His-And-Her Cabooses Couple Turn Pair Of Railroad Relics Into Their Dream Home On Loon Lake

What’s life in a caboose like?

Karolyn: “Romantic, like we’re living in the Roaring ‘20s.”

Al: “Cramped.”

Spacious they are not, but there is something undeniably nostalgic about the caboose - and what the Burrells did with two of them.

On a strip of lakefront property here, they plunked down the mothballed rail cars, painted them a shiny red and hitched them to a small house shaped like a train depot.

The Burlington Northern caboose now is their kitchen and sitting room. The Great Northern caboose is a master bedroom suite.

It’s easy to attribute this strangeness to Al Burrell.

There’s railroad blood in his family, flowing through his father and grandfather, an Italian immigrant farmer who found work in the rail yards of Spokane.

But this caboose-house idea really was Karolyn Burrell’s.

Crazy about antiques, the 46-year-old hair stylist figured it would be neat to live in a caboose with its perky cupola and builtin front and back porches.

“They’re cute,” she says.

He bravely went along with the notion. “I’d live in a tent with her,” he says. “It makes no difference.”

The little red caboose always came last. First came the big black engine, puffing and chuffing. Then came the boxcars, then the oil cars, then the coal cars, then the flat cars.

Sometimes they were switched around in different ways. But the little red caboose always came last.

- From “The Little Red Caboose” by Marian Potter, 1953.

Three years ago, the Burrells found a dealer who was ready to unload 14 1970s-vintage cabooses.

In a Spokane railroad yard, the couple inspected the prospects - lined up like used cars that happen to be 35 feet long, weigh 26 tons and feature steel exteriors, on-board outhouses and bulletproof glass.

Reality hit like a train wreck when they stepped inside. The wood floors reeked of creosote. The walls were scarred with graffiti, probably the work of hobos and vandals.

“Ooh, it was bad,” Al Burrell says. “There was gross stuff all over the walls.”

But the romantic fire continued to burn. They bought the cars for $3,000 each and trucked them to Loon Lake.

Neighbors weren’t overjoyed.

One called the Stevens County Building Department, prompting a visit by an alarmed inspector.

The Burrells survived the government attention and seven months of hard labor refurbishing the old cars, adding plumbing and electricity. They stuffed them with antiques, built a walk-through kitchen, installed a claw-foot bathtub and shoehorned in a brass bed.

Today, motorists on U.S. Highway 395 honk and wave when they catch sight of the Burrell home. So do engineers in the freight trains thundering past once a day.

While few people build their dream home around rail cars, buying the rusting relics is a national fad. Train fanciers are converting them into gift shops, offices, restaurants and museums.

Retired railroad men like Percy Achre of Spokane find this amusing. Especially the caboose love affair.

“They were plain, simple and functional,” Achre says of the last car on the train. “They had bunks and a flattop stove for heat. They were called ‘crummies,’ probably because of the crummy quarters.”

Most cabooses held a conductor, who sat at his desk with a stack of waybills, and a brakeman, who perched in the glass-enclosed cupola looking for trouble, like smoking wheel bearings.

At their peak in the 1920s, more than 25,000 cabooses rattled along U.S. tracks. They began getting unhitched for good 15 years ago, replaced by cost-cutting electronic sensors.

Railroad buff John Ryan understands the romantic allure of trains - the billowing clouds of steam, the piercing whistle, the friendly wave from the caboose man to smiling children.

Ten years ago, Ryan converted an engine, Pullman car and caboose into his Spokane Valley dental office. But he warns against taking nostalgia too far. Fixing up old rail cars is very expensive. (It cost the Burrells about $6,000). Living in them isn’t for the weak of heart.

“It’s a great idea,” Ryan says, “but it wears off when the practicality part hits.”

“Oh, smoke!” said the little red caboose. “I wish I were a flat car or a coal car or an oil car or a boxcar, so boys and girls would wave at me.

“How I wish I were a big black engine, puffing and chuffing way up at the front of the train!

“But I’m just the little old red caboose. Nobody cares for me.”

Al Burrell has come around to this caboose-living thing.

It starts with learning to protect your groin when squeezing around the bed, he says.

Besides claustrophobia, there are downsides. When pine cones drop on the metal roof, it sounds like a small explosion. Winters are bad. The cold penetrates the thin layer of insulation, forcing the Burrells to huddle under quilts and keep the wood stoves stoked.

There are benefits, too, starting with not having to tell visitors the exact address. Stop at the red cabooses, they say. At night, stars shine through the observation windows. And it’s soothingly quiet.

“No creaks and groans like a real house,” he says.

She takes a certain pride in all this. “My first husband didn’t like antiques,” she says.

Her current husband, a 53-year-old printer turned landlord, didn’t either, at first. Now he rattles off his wife’s treasures with admiration and joins her on bargain-hunting expeditions, building a cache of railroad memorabilia.

“I love it,” he says. “It’s like when I see the old railroad pictures and I study them, and I see the old characters and wonder what they were thinking. I’d like to walk back into time and talk to them.”

She smiles. “He’s the real romantic,” she says.

“Look out, little caboose!” called the flat car. “The train is starting to slip back down this long tall mountain!”

“Not if I can help it!” said the little red caboose.

And he slammed on his brakes. And he held tight to the tracks.

… Now, children wave at the big black engine and at all the cars. But they save their biggest waves for the little red caboose. Because the little red caboose saved the train.