All aboard! On September 24, 15 members boarded a bus to visit the Museum of the American Railroad which was at the State Fair of Texas. North Texas owes its growth and prosperity to the coming of the railroads and they still play a vital role in our society as we learned on our tour. They have 13 acres in Frisco in which to exhibit 46 historic rail cars with ten Chicago Metra cars coming soon to provide a "Stream-Liner" for educational STEM programs for K-12 classes. (Did you know that 80% of the world's power is produced via steam?) We saw the "Big Boy" which is the world's largest locomotive, weighing 1.2 million pounds (and requiring two months to move from Dallas to Frisco). We saw the GG-I electric locomotive which pulled Robert Kennedy's funeral train in 1968 and we toured a Pullman sleeping car, "Glen Nevis". George Pullman's company provided first-class accommodations on the Chicago-Florida Orange Blossom Special using freed slaves as porters. This led to the creation of the first African-American labor organization, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
Museum of American Railroads Tour, September, 2015
