Eastern Ontario municipal politicians are steaming after the federal government announced it would help fund a historic tourist train in Wakefield, Que., without offering a similar splash of money to a help launch a water park in eastern Ontario.

"It's definitely frustrating, it's disappointing, it's bewildering," said Ken Hill, mayor of Russell Township, the municipality about 25 kilometres east of Ottawa where the Calypso water park is supposed to open in 2009. "To look at…the projects, they're comparable in nature. Why does one get and one doesn't?"

The federal government announced earlier in November that it would cover up to a third of the cost of repairs to the railroad used by the Hull-Chelsea-Wakefield steam train in order to get the locomotive running again.

The announcement came after Hill and mayors of nearby communities asked the federal government repeatedly to invest in infrastructure such as roads and sewers that would benefit the park and the community and were told there was no money for tourism projects like Calypso.

Denis Pommainville, mayor of nearby La Nation, said he was upset to learn federal officials bent the rules to accommodate the steam train.

"I would expect that they would have the opportunity to do the same thing for us," he said, adding that both tourist attractions would bring cash and jobs to their regions.

Both he and Hill said they plan to go back to the federal government to ask why it seems to consider the western Quebec tourist attraction more deserving than their own in eastern Ontario.

The Calypso water park, previously slated to be named Sunnyland, is being built in Limoges, Ont.