Family Buys Abandoned 120-Year-Old Train Car Housing 20 Feral Cats for $3K. Now They Rent It Out for $350 Per Night (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW

• Isaac French's family bought a neglected 1906 train car for $3,000 after discovering it beneath a farm shed with 20 feral cats inside

• They spent $147,000 restoring its original wood, windows, brass and lettering before turning the car's mail and cargo spaces into cozy guest rooms

• Now an Airbnb, it gives visitors a chance to stay inside a piece of railroad history located in Deary, Idaho

A 61-foot train car built in 1906 spent decades in an Idaho farm shed, storing grain and feeding cattle, before Isaac French's dad saw a reason to bring it back to life.

By 2018, the abandoned Washington, Idaho & Montana Railway Car 306 had broken windows, rotten window sills, layers of grime and about 20 feral cats living inside. Still, the French family paid $3,000 for the "enormous, impractical eyesore" — and spent five months restoring it to its true potential before turning it into an Airbnb .

"My dad knew what he was looking at," French, 29, tells PEOPLE exclusively. "My grandpa Lynn is a devoted student of trains and my dad grew up around them, and he's always had a keen interest in history and a sharp eye for opportunity in things other people dismiss."

French's father spotted the rail car while helping their 90-year-old neighbor, Loyal, clear snow from a barn in December 2018. A long, open-sided shed on the property caught his attention, and underneath it was a battered wooden rail car that was "barely recognizable."

Knowing the area's railroad history, French's father noticed faint traces of paint near the end of the passenger section. The numbers 3, 0 and 6 were still visible beside the broken clerestory windows.

That connected the car to Washington, Idaho & Montana Railway Car 306, which had been built by the American Car & Foundry Company in St. Charles, Mo., in 1906.

According to French, the car had been sitting on the property since the 1950s, after the railroad tracks were removed. A previous owner had purchased it for scrap, hauled it about 10 miles to the farm and repurposed it for agricultural storage.

By the time French's family encountered it, the inside was filthy and the exterior had taken years of abuse. "Twenty feral cats had turned it into their kingdom," French reveals. "My dad likes to say that as he walked up to it, history didn't greet him — the smell did."

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Although Loyal wasn't sure why anyone would want the abandoned, run-down structure, the snow-shoveling favor helped lead them into an agreement. "They shook hands and my dad wrote a check for the asking price: $3,000," French recalls.

The purchase, however, was followed by a much bigger problem. The family had no easy way to get the train car home. For two years, they searched for a mover willing to attempt the job, with most companies turning it down after seeing its size and condition. "I don't think any of us fully believed it would happen until it did," French admits.

The move finally took place on a "cold, drizzly day" in February 2020. A semi-truck pulled the train car along "icy, winding backcountry roads" for three hours. The final climb up the hill to the family's property proved too much for the truck alone, so a bulldozer pushed from the front to help get it over the top.

Once Car 306 reached its new home, the family had to protect it before they could tackle the restoration. French had sketched a timber-framed roof based on traditional depot architecture, and his brothers built the structure over the car to shield it from the weather.

Renovations ran from January through August 2020, but with the world shutting down just weeks after the train car arrived, French says that the project only grew more challenging, especially financially.

"The money was the pressure point," he tells PEOPLE. "My brother Gabe pulled strings with our small construction business so we could run materials on credit cards and a small operating line of credit."

Luckily, much of the labor came directly from the family, which French says "is the only reason" the renovation costs weren't higher.

"My dad and brothers ran the plumbing and wiring. I did the sanding, the epoxy work, the brass, the lettering. Our friend Joe hand-forged the copper chandelier. My mom sourced and placed every antique in it," he recalls.

A photograph taken when Car 306 was built in 1906 gave the family something especially valuable during the restoration — they could see how the original car looked rather than having to guess the details.

Determined to preserve its history, French painstakingly recreated the gold lettering, restored the windows and cleaned the brass hardware.

"That's the kind of detail that takes an absurd amount of time and that most guests will never consciously notice, and it's exactly the kind of detail that makes the whole thing feel true instead of themed," French emphasizes.

The original wood also held up far better than the family might have expected after decades in the shed. Most of it could be preserved, with epoxy used to repair some rotten areas around the window sills.

"That ugly farm shed had saved its life," French notes. "The very thing that made it look worthless is what preserved it."

The family completed the restoration in August 2020 and converted Car 306 into an Airbnb without losing its original layout.

"The mail compartment became the master bedroom. The cargo area became a luxurious bathroom. The passenger section became a reading lounge with a gas-powered potbelly stove and a small kitchenette designed to disappear into the original woodwork," French reveals.

The family now charges more than $350 per night to stay in the unique rental, and it's occupied around 90% of the time — paying for itself within roughly the first year.

Still, French underscores that his family didn't buy the train car with the purpose of creating an Airbnb.

"I'd argue we had it backwards from most people," he says. "We didn't find a business opportunity and then go looking for a building. We found something beautiful that was about to be lost, and hospitality turned out to be the way to save it."

And now, six years later, French tells PEOPLE his favorite part of the finished car is simply sitting in the reading lounge, settling into a plush chair with a book and taking in the rolling hills and pine trees, "the same view passengers had when this car rode the rails a hundred years ago."

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