Edward “Webb” French and wife Lisa have been married 38 years. They have 10 children, most of whom are involved in the family construction business in Deary, Idaho, and worked on restoring the family’s various train-related rental properties.

DEARY, Idaho — Loyal Fleener was worried about his barn collapsing because of snow piling up on the roof.

The longtime Deary, Idaho, wheat and barley farmer went into Edward “Webb” French’s family’s bakery, the Pie Safe Bakery and Kitchen, every day.

Fleener asked French if he would come clean off the snow.

So Webb French went out to Fleener’s farm.

“Got over there — there was a train car sitting in his barn,” Webb French recalled. “Very interesting, obviously. Wasn’t expecting that. So I asked him about it.”

It was Washington, Idaho and Montana Railway Car 306, a passenger, mail and cargo combination railcar, built in 1906 and decommissioned in the 1950s, according to Webb’s son Isaac, in an Aug. 14 thread on X.

“It was a rotting, cat-infested wreck,” Isaac French wrote. “But after investing $147,000 and five months of work, we redeemed it.”

French’s family restored the old railcar and now rents it on Airbnb.

“Today, it’s one of the most profitable and exclusive stays in the country,” Isaac French said.

The previous owner of the land had purchased the train car at a surplus sale, Webb French said.

“(He) had been feeding cows out of it for years,” Webb French said.

When Fleener bought the property, the railcar was sitting in a field. He put logs under it and dragged it up near his house with a piece of Caterpillar equipment, then built a barn over it to preserve it.

“He made it into kind of a crew quarter there for a while, so his hired hands could live in it — there was evidence of that,” Webb French said.

Fleener installed wiring and would stay in it during the week while logging or farming, instead of making the 50-mile round-trip between Deary and Moscow, where he lived.

The railcar sat in Fleener’s barn for about 45 years, Webb French estimated.

‘Cat house’

The train car mostly served as a “catch-all” of sorts for junk.

“It was a cat house for 20 years,” Loyal Fleener said. “There were probably anywhere from five to 15 cats in there from time to time. It was part of a chicken house for a while.”

“Approximately 20 cats had made it their home, and the smell was almost unbearable,” Isaac French said on X.

But Webb French ‘s face lit up when he saw the railcar.

“I mentioned to him, ‘If you ever want to sell this, I’d sure be interested in restoring it,’” Webb French said.

Fleener asked him to make an offer. Webb French did, for $2,000, according to Isaac French ‘s thread on X, and the two men agreed.

Historical preservation

Webb French has a total of 10 children, eight boys and two girls.

Two brothers live out of state, the rest are involved in the construction business, Quality Contractors, LLC, where Webb French is owner and partner.

One brother has the bakery, which is in a former Ford garage, now refurbished. Webb French owns the building.

“Lots of labor available,” said David French, 18, who manages the family’s train-related properties.

Webb French is the big train buff, David French said.

Webb French and his family maintain a small herd of about 40 cattle, six sheep and farm ground where they cut grass hay.

“The construction pays for all the things we enjoy doing, and we enjoy the construction, too,” Webb French said.

Like the garage-turned-bakery, they’ve restored other older buildings.

“Historical preservation is something I personally really enjoy doing,” Webb French said.

But there are limits, he noted.

“If something has fallen in, I don’t think you should preserve it,” he said.

Several sons are “skillful” at carpentry and other restoration requirements.

“I don’t really have those kinds of skills — it takes all of us working together to restore these things,” Webb French said.

He uses the old garage/bakery as an example. They probably could have knocked it down and put up a metal structure for less than what they put into restoration.

“But there’s an extreme amount of character in these things,” he said. “When you factor in the amount of character in the building and the appreciation people have, there’s a whole lot said that isn’t even on paper.”

He praised Fleener for covering the railcar with the barn.

“We wouldn’t even have a train car to work on if he hadn’t done that,” Webb French said. “It had begun to rot out in the field.”

Moving the railcar

Webb French spent several years trying to find someone who could move the railcar off Fleener’s property.

In the meantime, Fleener found a safe place to move the cats, Webb French added.

The family toyed with moving it themselves, but “we realized we were biting off more than we could chew,” he said.

The whole process took about three to four years after the first time Webb French saw it, he said.

Around Christmas 2019, they finally pulled the railcar out of the barn, relocating it about 3 to 4 miles from Webb French’s home a month later.

“’course, that was quite an ordeal,” Fleener said of moving the railcar.

“Now the tricky part: How to move a 61-foot train car down winding, hilly, backcountry roads?” Isaac French wrote. “The wood was almost completely rotten, and the ground was slick with mud and snow. Two months later, for $10,000 a local trucker hooked it up and towed the car to the hill my dad dreamed it would sit.”

“And I began to think, ‘Now, when I get there, what do I do with this thing?’” Webb French said.

Folks suggested a museum or walk-through area, but then the family would need to rely on donations to keep the train preserved, David French said.

Funding and operating a restored train car wouldn’t necessarily have been feasible for such a small operation, Webb French said.

“Somewhere in there, I had the idea it would make a really neat accommodation,” he said. “And that could then pay for it, too, if it was done right.”

Restoring the railcar

The train sits on the edge of a piece of ground where the family graze their cattle, several miles outside of Deary.

They finished moving it in February 2020 and got to work.

“It was good structurally, but it needed a ton of epoxy and wood restoration,” David French said.

“With a pandemic sweeping the globe, it was the perfect time to dive into an adventurous outdoor project,” Isaac French wrote. “So that’s exactly what we did.”

The brothers each took on different parts of the work, tediously restoring every single piece of the car.

The mail compartment became a bedroom, the cargo area a bathroom and the passenger space a kitchenette and lounge.

All windows were restored.

An artisan made a lamp based off historical factory photos. It would have been gas burning, originally, David French said.

The floor includes a pattern of dots in the passenger area, where loggers would sit and their spike-heeled boots would puncture the floor.

The first guests checked in around September 2020.

Bookings

For the first two years, the locations were about 90% booked, Webb French said.

They eased off on promotion for a bit and raised rates, so in recent years, bookings have dropped to more of a “nice, steady flow.”

The railcar is about $350 a night, plus cleaning and AirBnb fees. The depot is $170 a night per room, and the caboose is about $219 per night.

The family added a hot tub and sauna by the railcar, and a lounge where train-related visitors first check in and receive exclusive access.

For preservation, they’ve touched up the paint and polished the copper, but the facility is mostly low-maintenance.

“I’m really wanting to make it world-class,” David French said.

They get a lot of repeat customers.

“They’ll fly completely all over the country,” he said. “And then they’ll come back again, because they liked it so much.”

Webb French estimates people have traveled from up to 40 different states and several other countries just to stay in the train car.

“Preserving part of our local history in a way that can pay for itself,” he said. “You don’t just have this museum that everybody can go to on Tuesday afternoons.”

Many local clubs and tour groups come through.

“I think it’s had a great impact — it’s not like it’s changed the local economy, but it’s definitely had a positive impact on the local economy,” he said.