kevin_standlee | To The Trains

Today was our day to visit the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois. This is about 60 miles west of downtown Chicago and challenging to access without a car, so I rented a car from the Hertz agency in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency this morning for the day trip. Lisa, Kuma, and I were joined by Feòrag, who arrived last night with her partner Charlie Stross. Charlie decided not to come with us, but chatted with us while we waited for the car to be brought up to us.

As the car's fuel tank did not appear to have enough fuel to make the round trip, we elected to find a BP station (I received as a gift some BP gas cards, and I can't use them at home because there are no BP stations in Nevada). Aside from my making a wrong turn that required a bit of hunting around to get us pointed in the right direction, this was not that difficult, and I ended up putting more fuel than we ended up needing into the car, but that's okay. We set out west onto I-90, slogging through slow traffic until suddenly everything opened up and it was 70 mph until we got to US-20. Lisa navigated us through the rural roads to Union, and we were there shortly after they opened at 10 AM.

I wish I had the energy to label and categorize all the photos I took, but I'm really worn out. Lisa also took piles of photos. I expect that you will see some of this turn up on Railway Legends, Myths, and Stories in the future.

We rode on the IRM's demonstration railway on a Chicago, Aurora, and Elgin interurban car, which I enjoyed, and then we started walking through the huge collection they have there. Even spending four hours at the museum, we didn't get to see everything. It was fascinating, though. I now have seen one of the two Electroliners in person, and have been up close to a "Little Joe" and a GG1 electric locomotive, neither of which I've ever seen except in pictures.

I wish we could have stayed longer, but we had to have the car back before 5 PM and we'd been warned that the inbound traffic was going to be bad (thanks, folks), so shortly after 2:30, we turned back to Chicago. This also went as predicted, taking about two hours to drive sixty miles, including a slow crawl to finally get to the exit to take us back down to the Hyatt. We arrived at 4:30, with plenty of time to hand the keys back to the rental counter, at least once I disentangled myself from the Hyatt employees who were trying to sign me in to valet parking. Eventually the valet heard me saying, "No, I'm not parking this car with you; I'm returning it to the Hertz counter inside your lobby!" (I did later get the return receipt from Hertz, so that's fine. Tolls from I-90 are collected electronically and billed later.)

We bade Feòrag goodbye (they're in the other hotel tower from us), dropped our things in our hotel room, and made another trip to Bockwinkle's grocery down the street for stuff for dinner. (Expect this to be a common refrain on this trip.) We made dinner out of what we bought, and were happy to have it. We are really glad we made the trip out to Union, and I'd love to visit the place again, but we're very tired, and also very glad that we don't have early-morning commitments tomorrow, so I don't have to set an alarm. Sleeping in is on our agenda for tomorrow.