We’re transitioning back to the operations department, and this month want to introduce one of our train operators: Gianni. Gianni first joined us last year, after having come to visit us to get reference photos for a personal project to make a 3D model of North Shore car 715. Our trainmaster noted his interest and encouraged him to volunteer, and he has been enjoying come out to operate trains and show to them to the public ever since.
Outside of the museum, Gianni is currently a student pursuing a degree in web development to allow him to work in that field. In addition, he does a lot of 3D modeling, especially trains and other railroad equipment. He has even modeled several cars from our own collection, including the aforementioned car 715.
Gianni really appreciates the small nature of our museum compared to the much larger volume of volunteers and equipment that can be found at a lot of others, helping keep us down to earth and close to the community. Additionally, the smaller group helps foster a tight-knit community among our volunteers.
Jasmine is one of our volunteers working to restore and maintain our fleet in the car department. She can often be found in our car barn and is one of the key people in our ongoing effort to restore Chicago Aurora & Elgin Car 316 to join car 458 in our active CA&E fleet. She is never afraid to tackle the hard problems that are solved by our car department and her expertise has enabled us to have the fleet we have today.
Her main work in the car barn is staining and sanding wood, but she also has been deeply involved with the roof work going on lately. Along with Kathleen, another one of our volunteer workers, Jasmine has secured all of the saddles onto the roof of CA&E 316. She also helped get the trolley bases onto the roof of 316 using a pulley system, and many times used a wire wheel to remove old paint from the brass pieces of the car, such as the door hinges and sconce brackets. Finally, she works as a groundsman to aid other car department volunteers in their work.
Jasmine first became interested in the museum after being introduced to it by her aunt and uncle when she was 17. At first she was helping with filling the eggs used for the Bunny Burrow Express, but as time went on her role grew and she gradually shifted into the car barn. Through her work she has found her passion for trains.
We are now introducing a new feature: our volunteer spotlight! Every month, we will pick one of our volunteers and give a quick overview of them to show who makes this museum run and give some human faces to the museum.
Our inaugural featured volunteer will be Jacob Goldberg, our webmaster and one of our train operators.
Jacob works as a software developer in Chicago and joined our museum in the summer of 2022. At our museum he is a regular volunteer, frequently acting as motorman on our equipment and also acting as conductor and giving historical explanations of our equipment to passengers. His explanations are a mix of an overview of the train passengers are riding on and our railroad, particularly interesting stories (such as the abrupt abandonment of the CA&E in 1957 that left passengers stranded in Chicago), and humor (“Please let me know if you have any questions. If I know the answer I’ll give a nice explanation, if I don’t know the answer I’ll try to come up with something that sounds convincing.”) In addition, Jacob works behind the scenes as our webmaster, applying the skills from his day job to help the museum. He oversaw the migration of this website from WildApricot to WordPress in late May and a number of other web modernization initiatives, both ones that have already been done and ones that are still in the works. He also is in charge of maintaining our museum social media accounts.
Jacob has had an interest in trains for much of his life, but it really took off in high school after a trip to Paris which included a lot of travel on the Metro and RER. Since then, he has been interested in trains of all kinds, but especially rapid transit and commuter rail. When traveling he will always make a point to ride the local transit system and observe any unusual features of it. He maintains a collection on Flickr of photos from all the transit systems he has ridden. He has photographed all of the stations on the Chicago L, and is currently about three quarters done photographing all of the stations on Metra.
As part of Jacob’s interest in trains, he came out to visit the museum in July 2022. After the other volunteers noted his interest (and his need for a ride back to the Metra station), they encouraged him to join their ranks. He saw an opportunity not just to look at trains, but to work with them and operate them, and now two years later is out here operating trains regularly.
In addition to just an opportunity to operate trains, Jacob has found a strong community at the museum with the other volunteers. They are a very dedicated group of people all centered around a common interest, and also frequently get together outside of the museum for both railroad-related activities and just general fun things like mini golf.
Jacob is one of a few of our volunteers who lives in Chicago and does not have a car. That does not deter him from getting out to the museum: he will either get a ride from one of our other volunteers or take Metra.
