Isaac French, who publishes a newsletter about “experiential hospitality,” recently detailed the extraordinary work he and his family put into renovating a smelly and dilapidated train car from 1906 into a one-bedroom, one-bathroom home that has become a hit on Airbnb.
French’s dad bought a 120-year-old train car from a farmer, who’d used it to store grain and feed hay, for just $2,000. It was a smelly, rotting hunk of junk that several cats called home.
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After five months of work and a slightly less inspiring renovation cost of $147,000, they’d converted it into a gorgeous vacation spot in Idaho.
Inside, it pretty much looks like a train—but a nice old wooden one!
French said the train car was originally owned by the Potlatch Timber Company. Starting the early 1900s, it was used for nearly 50 years to transport Western white pine logs out of northcentral Idaho. Then, somehow, it wound up in the barn of an old Idaho farmer, where it remained for decades.
Renovating a train car for Airbnb isn’t exactly as cool as riding the Beast in Mexico. But French’s dad turned something that looked like it should have been burned to ashes by a team in hazmat suits into a vacation hotspot that looks like the setting for a cozy murder mystery. And that is pretty cool, no matter how you slice it.
There’s even a soothing video of them re-painting the original lettering.
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