Depot restoration dreams are becoming reality
The Detroit & Mackinac Railroad depot in Millersburg, a rare historical link to the past, will be 90 next year.
It doesn?t look a day over 50 — as restoration work continues by the Millersburg Area Historical Society.
The changes are not as evident until the building is viewed close up.
Over the last two summers, the original slate roof has received $30,000 in repairs and wooden docks on the north and south side of the buildings have been restored to their early 20th century appearance.
Intact train tracks from O-N Minerals of Rogers City have been donated and delivered, in anticipation of the day they are placed on each side of the building.
This summer, concrete was poured around the structure to recreate the walkway in preparation of the tracks being moved to their permanent home.
With the work that has been done, it is getting easier to imagine people gathering at a place, which was once the center of commerce for Millersburg.
IT IS WHERE the farmer?s cattle and sheep were loaded for markets, where forest products ? including lumber, trap-net poles, railroad ties, Christmas trees, and pulpwood-were loaded and shipped.
It is where the mail arrived, farmers picked up their chicks in the spring, young boys marveled at the steam engine, and families watched their boys go off to war.
The depot closed in 1949 and was used for storage for nearly five decades. The building was in advanced stages of disrepair in the 1990s, when the Department of Natural Resources sold the land and the building to the village.
The original restoration estimates by architect John Dziuman, a Rochester firm specializing in historic sites, placed estimates at $450,000.
?When we first started on this, there were a lot of people, and rightly so, who were very hesitant to make gifts of money to something that was just a dream,? said Millersburg Area Historical Society president Virgil Freel. ?Now we?ve got it to the point where it is not a dream. We have a new roof, we have new eave troughs, like they were originally, and we have a dock that is done exactly the way it was.?
MORE WORK and money are needed to move forward with efforts to restore the depot to its former glory.
A recent grant for $1,000 has helped. The funding was used on dock work and the raising of the concrete floor in the baggage room. Much more work is planned.
?What we have to do is restore the inside of this, the way it was before the former owner gutted it and used the materials in his personal home,? said Freel.
With most restoration projects involving historical sites, specific material has to be used to qualify for historical funding. ?It has to be done exactly the way that it was,? said Freel. ?It puts a little crimp in the budget, because you can?t just go to a lumber store and buy a window.?
Some windows have been purchased and are ready to be installed, but the building is still not ready to be sealed for an entire winter. Boards will still have to be used to completely enclose the building.
There are places, such as above the north baggage doors, where there are no windows at all, just open window frames with not even a piece of glass remaining.
WORK COMPLETED this summer includes the installation of downspouts from the roof and the sealing of cracks in the wall. ?There were some structure cracks in the concrete blocks, which has all been sawed and scraped, and remortared,? said Freel. ?Structurally now, it is really quite sound. The architect said that it was structurally sound, before we did that, but we had to do that to keep the moisture from getting in and doing any more damage.
Immediate plan
?The doors are going to be very costly, but we have a person who can duplicate those doors,? said Freel.
The community, former Millersburg residents, local educators, and the DNR have wholly-heartedly endorsed the project. Folks will continue to dream, though.
What would a steam locomotive look like on the tracks next to the depot?
It might someday not just be only in their imagination.