The story
History
The Pere Marquette was incorporated on November 1, 1899, in anticipation of a merger of three Michigan-based railroad companies that had been agreed upon by all parties. It began operations on January 1, 1900, absorbing the following companies:
Flint & Pere Marquette Railroad (F&PM)
Detroit, Grand Rapids & Western Railroad (DGR&W)
Chicago & West Michigan Railway (C&WM)
The first shop facilities were inherited from the Flint and Pere Marquette in Saginaw, Michigan. However, the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan was chosen as the primary repair facility for rolling stock in 1905, which became known as the Wyoming Shops after the neighborhood in which they were located. Wyoming Yard was one of the system's primary freight classification yards. The shops were renovated and expanded in 1923 after those of Saginaw were downgraded, and converted to service diesel engines in 1946. The massive roundhouse began to be slowly demolished in the 1970s and finally removed completely by CSX by 1984.
The company was reincorporated on March 12, 1917, as the Pere Marquette Railway. In the 1920s the Pere Marquette came under the control of Cleveland financiers Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen. These brothers also controlled the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad (Nickel Plate), the Erie Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, and planned to merge the four companies. However, the ICC did not approve the merger and the Van Sweringens eventually sold their interest in the Pere Marquette to the C&O in 1929. The company continued to operate separately as the Pere Marquette Railway until being fully merged into the C&O on June 6, 1947. Forty years later, the C&O was absorbed into CSX Transportation.
In 1984, Amtrak named its passenger train between Chicago and Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Pere Marquette.
The locomotive in the 2004 film The Polar Express was modeled after steam locomotive Pere Marquette 1225. The film also included audio recordings of #1225 in operation. It is the locomotive that Chris Van Allsburg said was the inspiration for the book, having seen it as a child when it was on the Michigan State University campus. The locomotive was scheduled to be at the premiere in Grand Rapids, where the writer was born, but was canceled because of interferences with the schedule of CSX. It is now housed and maintained at the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, Michigan.
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Surviving steam locomotives
PM 1223 - 2-8-4 "Berkshire" displayed at Chinook Pier in Grand Haven, Michigan. PM 1223 is the oldest surviving example of the 2-8-4s in America.
PM 1225 - 2-8-4 "Berkshire" operational by the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, Michigan. PM 1225 appears in motion-capture form in the 2004 Christmas movie The Polar Express.
1907 wreck
On July 20, 1907, an excursion train carrying 800 passengers from Ionia to Detroit collided near Salem with a freight train, killing 31 and injuring 101. The accident apparently happened because of a hand-written schedule on unlined paper whose columns did not line up, and was misread by the freight crew. The Interstate Commerce Commission investigation also cited safety violations, including use of pine instead of oak for car walls and the omission of steel plates required for mail cars. This was Michigan's worst rail disaster.
From Wikipedia’s article on Pere Marquette Railway, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3