In 2018, an old wooden railway carriage was hiding beneath a farm shed in Idaho, so neglected that it was difficult to tell what it had once been. Its windows were broken, the timber was deteriorating and around 20 feral cats had moved in. Then Isaac French’s father noticed faded paint and the numbers 306, offering a clue to its past. Built in 1906, the 61-foot carriage had spent decades away from the railway, eventually being used to store grain and feed cattle. A post shared on Instagram by a US couple reveals how the wooden railway carriage was transformed from a neglected farm storage space into a $350-a-night holiday rental.
Get breaking news anytime, anywhere. Download the TOI app now!
The family bought it for $3,000, but getting it home took another two years. What followed was an extensive restoration, carried out largely by the family, costing about $147,000. They repaired the ageing timber, rebuilt damaged sections and carefully restored the carriage’s historic character while adapting its cramped interior for modern guests. By August 2020, the neglected carriage had been transformed into a holiday rental, where guests can now stay for more than $350 a night.
What looked like farm storage in 2018 had a railway past
This began in December 2018, when Isaac French's father was helping an elderly neighbour clear snow from a barn. On the property stood a long, open-sided agricultural shed, and beneath it was something that appeared to have been abandoned for years.
According to People.com, it was a wooden railway carriage, though its condition made that difficult to recognise at first. The windows were damaged, the sills had rotted and dirt covered much of what remained. There was another complication inside: about 20 feral cats had taken over the carriage.
French's father, however, knew enough about the local railway history to look more closely. Near the passenger section, traces of old paint could still be seen. Beside the broken clerestory windows were the faint numbers 3, 0 and 6.
Those details led the family to identify it as Washington, Idaho & Montana Railway Car 306, a carriage manufactured by the American Car & Foundry Company in St Charles, Missouri, in 1906.
The discovery changed the way they looked at the battered old structure. Rather than being an unidentifiable farm building, it was a surviving piece of local railway history.
After leaving the rails in the 1950s, Car 306 found a new life on a farm
Car 306 had not been sitting beneath that shed since its railway days. According to French, it arrived on the farm sometime in the 1950s, after the tracks in the area were removed.
A previous owner had acquired the carriage as scrap and transported it roughly 10 miles to the property. There, its purpose changed completely. The former railway car became agricultural storage, eventually helping with jobs around the farm such as storing grain and feeding cattle.
That long period of neglect left plenty to deal with. The family found an exterior battered by years of exposure and an interior that had accumulated layers of grime. The cats had made themselves comfortable inside, too. French later joked that the first thing his father encountered when approaching the carriage was not its history but its smell.
Yet the shed that had hidden the carriage away for so long had also done something unexpected. It had protected much of the original structure.
