Food on the Rails: The Golden Era of Railroad Dining
by: Quinzio, Jeri

Hardcover. Lanham MD, Rowman & Littlefield , 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glossy pictorial boards, 173 pages, b&w illustrations. In roughly one hundred years - from the 1870s to the 1970s - dining on trains began, soared to great heights, and then fell to earth. The founders of the first railroad companies cared more about hauling freight than feeding passengers. The only food available on trains in the mid-nineteenth century was whatever passengers brought aboard in their lunch baskets or managed to pick up at a brief station stop. It was hardly fine dining. Seeing the business possibilities in offering long-distance passengers comforts such as beds, toilets, and meals, George Pullman and other pioneering railroaders like Georges Nagelmackers of Orient Express fame, transformed rail travel. Fine dining and wines became the norm for elite railroad travelers by the turn of the twentieth century. The foods served on railroads - from consomme to turbot to souffle, always accompanied by champagne - equaled that of the finest restaurants, hotels, and steamships. Bright, clean copy.