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Plenty of people dream of turning an old caboose into a tiny home. At the Red Caboose Motel in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, you can find out what that’s actually like for a night or two. Nearly every room on the property is a real railroad caboose, parked on real track beside the historic Strasburg Rail Road in the heart of Amish country.
The motel opened in 1970 with a handful of surplus cabooses. Today the collection has grown to 38 cabooses, plus a baggage car, a mail car, a farmhouse, and a pair of 1920s dining cars that serve as the restaurant. Each caboose wears the paint scheme of a different famous railroad, so the whole place looks like a rainbow-colored rail yard set in the middle of farm fields.
Photo by David Wilson via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
It All Started With a Dare
The motel’s story starts in the summer of 1969. Local tourism developer Donald M. Denlinger placed what he later called a half-hearted bid on nineteen surplus 25-ton N-5 cabooses from the Pennsylvania Railroad, the type the railroad called “cabin cars.” According to the motel, a school friend dared him to do it. Six months later, during a January blizzard, the phone rang: he’d won, and 475 tons of steel needed to be moved off the railroad’s siding right away.
Denlinger found a farm in Ronks, right along the Strasburg Rail Road, and laid about 800 feet of track for the cars. Strasburg’s vintage steam locomotive #31 helped deliver the first cabooses to the site. The Red Caboose opened on Mother’s Day 1970, and more than 4,500 people came through in about five hours just to see the inside of a caboose motel room.
Photo by Klaus Nahr via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Painted in the Colors of America’s Famous Railroads
When the motel opened, every caboose was painted the classic railroad red that gave the place its name. Over the years they were repainted in the liveries of different North American railroads. Today you’ll walk past cabooses lettered for the Seaboard Coast Line, New Haven, Pennsylvania, Rio Grande, Northern Pacific, Illinois Central, Lehigh Valley, and many more.
It turns the property into something like an open-air railroad museum. Rail fans can spend an hour just walking the rows and reading the heralds, and kids tend to treat it like a giant train set.
Photo by David Wilson via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Photo by Klaus Nahr via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Photo by Klaus Nahr via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
How a Caboose Becomes a Tiny Hotel Room
A caboose makes a surprisingly good tiny home shell. It’s a long, narrow steel box with windows down both sides, a door on each end, and often a raised cupola on top. Turning one into a guest room meant insulating walls that are only about a quarter inch of steel, adding heat and air conditioning, and fitting a private bathroom into the middle of the car. The motel’s history notes the original crew was surprised to discover the cabooses had thick concrete floors, poured to keep their center of gravity low at speed, which made running plumbing a lot harder than expected.
The result is a room that feels a lot like a tiny house on wheels: a bed at one end, a compact bathroom in the middle, and every inch planned. Today each caboose has a private bathroom, a refrigerator, a microwave, independent climate control, a flat-screen TV, and free Wi-Fi.
Image courtesy of the Red Caboose Motel
Bunk Beds for the Whole Crew
Families are the motel’s bread and butter, and the caboose layouts reflect that. The Large Family Caboose fits a double bed plus four bunk beds, the Medium Family Caboose has a double plus three stacked bunks, and the Small Family Caboose has a double with two bunks. That’s a lot of sleeping space in a single railcar, and it’s a good lesson for anyone planning a tiny home for a family: stacked beds along one wall free up the rest of the floor for living.
Image courtesy of the Red Caboose Motel
The baggage car takes the same idea and stretches it out. The car holds two separate guest rooms, and its layout combines a queen bed, a double bed, and two bunks, lined up along the length of the car with windows running down the side.
Image courtesy of the Red Caboose Motel
Cozy Options for Couples
Not every room is built for a crowd. The Couples Half Caboose splits one car into two private rooms, each with a double bed. The Queen Couples Caboose gives two people the whole car, and some, like the one below, are finished in knotty pine that makes the steel railcar feel more like a little cabin in the woods.
