Although some claim that the 1225 was saved because of the number, having spoken to Herschal Christiansen, I know that not to be true. Herschal was the yard foreman of engines responsible for getting the 1225 ready to ship to MSU. The reason that the 1225 was saved was that it was the engine at the end of the line. When they went to get an engine and visually restore it for the purpose of giving it to MSU, they just pulled the one from the end of the line. Christmas day is a nice story, but just not true. Sam Chidester, an engineer and Hank Truer, one of the steam shop mechanics verified the story. We got 1225 by luck.

They had to do some restoration on the 1225 because the eccentric rods from 1225 had been pulled. These were replaced with ones from the 1229. You can tell this because all the rods of an engine were stamped with the engine number. This kept you from putting just any rods on an engine, which could be a problem because uneven wear could cause excessive stress in a local area. The eccentric rods currently on the 1225 are stamped 1229.

In speaking to guys like Herschal, Hank Truer and Sam Chidester, we were all a bit disappointed that they didn't save the 1229. This engine had roller bearings and a booster. It was an N2, instead of an N1 (The steam dome and sand tank had the positions reversed). This made the engine less susceptible to sucking water into the dry pipe when braking or going down hill. Sam, who was an engineer for the Pere Marquette, said that the 1225 was not his favorite engine. The springs were harder than on the other 1200s, giving it a much harder ride. By the time we were working on the engine, the springs had sagged to the point that they had to be removed and re-tempered.

I found it interesting that when Chris Van Allsburg was interviewed by the Detroit Free Press for the grand opening of the movie, he said that no one engine was the engine he envisioned in writing the book, but the one with the most influence on him was the engine that was on campus next to the stadium at MSU. He had played on that engine when his father took him to football games as a child. He was quite surprised to learn that the 1225 was that engine. The movie studio had merely decided to look for a Michigan engine to use for the movie, figuring that it would be most true to the story. Little did they know that the 1225 was "the engine". We were the first organization they called. Dennis Braid also didn't know that it was "the engine" when he took the call but thought that it was an opportunity we couldn't turn down.

My member number is 13. I joined the club in spring of 1970, when the actual restoration was just starting. I was the last charter member, I think. I was the president of the MSURRC for 4 years and the first president of the MSTRP. In the summer of 1975, I came back to finish school after having been off for a year due to an injury. That summer, Arnie Frobom and I started working on the engine. Arnie confided in me that he really didn't like doing the physical restoration. He much preferred the office work. I told him that I didn't like the office work and preferred the engine work, so we decided that he would handle the office and I would take care of the engine. After that, Arnie only occasionally showed up at the site. I only occasionally showed up at the office. At the first fall meeting, I was the only student member present. Arnie was there but had graduated and was working for the State Highway Dept. This left him ineligible to be President of a student organization and ineligible to vote. As the only voting member present and the only eligible person to hold office, I unanimously elected myself president.

I was grateful to Arnie to have stayed on. He wrote the newsletter, took care of mailings and membership, etc. He also kept in touch with other organizations to find out what they were doing and let them know about us. We probably wouldn't have survived without him.

As the years wore on, I often though of a conversation Steve Derocha and I had back in 1970, which was in essence that unlike others in the club who were dying to get at the throttle of the engine, that really didn't matter to us. We just wanted to see it run and be able to say that we were part of that. I still haven't ridden in the cab of the 1225 and if I never do, I won't be any sadder. I am just happy it is running and preserved.

I stayed at MSU, becoming a grad student in geology because MSU Vice President Jack Breslin said to Rollie Baker, the director of the museum, and official guardian of the 1225, to let us know that the day the restoration stops is the day that the cutting torches come out. To emphasize the point, he had the last remaining Pere Marquette hopper car, which was also on campus, cut up. I was afraid that if I left, the 1225 would also be cut up, as Jack had threatened. Mr. Breslin had let it be known that he didn't appreciate the appearance of the 1225, on several occasions. Once when pulling the jacket, Dr. Baker came by and told us that. We immediately put a coat of black paint on the boiler to make it look better. When we constructed a greenhouse around the engine one year to allow winter work, Dr. Baker came by in the spring and said that Jack Breslin thought it was time for it to come down, so we took it down. The Vice President of MSU has more to do with the actual running of the university than does the President. The President raises money and is the person who hires the VP, but the VP actually runs the campus. We did everything we could to keep Jack Breslin happy. For his part, he did not stop us, though he could have. I am grateful for that.

Don't get the impression that I was responsible for the restoration of the 1225. A lot of people were. Steve Reeves gets mentioned because he was the first president, but a lot of guys were important to the organization at different times. Randy Paquette was the second president. He was president when actual work got started on the engine. Randy introduced us to Don Childs, who ran the Engineering machine shop. Don was willing to let us use university machine tools. He got it approved by the Engineering Dept. The rule was that we could work there but we had to clean up our mess, buy our own supplies and not waste any of the employees time. Don donated his lunch perids and other times to get us setup to make parts. For this to work, he had to teach us to be machinists. We rebuilt air compressors, the cold water pump, hot water pump, blow downs, etc. in the shop. Don also helped us build a throttle grinder from the prints in the manual for the throttle. We built a wash out plug wrench and a special wrench to take off the nut on the main nut on the side rods. Since Norm Burgess did the work on the side rod wrench, it was called the Normington wrench after that. In rebuilding parts, we often had to merely replace them. One of the blow down valve stems was so shot, that we had to cut a new one out of a piece of bar stock.

