The Polar Express (locomotive)

The Polar Express is the titular magical 2-8-4 wheel configured American Berkshire type steam engine that transports children to the North Pole on Christmas Eve. It pulls a line of passenger cars, which in the film amount to five (however, some scenes show the train with four or twenty), including an abandoned toy car and an observation car. The children reside in the second to last car.

Role in the film

The train makes two stops in Grand Rapids, Michigan to pick up Hero Boy and Billy the Lonely Boy respectively. Later in the film, Smokey and Steamer, the engine's fireman and engineer, have to fix the light, so Hero Girl is put in charge of driving the engine in the engine room. Suddenly, Smokey and Steamer see something ahead on the track and call out to Hero Girl to stop the train, but she and Hero Boy have trouble figuring out which lever applies the brakes. Eventually, Hero Boy applies the brakes and the train stops just before it crashes into a huge herd of caribou.

After the caribou gets out of the way, Smokey and Steamer return to the cab and start the train again. However, the throttle jams due to a loose cotter pin, which eventually comes off and falls into an air vent, causing the train to accelerate uncontrollably. Concerned about the situation, the Conductor ties himself and the two children to the safety bar to get ready for the approaching Glacier Gulch. While on the fast downhill grade, the pin comes back out and Steamer catches it with his mouth, but swallows it by accident. The train speeds onto the Ice Lake; because the tracks are frozen over, the train ends up slide across the ice. Smokey tries to retrieve the pin by hitting Steamer's back with a shovel, which instead sends it flying out of the cab and into the ice, causing it to crack. The train hits an iceberg that causes it to tilt, almost causing Hero Girl to fall off, but is saved by the Conductor, Hero Boy, and the Hobo. Smokey finally uses the spare pin from his hair to fix the throttle, allowing Steamer to control the speed again and stop the train. Everyone had to move to the left to keep the train from toppling over. They soon notice the cracking ice, so Smokey and Steamer get the train back on the tracks with the Conductor navigating. They narrowly make it to the other side just before the ice breaks completely.

The Conductor, Hero Boy and Hero Girl later walk across the engine and tender to get back to the passenger cars as the train goes up Corkscrew Mountain.

Basis

Chris Van Allsburg based the locomotive in the book on the Pere Marquette 1225, a 1941 Berkshire N-1 class 2-8-4 locomotive built at the Lima Locomotive Works. He chose this design because he used to play on the locomotive while attending games at the Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan where it was placed on static display at the time. He was inspired by its number, which is also the date of Christmas.

The locomotive's design was also used in the film, as well as its sounds, with the exception of its whistle, which came from Sierra Railway No. 28. Drawings and blueprints of the locomotive were used to create the CGI model engine.

Today, the 1225 is housed in Owosso, Michigan and is operated and maintained by the Steam Railroading Institute. The 1225 frequently hauls passenger excursions in Michigan throughout the year, including the world-famous North Pole Express trips throughout the months of November and December.

Livery

In both the book and the film, the locomotive and its tender are painted black. In the film, the tender also has the words "Polar Express" in white on both sides.

In some merchandise, the wording on the tender is yellow. The locomotive often also has the number 1225 under its side cab windows, matching the number of its basis, in the same color as the wording on the tender, even though lacks a number in both the book and the film.

