The Ann Arbor Railroad's cross-lake ferry service began on November 27, 1892 with an outbound ferry 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 in 1982, along with the state subsidies that had kept the Ann Arbor afloat (literally). 

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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.

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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.