Villa Real in Feb. 2009, courtesy of Steve Rhoade
A few weeks ago, the family and I stopped in to our favorite Chinese restaurant, Peace Street China, for some take-out dinner. As our order was being prepared, Travis and I wandered over to look at the trains in the CSX rail yard.
As we wandered up to the edge of the yard I saw that the owners of the private rail cars were there, working to restore them. It was the first time since I saw the cars appear almost a decade ago that I’d seen anyone working on them. According to a few web searches, the Villa Real is owned by Herman Page and Al Sauer, though I don’t remember now which owner I met. The baggage car next to the Villa Real was also being worked on and I met the owner of that one, too.
We chatted a bit about their plans and progress and I expressed my interest in helping out. These gentlemen were restoring these cars for donation to museums: one to a city in the Midwest and the other to a railroad museum in Huntsville, Alabama. The Villa Real is exactly 100 years old now and looks pretty good, considering.
I learned that it costs $1000 a year to park a rail car here, and $1500 a year for liability insurance in case it falls over on something. To me, those numbers sounded pretty affordable. I found myself scoping out other sections of track that might be available!
I’ve often dreamed of taking one of these private rail cars (called “private varnish” in railroad lingo) and restoring it into a luxury RV on rails. It’s cool that there are some people actually doing it.