Pere Marquette No. 1225

Design and Construction

No. 1225 was built by Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio, and delivered to the Pere Marquette Railway in October 1941, one of a small class of 2-8-4 “Berkshire” type locomotives Pere Marquette ordered for fast freight service across its Michigan and Midwest routes. The Berkshire wheel arrangement paired eight driving wheels with a four wheel trailing truck supporting a large firebox, a configuration built for sustained speed with heavy tonnage rather than for drama or record setting, and No. 1225 spent its working life doing exactly that kind of unglamorous, essential freight work.

Revenue Service, 1941 to 1951

No. 1225 hauled fast freight over roughly a decade of service on routes linking Detroit, Toledo, Flint, Saginaw, Grand Rapids, and Chicago, work that continued without interruption when Pere Marquette merged into the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in 1947. It remained in regular freight service under C&O ownership until diesel power caught up with it, and it was formally retired in 1951, a routine end for a workhorse freight engine of its era.

Museum Donation and a Formative Childhood Memory

Rather than being scrapped, No. 1225 was donated to Michigan State University in 1957 and placed on outdoor static display near Spartan Stadium in East Lansing. It sat there through the 1960s as a piece of campus scenery, climbed on and admired by generations of students and local children, among them a young Chris Van Allsburg, who later credited memories of the locomotive with helping inspire his 1985 children’s book The Polar Express.

Project 1225 and Restoration

In 1969, students in the Michigan State University Railroad Club took an interest in the retired locomotive and began what became known as Project 1225, a long term volunteer effort to restore it to operating condition. The effort evolved into the Michigan State Trust for Railway Preservation, and in 1982 the locomotive was moved from campus to the former Ann Arbor Railroad steam backshop in Owosso, Michigan, where the restoration continued in earnest. No. 1225 moved under its own power again in 1985, the first time in 34 years, and after further work it began carrying passengers in 1988, making its first excursion run on a roughly 17 mile route between Owosso and St. Charles.

The Polar Express Connection

No. 1225’s greatest public recognition traces directly back to Van Allsburg’s book and its 2004 film adaptation by Warner Bros. The production team behind the animated film used No. 1225’s original builder’s blueprints as a reference for the computer generated locomotive that appears on screen, and recordings of the real engine’s mechanical sounds were incorporated into the film’s soundtrack, giving the movie’s fictional train an authentic aural signature drawn from the actual machine that helped inspire the story. Since 2004, the Steam Railroading Institute, which grew out of the original MSU restoration effort and now owns and operates No. 1225, has run seasonal North Pole Express excursions behind the locomotive each holiday season, drawing families from across the Midwest to Owosso specifically because of the Polar Express connection.

Recent Operations and Maintenance

No. 1225 continues to operate regular excursion service out of Owosso in addition to its holiday season duties, but like any working steam locomotive it requires periodic heavy maintenance. In November 2024, on the eve of that year’s North Pole Express season, inspectors found the locomotive’s superheater units and some boiler tubes and flues nearing the minimum thickness allowed for safe operation, and the Steam Railroading Institute made the decision to fully retube the boiler barrel and build and install 27 new superheater units in house. The crew completed the retubing by September 2025 and had No. 1225 fired up and through its annual Federal Railroad Administration inspection just in time to open that year’s North Pole Express season, a tight turnaround that came after the locomotive had to sit out part of its 2024 schedule.

Current Status

No. 1225 is based at the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, Michigan, and is one of only two large steam locomotives to survive in the state of Michigan, and the only one still operating under its own power. It remains in active excursion and holiday train service, maintained by the Institute’s staff and volunteers who trace their organization’s roots directly back to the original 1969 Michigan State University restoration effort.