This story appeared first in the Sunday edition of the Wisconsin State Journal newspaper.

NORTH FREEDOM - The 1385 has seen better days.

The 104-year-old steam engine has traversed the country pulling freight and passengers, been in movies and shuttled colorful wagons from Circus World Museum in Baraboo to Milwaukee for the Great Circus Parade.

But it's hard to imagine this beast of a machine breathing again.

Approach the 60-ton cast-iron and steel engine today on a side track at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum here and there is no black coal smoke belching from its front stack, the bell is missing, cobwebs fill spaces and rust is everywhere.

The Chicago & North Western Railroad had the engine built by the American Locomotive Co. in Schenectady, N.Y., and began operating the engine in 1907. That's the same year of the Lusitania's maiden voyage and a year before the Chicago Cubs' last World Series win.

Only with the 1385, there is a chance at life.

Led by a $250,000 matching grant from the Wagner Foundation, a fundraising campaign is under way to cover the costs of a restoration for the 1385 that is expected to cost an estimated $1.2 million. If completed, it would be the largest restoration project in the museum's history but less than the estimated $2 million it is taking to restore the museum following the floods of 2008.

"When I look at it, I know what (it) can be and that's the drive to keep it going," said Don Meyer, project director of the 1385 restoration effort. "I know the impact that it has on the general public."

Meyer had only been at the museum a week when in 1995 he saw a man and his grandson holding hands on the train platform. The boy jumped up and down. The grandfather had a tear in his eye as the 1385 belched, hissed and churned away from the train station.

Videos taken in the 1980s and posted on YouTube show throngs of crowds greeting the train on runs in Iowa and Illinois. A clip from 1986 in Menomonie, in northwestern Wisconsin, shows the engine arriving and stopping, a worker shoveling coal into the firebox and the train slowing pulling away, white smoke pouring from the back smokestack and its wheels gradually turning with the help of massive pistons.

The locomotive has been a part of the museum since 1961 but hasn't operated since 1998. Accordingly, attendance has also dropped from peaks of about 50,000 to about 30,000 a year. Meyer and others have no doubt those numbers will climb once the steam locomotive and its tender — that when filled weigh a combined 100 tons — return to active duty.

"We couldn't think of any more important way to support the museum further than to help it get it's steam program going again," said Dick Wagner, president of the Wagner Foundation and a retired airline pilot.

His foundation has helped restore airplanes and has made other donations to Mid-Continent, but the $250,000 matching grant is a bit unusual.

Instead of waiting for matching funds to be raised before releasing his grant, Wagner, who lives in the Walworth County community of Lyons, has instructed Mid-Continent to begin spending the money. That has allowed work on the engine's boiler and tender car to begin and could put the 1385 back in service by 2013.

The railway museum was founded in 1959 as the Railway Historical Society of Milwaukee, had a brief move to Hillsboro in 1962 before settling in North Freedom a year later when the society purchased 4.2 miles of track from the Chicago & North Western. The 1385 was the first engine to pull cars at the new location.

The nonprofit museum's collection is focused on railroad equipment that dates between 1885 and 1915, when steam locomotives moved 90 percent of the nation's passengers and freight. The museum has 13 steam locomotives, 38 passenger cars, 31 freight cars, 21 cabooses and 15 pieces of service equipment.

The 1385 is the museum's only steam engine targeted for restoration. When it was taken out of service in 1998 for $125,000 in boiler repairs, a closer inspection revealed the engine needed $750,000 worth of work.

The project stalled and was further set back in June 2008 when the swollen Baraboo River covered most of the property in flood water. The damaged closed the museum until February 2009. Repairs to the museum are about complete and have made for better access, smoother walkways and cleaner-looking grounds. The work was done by volunteers and local contractors and paid for with insurance money, donations, grants and a $460,000 loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The recession would appear to be an obstacle for raising money for the steam engine project but Meyer is counting on the passion that comes with old trains.

In 2006, the Jeffris Family Foundation of Janesville announced a $475,000 grant for the restoration of a nearly 100-year-old fish-stocking car if the museum could match that sum within two years. It had $60,000 to go when the flood and then the recession hit. The money, however was raised and the project completed in 2009.

Relatively quiet diesel locomotives now pull passenger cars three times a day during the summer, but Meyer is looking forward to the enticing noises and vibrations in the earth that only a steam engine can provide.

"It's quite a fascinating piece of equipment," Meyer said of the 10-wheeled engine. "It's a beautiful piece of work."

Barry Adams covers regional news for the Wisconsin State Journal. Send him ideas for On Wisconsin at 608-252-6148 or by email at badams@madison.com.