Image courtesy of the Red Caboose Motel
For special occasions, the Honeymoon Caboose adds a whirlpool bath, a queen bed with a pull-out trundle, and its own deck. The motel says some other cabooses come with bonus upgrades like whirlpool tubs too, but because every caboose is decorated differently, specific room requests can’t be guaranteed.
Image courtesy of the Red Caboose Motel
More Room in the Farmhouse and Conductor’s Quarters
If a caboose feels a little too tiny, the property has bigger options. The mail car has two private rooms with their own bathrooms. The historic farmhouse on the property holds several suites, including one with a full kitchenette. At the top of the list is the Conductor’s Quarters, a Victorian-style suite with a queen bed, two twin beds, a kitchen with a range and dishwasher, a whirlpool bath, and a private deck.
Image courtesy of the Red Caboose Motel
Dinner in a Vintage Dining Car
You don’t have to leave the property to eat. Casey Jones’ Restaurant, named after the legendary locomotive engineer, is set inside two P-70 passenger cars that once ran on the Pennsylvania Railroad. It serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a menu of scratch-made Pennsylvania Dutch dishes and barbecue, and room service is available too. Grab a window seat and you can watch steam trains roll out from the Strasburg Rail Road station.
Image courtesy of the Red Caboose Motel
A Train Lover’s Base Camp in Amish Country
The Prickett family, who had been visiting the motel since the 1980s, bought the property in 2016 and have been restoring it since. They also renovated an 1812 barn into an event space called The Barn at Paradise Station, which hosts shows, concerts, and weddings. The property also has “The Depot” gift shop, stocked with model trains and railroad merchandise.
The location is hard to beat for rail fans. The Strasburg Rail Road, the oldest continuously operating railroad in the Western Hemisphere, runs right past the cabooses, and the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and the National Toy Train Museum are close by. You’re also surrounded by Lancaster County’s Amish farms, markets, and back roads.
Image courtesy of the Red Caboose Motel
Stay Details
- Location: 312 Paradise Lane, Ronks, Pennsylvania (Lancaster County, next to the Strasburg Rail Road)
- Opened: Mother’s Day 1970
- Rooms: 38 cabooses, a baggage car, a mail car, farmhouse suites, and the Conductor’s Quarters
- Caboose layouts: family cabooses with 2 to 4 bunks, couples cabooses, double-double, honeymoon caboose
- In each caboose: private bathroom, refrigerator, microwave, independent climate control, flat-screen TV, free Wi-Fi
- On site: Casey Jones’ Restaurant in two vintage dining cars, The Depot gift shop, The Barn at Paradise Station
- Good to know: check-in 3 pm, check-out 11 am; no pets or smoking; most rooms aren’t wheelchair accessible; two-night minimum on most weekends April through December and during Day Out With Thomas events
What Makes This Stay Special
- A real test drive of caboose living. If you’ve ever thought about converting a railcar into a tiny home, this is the easiest way to see how the layout actually lives.
- Smart use of a narrow footprint. Beds at the ends, bathroom in the middle, and bunks along the walls show how to fit a family into a space about the size of a tiny house on wheels.
- Real railroad history. These are retired Pennsylvania Railroad cabooses, not replicas, and each one carries the colors of a different railroad.
- Trains outside your window. The Strasburg Rail Road’s steam trains run right past the property.
- More than 50 years of roadside Americana. The motel has been a Lancaster County landmark since 1970.
Highlights
- Sleep inside a real railroad caboose in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
- 38 cabooses painted in the colors of famous North American railroads
- Family cabooses with up to four bunk beds
- Couples cabooses, a honeymoon caboose with a whirlpool, and a Victorian suite
- Private bathroom, fridge, microwave, and climate control in every caboose
- Restaurant inside two vintage Pennsylvania Railroad dining cars
- Right beside the Strasburg Rail Road in the heart of Amish country
Check Rates and Book the Red Caboose Motel
More Caboose Getaways
Love the idea of sleeping in a caboose? Check out the Trainmaster’s Inn retro caboose stay, this Southern train caboose turned vintage cabin, and the caboose vacations in Essex, Montana.
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Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase through one of our links, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
Alex
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