Trivia

• The Polar Express' whistle is from Sierra Railway No. 3, which was featured in Back to the Future Part III, another film directed by Robert Zemeckis.
  • In one scene when the train goes through the forest (where a pack of wolves run along side it), the second whistle which was heard comes from Canadian Pacific No. 136.
  • When the train arrives to pick up Hero Boy, a Southern Pacific flat-top 6-chime whistle is used.
• Contrary to its basis, the locomotive has a 4-8-2 wheel arrangement in the book, in which it has 4 leading wheels, 8 driving wheels and 2 trailing wheels.
• The engine has some differences in appearance compared to its prototype:
  • The Polar Express lacks a feedwater heater (between the stack and bell), number boards (on each side of the bell), and builder's plates (on the sides of the smokebox) that its prototype features.
  • The Polar Express's headlight is recessed into the smokebox, similar to many Delaware & Hudson locomotives, rather than sitting on a platform attached to the smokebox.
  • The cowcatcher is larger than that of the prototype, with slats that extend to the top of the pilot beam, and lacks a front coupler.
  • The whistle is mounted on the upper right-hand side of the boiler, rather than on the top of the boiler, and is positioned upright as opposed to horizontally as is the prototype's.
  • There are six sand tubes on each side of the sand dome instead of five like the prototype.
  • In the scene when Hero Boy applies the brakes, the real world controls would have been set to release, the brakes current position was in LAP (holds current pressure), and Hero Boy should have move the lever to right instead of left.
  • The Pere Marquette's throttle is mounted with bolts, the likely hood of the throttle falling apart the way it did in the film is very unlikely.
  • In the scene where the cotter pin lands on and bounces off Smokey's hat, if you look closely next to Smokey's head there appears to be a flux capacitor, insinuating the locomotive can time travel, but alas it could just be a nod to "Back To The Future" as the director directed both films. This also appears with in the video game during the "Repair the Engine" and "Stoke the Flame" levels.
  • Whenever Steamer opens the throttle on the locomotive in the engine room, he pushes it away from him, the further away he pushes it the faster the train will go. In reality, the engineer must pull the throttle lever toward him to accelerate while pushing it away from him closes the throttle valve.
  • The grate the cotter pin fell into, is assumed to be a part of the engine's firebox, as it glows the same as the engine's firebox itself, but in reality the grate would actually cover the locomotive's stoker motor auger (a way of fire the locomotive semiautomatically with steam), and despite the Polar Express displaying that it does have a stoker, Smokey continues to fire the locomotive by hand with a coal shovel.
• In the film, Know-It-All refers to the locomotive as a "Baldwin 2-8-4 S-3 class Berkshire type steam locomotive" and says it was built in 1931 at the Baldwin Locomotive Works. He also mentions the locomotive weighing 456,100 pounds. In reality, Pere Marquette 1225 weighs 442,500 pounds (which, including the loaded tender, brings the total weight up to 802,500 pounds), and is an N-1 class built by Lima in 1941, a full ten years after his claim.
  • However, there was a series of S-3 class steam locomotives built in 1949 at Lima for the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (Nickel Plate Road), which look very similar to Pere Marquette 1225, being built to the same design, and having the same wheel arrangement. They weigh 444,300 pounds.
  • As an added note, there was a "Baldwin S-3 Class" 2-8-4 Berkshire, built for the Erie Railroad in 1928. 35 engines of them and their class were built, with all of them being withdrawn and scrapped between 1950 and 1952.
• Grand Rapids, Michigan and the North Pole are over 3,000 miles (over 5,000 kilometers) apart, so a train in real life would have to travel hundreds of miles per hour to complete a round trip in one night. At Pere Marquette's a top speed of 70 mph (113 km/h), it would take about 93 hours to complete the journey non-stop, which is nearly four days. Since the Polar Express has a flux capacitor, it could be assumed it can either slow or speed up time, allowing the train to travel such a distance in a shorter amount of time.
• Each of the tickets in the film all have a seven-digit number on them. 1225, the Pere Marquette's number, always appears as part of that number with zeroes filling in the remaining places. The order of the 1225 and three zeroes varies depending on the ticket.
• The locomotive lacked a tender when it appeared as part of a float based on The Polar Express at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2005 and 2006.
• In the video game, the locomotive does not have a bell in front of its smokestack as shown in the "Chasing the Train" level. It also lacks the "Polar Express" lettering on its tender, making the locomotive closer to its appearance in the book. It also looked like that on the Game Boy Advance version.

Gallery

The Polar Express (film)

Polar Express flux capacitor

The locomotive's driving wheels

The locomotive's smokestack and bell

The locomotive's whistle

Merchandise gallery

Lionel HO Gauge Polar Express

Lionel

G-gauge, incorrectly depicting the engine as a 2-8-2

Lionel O Gauge starter set

Brio Battery-powered Polar Express

References

Preceded by N/A

The Polar Express Locomotive

Followed by Abandoned toy car