotcom]

My'eah, some Sonic stuff I drew, playing with a different style!

Last 3 pages feature Terios, & the last page features Violet -- both are characters co-adored by @carnation-damnation !

[littlewestern]

Pilot also looks back fondly on his time on the C&S's Texas Zephyr route as a time when most of the E5 fleet were together. A class as small as theirs would have had a lot of familiarity with each other, and while they wouldn't always have gotten along, it was nice that they all got to live out the rest of their service lives in closer proximity than is typical for a class with only 16 individuals in it.

While it might have been kind of nice at the time, his memories of it have only gotten rosier since his preservation. He's filtered out the days when Speed was being disagreeable or when Bullet and Arrow were having arguments loud enough to hear across the yard.

Lots of traveling for me at the moment. Makes me think of the trains! What was their favorite route to take?

For Pioneer, it's easily Lincoln-Kansas City. It's the route he started on, the route he re-debuted on with his new name, and the route his legacy and the entire Zephyr fleet was built on top of. A humble route for a doughty little train, but the people in those cities loved him so much they had to get bigger and better trains to replace him on it to service the demand.

Pilot's favorite is Denver-Ft. Worth, the Texas Zephyr.

It's a little different for E5's, you see, because E5's never had the presumption of being Zephyrs. Every shovelnose was built with a specific route in mind and, indeed, the first shovelnose trainsets were articulated so it was actually the train that had the Zephyr name and not the route. As the CB&Q abandoned the articulation over time, the route rather than the train carried the Zephyr name, but shovelnoses were still built with their route in mind. A shovelnosed trainset simply would be a Zephyr upon entering service.

But E5's were built to cover the Zephyr routes. They were meant to be substitutes who would work elsewhere unless needed, not unlike the Aeolus. Silver Bullet was given a Zephyr route right out the gate, the Silver Streak Zephyr (taking over Pioneer's Lincoln-Kansas City route since his train took their name with them), but most E5's were given other non-Zephyr routes.

To be sure, getting a named route at all is a mark of distinction to any engine who isn't named on his own. The Fast Mail or the Exposition Flyer is still something special. But E5's were designed to look like shovelnoses and if Silver Bullet was made a Zephyr... well, one can hope they'd get that chance too.

The Texas Zephyr then became the route that made most of the E5's Zephyrs in their own right. Almost all of them saw assignment to it, so Pilot thinks back on it not just as the route that gives him claim to Zephyr lineage, but also as a route he shared with most of his siblings.

That Pioneer also asserted that pulling the Texas Zephyr made Pilot as much as Zephyr as he is helps, though that's a retroactive addition to Pilot's fondness for Denver-Ft. Worth. He also doesn't know that if he'd not pulled the Texas Zephyr first, Pioneer would still have said that pulling the Nebraska Zephyr now makes him a Zephyr engine. That Pilot has the history means Pioneer doesn't have to insist on more tenuous logic since the point of saying so wasn't so much to convince Pilot, but to convince his train. The Goddesses were already dubious on whether the Texas Zephyr counted at all, not being a proper CB&Q route. How would it look for mere cars to argue with the Pioneer Zephyr on the subject though?

[robotacap]

Only got Silver because Sniper did a Backflip

Turkish Pilot headcanon unlocked

[monstroso]

Hey everyone, and happy happy holidays to you all! For the occasion, @djangodurango and I got you a pair of cozy diesel engines and a pretty extensive update to The Future Is Still Silver And Black.

This update includes: New graphics! A guestbook! A searchable timeline! Art by the incredible @ferlost! And an all new set of letters! (As well as some edits to the old ones, shh!)

As always, thank you so much for your continued interest and support! We've been working really hard on this for a good few months and we're so excited to share our progress with you to close out 2023!

[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.

[djangodurango]

I think this is the first fanart we've gotten and this is quite a unique variety. :D

Do Screenshots Count as Fanart?????

Ever since I discovered that both Pioneer Zephyr and Silver Pilot (from @monstroso & @djangodurango 's The Future Is Still Silver & Black) exist in Rolling Line (my favorite train sim game) I had to do some screenshots involving the two of them.

To start, this was literally the first idea I had.

Here is some possibly self-indulgent shennanigans involving my little techinchally English but design is German tiny man Dean stuggling to move the Godesses, and then other guy (that I haven't shown on tumblr yet) Mutt hanging out with Pioneer Zephyr. Two former express engines watching the sunrise.

And then here's just some shots of the bois goin along.

Hope you enjoy these!

[littlewestern]

For Silver and Black, any headcanons about the other engines at the IRM? I wonder if Pilot, 1630, and the electroliner get along since they’re the ‘faces’ of the museum. There’s also that Q Hudson, 504, 9925 and 9976. They probably all hang out as the Q club lol. I wonder if they like the BN units?

The IRM is practically a chronic and compulsive character designer's dream. I could spend the rest of my life making little guys out of their roster and probably not ever get bored, so you can bet DJ (@greatwesternway) and I have spent the past 13 months doing exactly that lol.

1630 was absolutely one of the first ones we worked on after Pilot, given that she's so iconic and important to the IRM. Engines with stories are far and away the easiest to write for, and 1630 has a great one. Plus, she's a face as you say! I like to characterize her as a bold and confident problem solver, especially having read some of the old Rail & Wires from the time period when she was undergoing restoration. Her first trial run went so well they had her pulling trains even though she was supposed to just be fired for testing, and that to me informs so much of her personality. She was ready to work from the jump! She's obviously besties with Shay 5, being that they've worked together for so many years, and I like to think they're sort of the de facto ambassadors for the steam department with the rest of the museum.

The Electroliner, I'm a little embarrassed to say, I only got around to learning about recently even though I was struck immediately by the design. I like to picture her as a more blue-collar version of the Zephyrs, streamlined and modern but still very much of the people. I haven't explored her history that much since we haven't gotten there in the letters yet, but I'm excited to learn more! I think she and Pilot get along really well, but that's sort of a given since Pilot gets along with everybody.

Some other characters at the IRM that get some play in the discussion are The Goddesses, who all have unique personalities and have been cropping up more frequently in the letters. We've also casually written some thoughts down about the other Pullman streamlined cars (Birmingham and Loch Sloy) as well as quite a few of the diesel shunters, since they're literally always out doing stuff at the IRM, and it's easy to fall in love with the engines that are constantly out there working. Our favorite so far is the Commonwealth Edison 15 shunter because he's grey and the last time I saw it out, it was switching the aforementioned Pullman cars around and @joezworld joked that he was going, "Look! I'm a streamliner!" and that has since become basically canon.

I don't have much for the Q steam engines although they're definitely on the list. I'm very interested in the BNs 1, 2, and 3 because I think their story is going to be interesting but I also haven't put much time in on their history yet. Since the museum's roster is so extensive (especially compared to the MSI), we've just been letting the stories inspire us as we learn about them organically. DJ's been adding new entries to the timeline from the IRM's photohistory book, and that alone has sewn some ideas we're definitely going to revisit later, if not in the letters than possibly in some other stories or just for our own amusement.

These questions are *so* good by the way, I'm absolutely loving being able to answer these! Thanks so much!

[tothesolarium]

Sometimes I like the base layer of painting more than the final. Though I do plan on properly coloring the Questing Beast

[systemsayoo]

MODERN AU |

Always trust your flight instructor!