For Valentine’s Day, my wife got me All Aboard with E.M. Frimbo by Rogers E.M. Whitaker.
I married well!
A lady that thoughtful and kind brings to mind the old Vaudeville question, “Does she have a sister?”
You’re going to love the book.
Yes you did!!
Excellent read!!
You’re going to love it! Some of the best rail writing ever!
“Frimbo” should be a lot better known than he is. Great stories crafted with elegant prose.
It’s about time you had a copy!
Thanks all!
Believe it or not, I had never heard of these stories until recently.
I was watching a documentary on the New York Central that I found on Youtube. It talked about Frimbo in one part. They said that on a random weeknight, he would take the 20th Century Limited from Manhattan to Albany and back. On the train, he would get a shave and haircut, have cocktails, and then have dinner. He would then sleep on the train, arrive back in Manhattan in the morning, and arrive at the New Yorker offices by 9 am!
I’ve been re-reading John Cheever’s complete short stories and it’s making me sad that the book is about to end. Frimbo will be a nice transition!
I don’t think “Frimbo” was the only one to take the “Century” to Albany just for cocktails and dinner, I believe Lucius Beebe did it quite often as well, among others.
It goes without saying the food on the “Century” was that good.
I’ve often wondered how this concept would work for a restaurant or bar: Obtain several Budd dining and observation cars, sit them on tracks, either car-to-car, or if not feasible with the size of the lot, set them side by side on sections of track.
Restore the cars to their original art deco splendor. Serve high-end period cocktails, and include on the dinner menu a few of the original entrees.
There used to be an airplane bar in NYC. Would a passenger train bar work?
Problem is that everywhere I’ve seen some version of this tried (about 4x now, ranging from the old Azalea off Rt. 46 to a restaurant in Germantown, Tennessee) it has proven… well, just as much a money sink as the actual 20th Century dining arrangements were. Ed Ellis tried the slightly expanded version, offsetting some of the dining expense with potential accommodation revenue … that didn’t thrive across all seasons, either.
I think if it won’t work for Spaghetti Warehouse or Victoria Station, it might have short legs. The success I saw was not in a bar, but in a hot-dog stand, in a surprisingly modern Union Pacific car on Sunset Boulevard… I believe that is closed now.
The whole fun of train dining, and I suspect most of the bar-car service as well, was the shared community during the ride. That is absent from most any service a standing restaurant could offer, and probably from most dinner-train operations.
Wayne has probably been to the mega-diner in New Jersey that features one of the Blue Comet coaches. This is a delightful experience, but the ‘rest’ of that enormous operation pays for the car … and it’s a diner. I suspect it wouldn’t be as popular with cordon bleu cooking and Century-style floral budgets…
Now, there was an airline bar of bars in, I think it was Penndel, on Route 1. Somebody bought a Connie, hoisted it 70 feet
Mod-man, that’s the Clinton Station Diner in Clinton NJ with the old “Blue Comet” car, the “Biela” I believe. Sadly, I’ve never been there, it’s just a little too far to go from where I’m at when I’m up north, but I have seen it.
Heading east on Route 78 after crossing from Pennsylvania it’s easily spotted from the highway when you get to the Clinton area, “Blue Comet” car and all. And it’s supposed to be very, very good. Maybe one day.
You could have dinner in the diner and sleep overnight, have breakfast in the diner and get off where you got on in Spooner WI.
I’m reminded of a little thing Victor Borge did:
He walked up to the ticket window: “I’d like a round-trip ticket, please.”
Clerk: “Yes sir. Where to?”
Borge: “To here.”
I’ve read several articles by Rogers Whitaker in TRAINS in past issues. He was a much better writer than Beebe and could make all aspects of his travels, including the lowliest mixed train, sound like a great adventure. I’ve even read some of his work in the “New Yorker”, which confirmed what I had discovered in TRAINS, that his style was unsurpassed.
It is.
For the record, Carney’s on Sunset Blvd. is still open. And surprisingly good hamburgers and hot dogs and chili. I think that’s part of the secret. Simple food, more or less fast and reasonably priced food. Not prime rib or surf and turf.
You know, you can talk about haute cuisine all you want to, but sometimes nothing, absolutely nothing, fills the bill like burgers, hot dogs, fries, and/or chili.
Pizza too, for that matter. Or a meatball hero. Or a cheesesteak. Or a bagel with a good cuppa coffee. Or a good chicken pot pie. I could go on and on.