The Pere Marquette 1225 Playing the Role of Polar Express

I kind of wanted to stick around Port Huron a little longer because there were a couple more ships that I could have caught but there was something else I wanted to catch.

 During the winter, the Steam Institute does the Polar Express with the Pere Marquette 1225.  It gives people a chance to ride on the train they used to model the train in the movie.  It gives other people the opportunity to get pictures of a steam engine.  If I had acted sooner, I could have been in the first group but I definitely wanted to be in the second group.

 So after poking around the Mississagi for a bit, I left Port Huron to head over to Owosso.  They were doing a ride at 4:00.  Since it was cloudy all day, I wasn't sure about the lighting but as I headed west, the clouds started to break.

 This gave me the golden light.

 And I was happy for that because she is beautiful engine.

 As I was taking pictures, the engineer gave me a treat and started to blow out some of her lines.

 It gave me a nice steam covered train picture.  Couple that with the lighting and I think I have a pretty nice picture.

 I had to keep taking pictures.

 And she was starting to get ready to pick up her passengers.

 And I didn't want to linger too long because I had other plans.

 Those plans involved me heading over to the Carland Elevator to catch pictures of her there.  I think this makes a pretty nice backdrop for the train.

 If you look to the left, you can see a little spec of train.

 The little spec becomes a more full blown train.  At this point, she has a pretty full head of steam....

 ...and is flying by.  It doesn't give many opportunities for dilly dallying.

 But the light on the steam was pretty cool.

 Especially as it obscured it a bit.

 Sadly, I didn't have quite the shutter speed for this picture but I kind of like the illusion of motion.

And the helper engine.  I was a little ticked at first because the mobile home to the left was parked a little further forward, but they decided to move it.