Looking for a getaway that's not too close, yet not too far -- and isn't your typical hotel suite?
How about staying in a 100-year-old train car?
For around $200 per night, you and eight guests can spend a few days inside an original Pullman Palace Train Car in Plano, IL. The "Constitution" sleeper car was built in 1905 at the original Pullman Train Factory a few miles outside of Chicago, according to Willie Cade, the train's owner.
Cade says the train has been in his family since his "cousin's grandfather bought it from George Pullman back in the 1950s and made it into a weekend getaway."
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter here.
According to Cade, Andrew Carnegie rented the car at one point to go out West. And Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding had rented it, too, "when presidents traveled around in trains."
The car, available for rent on Airbnb, sleeps eight and includes four staterooms, a dining room, a kitchen, a study, two fireplaces, three bathrooms, and according to the listing, a piano.
Most of the car's fixtures and wooden interiors are original, Cade said.
Local
The stay also includes access to a private pool named after the famous synchronized swimmer from the 1950s, Esther Williams.
The train car sits on six acres of land near Big Rock Creek in Plano, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago. Visitors have to drive through cornfields to get there. There's no television and no internet.
"The rail tracks are about an hour away," Cade said. "If you're lying in bed at night, you can kind of hear this ghostly train going by."
According to the AirbnB listing, the "Constitution" has a 4.62 star rating and 90 reviews. It's nearly fully booked for all of July and August.
