The Green Bay & Western was the first and last Lake Michigan rail connection for the Ann Arbor Railroad car ferry services, which began on November 27, 1892 with an outbound boat from Kewaunee, WI. The Kewaunee, Green Bay & Western provided 22 boxcars laden with flour for markets in Ireland, Scotland, and England to the newly constructed ferry dock, and Ann Arbor Car Ferry #1 made the trip across Lake Michigan to the eastern shore and the new dock in Elberta. For the next 90 years, daily sailings continued to provide an east-west shortcut that avoided multiple days of switching and congestion in Chicago. This was a strategic advantage shared to the mutual benefit of the Ann Arbor Railroad and the Green Bay & Western Railroad until ferry service ended on April 26, 1982, after the state subsidies that had kept the Ann Arbor afloat (literally) were revoked. 

​

Due to embargoes on other routes, when the revocation of subsidies terminated Ann Arbor ferry service, the GB&W had a glut of eastbound cars stacked in Kewaunee and attempted to have WisDOT and MDOT negotiate resumption of ferry service to no avail. Eastbound cars were then sent to Ludington by C&O ferry, but as the C&O also desired to abolish ferry service, cross-lake rail transfers were ultimately shifted to different operators (MWT/LMC) and terminated in 1990.

​

However, as my 1/160 universe ends in 1980-1981, the Green Bay & Western is preserved and represented as a lower deck shipper/receiver of my upper deck Ann Arbor car ferry services. Thankfully there are great off-the-shelf models for the GBW, so my customizing was limited to DCC/Sound installations.