You know you're a rail transportation enthusiast when, upon receiving a gift of a Hallmark Polar Express "North Pole Table Decoration", you don't immediately plug it up and run the thing. (Company link unavailable because the bums are redoing their site.)
Instead, you look at the locomotive to count the wheel arrangement. For what it's worth, the Polar Express is a 2-8-4 of the "Berkshire" type. For extra points, you look at the (heavyweight) passenger coaches and think you're looking at rolling stock borrowed from the Central Railroad of New Jersey.
According to one site, Pere Marquette #1225, a surviving Berkshire, was used as a visual reference for making the new Polar Express movie. The Pere Marquette Railroad was a Michigan-based railroad merged into the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway on 06 June 1947.
Posted by Country Pundit at November 12, 2004 11:53 AM