as side line venture to my Ho scale model railroad leelanau county railway i am trying to develop a menu for my dinner train. are there any books out there or info online that has menus of past dinner trains of fallen lines?
This is a scenic railroad dinner train which is still in service:
Well hello caboose63!
Nice to meet someone of like mind and sprits, I too have similar interests in HO and the pleasures of dining, in fact I put up on my CCR blog some months ago a post on reliving the dining heritage of fallen flag railroads. In addition to this I have posted several menus based on railroad dining, you might also benefit from tracking down these books, one of which are out of print now, but might be found used online.
My Own Online resources:
Celebrating and Reliving A History of Fine Dining on North American Railroads In addition, at the end of this article you will find a list of external links and a Reference list too.
Suggested reading
Porterfield, James D. (1993). Dining By Rail. New York, New York: St. Martins Press.
Hollister, Will C. (1984). Dinner in the Diner. Glendale, California: Trans-Anglo Books.
There is a book called Dinner in the Diner. It contains authentic dining car recipes from numerous RRs. Includes breakfast, lunch and dinner items. Many are quite good.
Depends what you’re looking for…are you asking about menu information from dining car service run in the past by “fallen flag” railroads (like Santa Fe, New York Central) or about tourist-railroad ‘dinner trains’?? I might be overlooking somebody, but AFAIK “dinner trains” were / are run by historical socieities or tourist railroads or things like that, not by actual working railroads.
Slightly OT maybe … I always wished someone made good Chinet-quality disposable paper plate replicas of famous railroad dining car china. I think that would be a fun thing when entertaining railfans and modelers at a meal. I know there is Thomas dinnerware but I am talking about replicas of the great patterns the railroads used.
Dave Nelson
MisterBeasley, thank you for the awesome information on the Cape Cod Central Railroad. The menus listed on its website will greatly help me plan a weekly menu for my fictional dinner train. Being that i am from michigan, some items that will be on the menu would be morels, venison steak, walleye, lake superior trout, salad with traverse city cherries, morels, and blueberries.
Hi SilverSpike, Likewise it is nice to find someone of like mind and spirits also. I have always been interested in dinner trains since i rode on the Cadillac & Lake City Railway in northern lower michigan in 1968 at age 5. I love reading the menus of fallen flag shortlines and active tourist and freight/tourist shortlines. Thank you very much for the information on railroad dining. Whenever i see a segment on railroad dining on “Tracks Ahead” on Central Michigan University’s PBS station channel 12, i try to catch it. Once i work out a menu for my dinner train for my fictional HO scale Leelanau County Railway. i will post it here for you and others to see. I will have some michigan specialties like a salad with traverse city cherries and morel mushrooms, baked walleye with french style greenbeans and dishes that have been passed down from my mom’s family for over 8 decades like King’s Chicken. That is boneless, skinless chicken breasts that is dipped in egg yolks or egg whites and rolled in italian seasoned bread crumbs and baked. Its then served with side garnish of shallots, baby carrots, and onions. motive power for my dinner train will consist alternately of 3 RSC2’s, 1 SW8 or a high hood GP20, or on special occasions a russian decapod 2-10-0.
It kind of depends on which way you want to go with this. The New Haven Railroad Historical and Technical Association publishes a book about the railroad’s food service operations:
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New Haven Railroad
Dining on the Shore Line Route
By Marc J. Frattasio
The story of the New Haven Railroad’s famous food service operations. Features hundreds of actual New Haven Railroad Dining Car Department recipes! Softcover, 112 pages, profusely illustrated.
Special NHRHTA Price $19.00
Please add $3.50 S&H per book
Connecticut residents add $1.14 sales tax per book
Massachusetts residents add $1.19 sales tax per book
It is available on their website here. Look on the sidebar at the right for a link to NHRHTA Publications.
As a Friend of the Valley Railroad (a small piece of the once-mighy NH), something just as close to my heart is our own little dinner train:
I am surprised more people haven’t offered information on current dinner trains, they are not all that uncommon. Try this link;
Oh you just have to dig a little better my friend. If you had ventured and read my article (Celebrating and Reliving A History of Fine Dining on North American Railroads ) as I linked to and explained in my original response, there are links at the end and they include the following as a representative of existing dinner trains or excursion trains that also offer dining services, for your convenience I have re-listed them here:
Excursion Passenger Railways in N. America
These are just a small sample of the scenic and excursion passenger railroads that operate today in N. America. For a complete list of excursion railways check out Great Scenic Railway Journeys.
Alaska Railroad Special Event Trains
Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad
All this food, and me on a diet…[:D]
As I live in Lake County, Northern CA. I think of the Napa Vally Wine Train and its meals.
I think you need Old Railroad French Toast.
With biscuits & gravy, ham, sausage, bacon,eggs. etc
To get back to the origonal post, some RR menus are collector items. Complete with old prices.
You may find a cookie cutter set with trains, boxcars, etc
You might find some help here: http://itm.org/
We rode that train once – it’s really nice, Runs along the river, and you can combine the train with a riverboat ride – excellent idea!
On the original question, I googled to try to find some site I chanced across recently that had a whole story about dining cars and showed menus. Couldn’t find that, but did find this collection that has a few: Santa Fe menu
Thanks PC, I was heading there too. ITM runs a four course extravaganza out of it’s former L&N diner Cross Keys Tavern They’ve been known to do things like tack it to a train running to Tipton for Pizza, and cut the car and the trailing loco off on the White River bridge while the rest of the train goes on. While I have not eaten in the diner, I have had a wonderful sandwhich prepared in the Galley of FEC 90, the FLagler business car.
Depending on the background of your railroad, you might look into dishes of parent or remnana RRs, Also, mot large train shows have book vendors, and usually a cookbook from every known Class 1 and Regional train to ever serve food. I think I’ve even seen one for Amtrak before the usage of microwaves.
SilverSpike and everyone else that has responded to my post here, i will soon have my HO scale Leelanau County Railway’s dinner train menu posted here soon. I will use info from Cape Cod Central Railroad, Valley Railroad, Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad, and a bit of fictional meu info from my railroad to make up a dinner train menu. My railroad will have an elegant gourmet train, family dinner train, and weekend brunch train. I think when everyone sees my menu people may be salivating like Homer Simpson when he thinks of donuts. My railroad will also have a ski train. The logo of my railroad is Small on miles, Big on Service".
Great! Now, it could be fun if you actually made these dishes at home and served them at your parties. Show your guests the dining trains and then sit them down at the dining room table for a meal.
Mark