In the September-October 1954 issue of The Lackawanna magazine an article on the DL&W dining car service says it cost $1.26 to generate $1.00 of revenue. Other than a handful of railroads that had a good liquor business with commuters like the LIRR and NH, I suspect that every railroad's dining car department lost a lot of money. I have documents from the 1890's with railroads complaining about the losses from running dining cars. The railroads felt that dining car service was an important publicity tool. Ralph Budd, president of the Burlington even went so far as to claim freight customers routed their traffic on the CB&Q based on the meals they had in their dining cars. Tim ________________________________________ PeoplePC Online A better way to Internet http://www.peoplepc.com The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org ------------------------------
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