Kevin Keefe was the person who wrote our news letter. He was also president one year. I think it was Kevin, Andy Kwyer and Randy Paquette who bought the Railway Post Office Car off the scrap line of the GTW. They paid for it on the spot. Later, the railroad said that they were not willing to sell us the engine. Our response was that we had a receipt, so send us our car. They did, but when it arrived on campus, Jack Breslin wanted it removed, since it wasn't university property. Dr. Baker allowed us to give it to the MSU Museum. This defused the situation. We stored it initially on the spur that used to go across the river to the old power plant that stood where the Administration building now stands. We had to push the car 50 feet from the switch to be legal. This made a long walk to get tools. We had a stairway donated to us that had been the stairway used for the outdoor stage when the Jefferson Airplane (a rock group) performed on campus. Occasionally, we pulled the car up to the engine while we were working then rolled it back at the end of the day. We bought railroad car batteries and a 5 hp Briggs and Stratten engine to power the lights. Randy had to rewire the generator on the car to make it able to be turned with only 5 hp. Bob Wasko wrote a set of instructions for the installation of the engine and put them in the inspection certificate holder above the entrance by the latrine. When John Martin, a president of the MSTRP, sold the car (I was against the sale), the purchaser merely wanted the trucks and left the car sitting on the ground. This was purchased by the Southern Pacific and then modified to look like a Southern RPO. It is now on display in the National Post office in Washington, D.C. It is amusing to see Bob's instructions for putting up the 5 hp engine still in the inspection certificate holder. I wanted to keep the RPO because it was rarer than the engine. To my knowledge, it was the only RPO to survive intact anywhere. As such, as president, I would not allow anyone to modify the interior in any way that would damage it, as had other presidents before me. A few people wanted to pull out all of the mail sorting cubby holes to make more room. Instead, we used the cubby holes and put plywood boards in front of others to hang tools. I wouldn't even let them take the city names off of the cubby holes, so that they could put tool names. I also made sure we kept things like the mail bag catcher. Once I wasn't president, others had different ideas. It was argued that the RPO was no longer necessary once we had the Owosso shop and it needed upkeep. We also could use the money it would bring.

There are really too many members who deserve credit and whom I have not mentioned. Just let it be said that this was and is a project that many have made possible. No one person deserves all the credit. I'm still amazed that we got it done.

I spoke to Leslie Scott, VP for Development at MSU many years later. He had worked for the Santa Fe before coming to MSU and was sympathetic to us. He told me the reason that earlier presidents of the MSURRC could get nowhere with the administration. This was due to the Forestry Club. They wanted to build a log cabin on campus. They were given a site and allowed to cut trees on campus property to build a cabin. Part way through the project, the members who had envisioned this project graduated and left. No one took their places, leaving the university with a cleared site that had logs stacked on it, a partially constructed cabin, and tree stumps on campus. This left Jack Breslin furious about the mess. The university had to spend money to clean it up. It had a cleared site and was missing trees from the Beal preserve. After that, no one wanted to risk allowing a student club take on such an ambitious project, for fear that Jack Breslin would fire them. We had just started on the engine at the time that the Forestry Club fell apart, so Jack Breslin didn't stop us but had we wanted to start at a later time, he may have prevented Dr. Baker from allowing us to work on it. Les noted that the engine was right next to the the stadium, which meant that visitors and alumni saw it. Mr. Breslin, according to Les, envisioned the campus looking like a large park, not like a junk yard. By the time I spoke to Les Scott, the engine was near ready to move off campus. He said we surprised a lot of people. Many thought we would never stick to it and finish the restoration.

The engine was transfered to the MSTRP because when Cliff Wharton left as President of MSU and Edgar Harden came in as temporary president, I went to see him at his reception. I was president of the railroad club and a geology grad student. Dr. Harden recalled being president of Northern Michigan University when MSU geology field camp was based there. The Professor who was running field camp was Justin Zinn. He passed away during field camp. I then spoke to him briefly, saying that I would like to meet him to discuss the future of the 1225. He agreed and had his secretary set up an appointment. In that meeting, I told Dr. Harden that we were getting near completion of the work on the engine and wanted to know how we could work that with the University. We wanted to run this engine, not just leave it sitting after restoration. Dr. Harden said that it would be a problem, because we were students. We would need to be university employees to run the engine and that just wasn't going to happen. He also mentioned that the university had no interest in running a locomotive. The liability was more than what the university wanted. He suggested that if we formed a 501c3, he would give us the engine and that would solve both of our problems. We formed MSTRP and he arranged for the university to give us the engine.

I think the story of how the university came to own an engine was interesting. I heard this story both from Les Scott and from Rollie Baker. Forest Akers, who was a trustee of the University, and its largest contributor, was a member of the same club as The Chairman of the C&O, Cyrus Eaton. Cyrus Eaton told Forest Akers that he wondered if the University would be interested in having a locomotive. Eaton hated to see these engines being cut up. He thought that the Engineering department might use it to teach mechanical engineers on a real piece of equipment. Akers thought it a good idea so he proposed it to John Hannah, then president of the University and also a director of the Forest Akers Trust. As Dr. Baker phrased it, anything that Forest Akers thought was a good idea was a good idea to John Hannah. He accepted the gift and then told the Chairman of the Engineering Department about the engine. He responded to the effect of, what do they want with an antique steam engine? Hannah then told Dr. Baker that he would be getting the engine.

When the engine was being pushed to campus, the left lead truck bearing burned out. They put some cool-ax in the bearing box to get it to campus. We had to later pull the axle, re-turn it, and replace the babbit on the bearing before we could move the engine to Owosso. A group of us also spent many days polishing the driver bearing axles. The lubricators on them had not moved since 1957 and thus the oil had dried off of the axles many years ago. This left rust and some pitting. We cleaned these up and polished them with crocus cloth till they were shiny. The mechanical oilers were replaced with grease block holders later, a step back in technology, but one that required little maintenance. If the engine sat for a while, the grease would not run off.