Sept. 24--Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry is selling off five items from its historic train collection as part of an effort to present a wider range of transportation in its galleries, museum officials said.
The current transportation gallery "is narrowly focused on train technology, and what we are hoping to do is ... be able to broaden the story," said Kathleen McCarthy, director of collections.
Going on auction Oct. 5 in Philadelphia are a circa 1834 locomotive, the Mississippi, "enormously significant" and "believed to be the first locomotive in the South," according to Bonhams, the San Francisco firm conducting the auction.
Also on offer are four replica vehicles that have been shown at MSI for decades: the John Stevens steam engine (1825 in the original), the York coal-burning engine (1831), the Archer Avenue horse-drawn street car (1859) and a 1920 steam locomotive cab displayed by Pennsylvania Railroad Co. at the 1933 Century of Progress Fair.
"This is one I've been wanting to do for many years," McCarthy said. "We have had four locomotives, taking up a significant amount of space, that represent nine years of development in the history of trains, 1825 to 1834."
Sticking around to tell the rail story, just in lesser detail, are the trains known as 999, Rocket and Zephyr, McCarthy said. Expected to join them on display are something from the museum's motorcycle collection as well as some more contemporary and urban items.
Also leaving the gallery this year, she said, will be the Spirit of America, the first car to break the 500-mph barrier. It is being returned to its driver, Craig Breedlove.
