You’re looking at the railroad equivalent of a restaurant frozen in time, with the trains shown here akin to waiters sprinting across a crowded room, a hot plate in hand.
On June 19, 1938, passengers on the Pennsylvania Railroad could enjoy the time-honored tradition of dinner in the diner aboard 56 different trains. Five trains even ran with two diners: the westbound Senator, plus the General and Congressional in both directions.
The map is based on an article entitled “Mile-a-Minute Meals,” which appeared in Train Talks, a promotional booklet issued by the Pennsylvania in January 1938. By April of that year, PRR would energize the last catenary wire in its 650-route-mile electrification program. And on June 15, Pennsylvania would unveil its “Fleet of Modernism.” The General, Liberty Limited, Spirit of St. Louis, and Broadway Limited were the first trains to debut the lightweight, streamlined passenger equipment styled by industrial designer Raymond Loewy. The trains, on faster schedules, were a hit with the traveling public.
Although flagship trains retained their dining cars for the entire journey, other trains added or dropped diners intermittently, necessitating a close reading of the public timetable. For example, the eastbound Manhattan Limited carried a diner from Chicago to Pittsburgh, but riders were on their own for breakfast the next morning into New York. The New York and Washington sections of the westbound Spirit of St. Louis each ran with a diner, given their evening departures, but the Washington diner was left behind at Harrisburg.
To add to the confusion, on trains that did not rate full diners, other types of food-service cars were used, such as the broiler buffet fountain lounge, broiler buffet parlor, buffet lounge (or lounge buffet), cafe coach, parlor dining car, and the parlor buffet sunroom lounge.
Food service on the Pennsylvania may have been marvelously complex, but as Don Herold wrote in Train Talks, PRR did it “day after day, year after year in all kinds of weather, with practically never any variation.”
Railroads included in this map:
Pennsylvania
Enjoyed the article,tks