Tim Stuy queried..... <<Did anyone out there ever eat in a Lackawanna, Erie or EL diner? If yo= u did can you relate the experience. From the passenger point of view the dining car was one of the highlights of a trip yet it is seldom talked about in railfan circles.<< Well, I did. In the mid-60's I was working for Price Waterhouse and I found a few opportunities to take the train from Hoboken to Binghamton an= d Elmira. I would board in Hoboken and head to the diner immediately upon departure. In those days, they were using the Phoebe Snow diners (on the= Lake Cities) which I thought were beautiful cars. Dinner was ......well......dinner, and my most vivid remenbrance was that the only white wine was Sauterne, which was terrible. But the overall experience was sublime. I also recall riding from Chicago to Hoboken, where the diner was added somewhere in Ohio (Marion?). This time, it was an old Erie heavyweight diner. I seem to remember that the menu for lunch was limited to cold sandwiches. It didn't matter to me, as I loved the atmosphere of the car= . = Oddly, I have no recollection of what must have been later dinner and breakfast aboard this heavyweight beast. My favorite experience was in 1966, when I operated an NRHS excursion fro= m Syracuse to Scranton. The EL brought in a train which included two diner= s, and the crew had spent the deadhead move cooking some incredible number o= f turkeys. Turkey, on that trip, was something like $3.25, and was delicious. As a non-dining car memory, that train had also brought in (f= or the crew) a heavyweight (Erie, I think) section sleeper, which was parked= on a station track. And for the diesel lovers, we had asked for PA's on that NRHS trip, and w= e got THREE of them. Sigh! Dave Ross Cliffside Park, NJ ------------------------------------------------------------ Visit the erielack photopage at http://el-list.railfan.net ------------------------------
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