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.

(And man, I'm looking at my 1967 Steam Passenger Service Directory--nothing on the British stuff, but just what is that monstrosity behind 0-4-0T #11 on the Cadillac & Lake City Railway? It looks like a very bad Hollywood attempt at fabricating the Lincoln funeral Pullman from a boxcar body!)