With 63-inch driving wheels, these locomotives were known to exceed speeds of 60 miles per hour. The Chicago and North Western and related railroads had 395 4-6-0’s built to this general design by 2 builders between 19, but the 175 is one of the 40 most modern being equipped with the Walschaerts valve gear instead of the more primitive Stephenson design. Between 19, a large share of the transportation in the upper Midwest was accomplished by locomotives like the 175.
It is a relatively late example of a 4-6-0 Ten-wheeler the standard dual-purpose locomotive of the early 1900’s and used on light trains until the 1940’s. The locomotive hauled freight and passenger trains from rural Wisconsin to the iron-mining territory of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on the Chicago and North Western Railroad until the early 1950’s. 1225’s blueprints were used as the prototype for the locomotive image as well as its sounds to bring the train in the animated film to life!Ĭhicago and North Western 175 was built in 1908 by the American Locomotive Company in Schenectady, New York. It’s part of the National Register of Historic Structures and is renowned for its role in the 2004 Warner Brothers Christmas Classic, THE POLAR EXPRESS™. Today the Pere Marquette 1225 is owned, maintained and operated by the Steam Railroading Institute.
In 1982, under the newly evolved Michigan State Trust for Railway Preservation Inc, the donated locomotive was moved to the former Ann Arbor Railroad steam backshop in Owosso where the restoration continued until 1985 when it moved under its own power for the first in 34 years.
The Michigan State University Railroad Club was formed with the ambitious goal of restoring 1225 and using it to power excursion trains that would bring passengers to football games at the university. In 1957, the locomotive was saved with the help of Forest Akers Dodge Motors’s Vice President and Michigan State University Trustee, who saw it as a real piece of machinery for Engineering students to study.ĭisplayed as an icon of the steam-era, it sat at MSU until 1969, when a group of students took an interest in the locomotive. The Pere Marquette Railway merged with the Chesapeake and Ohio in 1947, but the 1225 continued in service until its retirement in 1951 in favor of diesel locomotives. The locomotive cost $245,000 or roughly $2.5 million by today’s standards. The tender holds 22 tons of coal and 22,000 gallons of water, consuming one ton of coal for every twelve miles and 150 gallons of water per mile.
PERE MARQUETTE 1225 FULL
It takes about eight hours to generate a full head of steam on the locomotive’s boiler, which operates at 245 pounds per square inch. The Pere Marquette 1225 is 15 feet 8 inches tall, 101 feet long with a combined working engine and tender weight of 401 tons, while producing an impressive 5000 tractive horsepower. The superpower design was developed between 19 and used by over dozen railroads to haul freight at maximum speed and minimal cost. The locomotive is one of 39 2-8-4, or “Berkshire”, types ordered by the Pere Marquette. The locomotive was used for 10 years between Detroit, Toledo, Flint, Saginaw, Grand Rapids and Chicago hauling fast freight for the products of Michigan factories and farms, including war materiel when Detroit was the “Arsenal of Democracy,” producing huge volumes of vehicles, aircraft, and armaments. The 1225 was built in October of 1941 by the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio for the Pere Marquette Railway. Pere Marquette 1225, the largest and most impressive piece in the Steam Railroading Institute’s collection, is one of the largest operating steam locomotives in Michigan.
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