Hello and welcome
Hello and welcome! My name is Liane and I want to take you along on the journey that brought us to the Old Dixie Depot. I met my fiance, Billy, in April of 2020. Not only was it the kickoff for the pandemic, but our hometown was hit by a tornado that same month. I guess you could say that tragedy brought us together. Our first "date" was him coming to my family's lake property to help cut up a cedar tree that had fallen. Not just any cedar tree. It was the one on the point that was in every picture, including one of my mom as a baby in her father's arms, and the tree was about 3' tall. It was the one you could see from miles up river. It was our tree. The driveway to the property was devastated, but not a single piece of the cabin was damaged, with exception of this tree. The property was sold that August (maybe the tree was some sort of omen) so his experience at the cabin was minute compared to the lifetime that I had spent there.
Billy lived on 42 acres about an hour north of our hometown in a tiny home built by the Amish. I visited there often, and fell in love with a new property. It wasn't the lake, it was a farm. Totally different landscape, same beauty, same feeling. Peace. Which in 2020, was every girl's dream.
Life on the farm
As it just so happened, I had just finished a flip house, and was looking to jump into the next project. It seemed like every other week, we were being quarantined as one of us had been in the car with, sat next to someone, or got passed on the street by someone who the next day tested positive -- and you remember those days. We would have to quarantine for a week and not see anyone but ourselves. What a way to start a relationship! It was during this time that I basically moved in. He was telling me his dreams, and showing me plans of the house he was planning on building. I decided to help him with that and not jump into another flip, as I saw that sending us over the edge. We were in a new relationship -- house building wrecks 40 year marriages, so it seemed like the best move. At this point I imagine you are wondering, what about the trains?! I'm getting there I promise...
Flash forward to February of 2022. The house is built. We emptied our combined storage units and filled our new home. Well, "filled" is a bit of an overstatement. A few weeks, maybe months go by, and we see our first home, the tiny home, sitting next to us full of neglect and dust bunnies. Then it hit me... let's AirBnB it! Now ya'll, this place housed the 2 of us for 2 years -- all 435 square feet of it. We loved it though, so surely others would too? I mean, the sunsets...
So I began taking pictures, filling out all of the needed information, and was ready to pull the trigger, but didn't. Something inside me was scared. I kept hitting "Snooze" on the listing, until one day, I was in Walland, TN for work, and with no cell service, was unable to hit "snooze". By the time I made it into a service area, we had a booking. And it was for over a month! His name was Raymond (shout out if you're reading this) and for newbies, the payout seemed too good to refuse. We were official.
Now it is 2025, and we are seasoned hosts (well, kind of). With a few not so lovely reviews, and several 5 star reviews, we were getting the hang of things. I would be remiss to not mention Bruce, our cat. He never was on board with the move to the new house, and has always stayed close to the tiny house. He is now mentioned in the majority of our reviews, and has been dubbed our 5 star generator. But anyways, big picture here is that we have learned, evolved, and personally, I realized that this was something that I was not only good at, but brought me a feeling that no other job has. I absolutely love getting to meet all of our guests, and getting the house ready for their arrival.
I stopped mid-sentence, grabbed both of his hands in mine, and told him that we were just going to pray.
The idea
From the beginning of our life on the farm, we had always talked of ways to have the land work for us. We went down the farming and homesteading rabbit hole for a few years, but now with our love of hosting, that dream suddenly switched to "let's put more buildings on our property." We spent months looking into what type of building(s), how many buildings, and where on the property we could put them. The more we talked and walked around, the more I liked the thought of not adding anything to the property.
Billy mentioned using a caboose as an Airbnb, just up in our front field. I was totally on board, but still thinking that a tiny home would be less expensive, and less work -- and where in the world would we find a caboose?! He was really getting into this idea, telling his friends about it, and his friend Robbie says to him "you know what would be really cool? If you could set your caboose on a piece of land trackside, so that people could watch actual trains go by." Now as great of an idea this sounded to me, my first reaction was full of negativity. To me, that just meant not only would we have to find and buy a caboose, but now that meant we would have to buy land too, and that just seemed way too far out of reach. But I humored him, and we drove around aimlessly looking for property with rail frontage. Then, we started to argue.
A prayer
We had so many ideas streaming back and forth for so long, with no direction whatsoever with any of them, and it seemed every time we tried to have conversations around the idea, we fought. Until one weekend, we started the treacherous conversation again. I stopped mid sentence, got up and grabbed both of his hands in mine and told him that we were just going to pray. At that moment we prayed to God, asking him to lead our paths. We prayed that we would take the path that he presented to us, gave up all control and worry, and stated that we trusted him. We dropped hands, and went about our day, never speaking of it again for the remainder of the weekend.
God sent
And then it happened. Billy called that very next week stating he had found property for sale on the rails. When I asked him how, he said he was driving and something told him to pull over. So he pulled over about 30 minutes south of our town and hopped on Zillow. He was sitting at the same rail line that passes through town, and he just started scrolling up the tracks until he found it. How we missed this property I will never know, but it is 6 minutes from our house. It is the closest property on rails to our house, and the asking price seemed incredibly reasonable for almost 2 acres, and it is also positioned on the main thoroughfare through town. God sent? I think so!
We immediately got in contact with my cousin who is a fantastic real estate agent, and got the ball rolling. But this was only one piece of the puzzle.
The cars
So like any curious American, we googled "caboose for sale near me". We found a place about an hour north of us called East Tennessee Railcar Services, and that next morning, Billy called. To our surprise, this company restores older train cars, and had a caboose he was willing to part with. Going to look at buying a caboose filled me with the strangest feelings. I was so excited, yet anxious and couldn't help but think "what in the world are we doing?!"
Let me tell you, these rail cars are MUCH bigger than I realized! But when we stepped inside, I immediately saw their potential, and was enamored at the history they held. There were 3 cars on the line where we were. A Southern caboose built in 1949, a Southern transfer caboose built in the 1920's, and a Dixie Line Boxcar built in 1914. And Billy wanted all 3. The Dixie Line (which was both of our favorite) was not on the table for discussion. I guess the buying in bulk piqued Charlie's interest, so he noted he had a BUDD railcar he would part with as well. We were unable to see it as it was at another location, but it was originally a RPO (Railway Post Office). It was then converted to work derailments, and had an industrial kitchen in it with a large kitchen island. We were sold. So we walked away that day purchasing 3 rail cars, one of them sight unseen. It was at this point that I realized that we had in fact, lost our minds.
Our dream was not only becoming a reality, but it was growing at a rapid pace. I mean, we had 2 acres, right? Why not fill the sucker with as many cool train cars that we could? Seems reasonable. We were (and still are) head over heels for the old Dixie line rail car. For me, I can say that that was the first time in my life that I have said the words "I love it" while looking at a train. Little did I know it wouldn't be the last.
The name
We thought we would pay homage to it in our name, and would call it the Dixie Depot. A few months later while drowning ourselves in YouTube videos on train car conversions and train car Airbnb's, we stumbled across a video about the Dixie Hwy. This network of highways was built in 1914, when car travel was needing promotion, and would run from Chicago to Miami. In these days, the federal government was not involved in this, so individual counties, local businesses, and agricultural communities funded, built, and paved their own segments just to get travelers through their neck of the woods. Without diving into a whole new topic, we realized that our "depot" is sitting on the Old Dixie Highway, and what a way to tie all the nostalgia and history together. So the name was born.
If you are still here, thank you for taking the time to read this. I will be sending out more soon, on getting the property ready, moving the train cars, and the renovations that are happening. I will try to post up to date progress reports, and when we will see opening day. Until next time. ✌️❤️🚂