(rshsdepot) Standish, MI

[I95BERNIEW_@_aol.com]

From today's Bay City Times.
 
Bernie Wagenblast
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
 
Historic caboose on way as Standish gets all on board for depot 

 

Wednesday, January 03, 2007  
By HELEN LOUNSBURY

TIMES WRITER  

STANDISH - It won't be the last caboose to stop at the old Standish depot,  
but it's likely the only one planning to stay.  
This month, a retired Detroit & Mackinac Railway caboose - the last of  three 
historic cars - rolls into Standish for good. The threesome will find a  
crane waiting to hoist their metal girths onto the depot's original iron tracks.  
The rail car museum-to-be is among the latest plans gathering steam at the  
118-year-old Standish depot. Inside the fieldstone train station, contractors  
have been busy stripping and re-staining original wood trim and flooring, and  
patching, plastering and repainting walls.  
It's all part of a million dollar-plus job that will transform the depot and  
property - by summer's end - into a state travel and service center. Not bad, 
 planners say, for what was a town eyesore until recently.  
''We're looking at doing our grand opening at the next Depot Days,'' Oct.  
6-7, said Curt Hillman, depot authority president. ''We're working on getting  
Gov. Jennifer Granholm (to attend). We think it's a grand enough thing ...''  
It's grand for Standish and surrounding Arenac County. The 33-member Arenac  
Heritage Route Authority owns and will run the new travel center. The  
partnership is a first for Michigan's Department of Transportation, which  
traditionally owns and operates its expressway-side travel centers, Hillman  said.  
The Department of Transportation is spending some $780,000 on the depot  
renovation, to include refurbishing the train station, landscaping and building  
restrooms and a parking lot.  
Adding rail museum components, however, is being covered by private money.  
The three historic cars, for example, are a donation from the Lake State  
Railway, which bought the Detroit & Mackinac Railway in the early 1990s. The  twin 
cars already trucked to the depot are 1950s-era English passenger trains,  
made by British Railways, Hillman said.  
The cars eventually hauled passengers in northern Michigan for the Boyne City 
 Railroad, until the late 1970s. That's when the Detroit Mackinac's parent  
company, Straits Corp. of Monitor Township, bought the cars.  
In October, the old cars and caboose will make a good backdrop for the Polar  
Express, planners say. The latter is an antique steam engine scheduled to 
roar  into Standish to give color tours during Depot Days.  
For now, the authority's immediate concern is raising $70,000 to build a  
bandstand. The depot originally featured a bandstand for community events.  
Planners say they'll use old photographs to reflect the original bandstand's  
architecture.  
To raise money, authority members are selling engraved, $100 bricks. Donors  
can have their bricks engraved with their family, business or civic group 
name,  said Brenda Matt, an authority member. The bricks will create a walkway 
from the  depot to the proposed bandstand.  
''Kids say the old train interiors are straight out of a Harry Potter  
novel,'' Matt said. ''The wood and upholstery is in remarkably good shape. With  a 
little soap and water they'll make the depot property that much more  
attractive, that much more historically valuable.''  
- - Helen Lounsbury covers regional news for The Times. She can be reached at  
1-800-727-7661 or by e-mail at hlounsbury_@_bc-times.com. 

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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