The RDG MU cars in Wilkes-Barre were generally converted to two motel rooms per car, not restaurants. You ate (more likely drank) at the former CNJ station. In any event, the motel part was never refurbished and eventually folded. The cars are being moved or scrapped.

We (Electric City) have the Scranton Trolley that had been a restaurant and plan to restore it to be a trolley again. One side is relatively intact to incluse a history of Scranton paint schemes. The other side has those diamonds cut into it that you see in Dave's picture.

Also in W-B is a former ACL/Amtrak Budd pre-WWII flat end obs car that was the dining room of Joe Palooka's Diner. The diner (a real diner, not a RR car) went to Philadelphia where it is in service as the Trolley Car Diner with SEPTA's inactive 23 trolley line in front of it.

The owners of the Trolley Car Diner in Philadelphia are planning to convert a PCC car into an ice cream parlor. So it continues.

Electric City Trolley Museum Association

SP 10408 Pride of Texas Budd car restored and now in static service for dining, mostly takeout but can eat in at the cocktail tables. www.winnerwinneraustin.com is their website. 9300 Highway 290 West Austin Texas. Project website is www.texascompound.com

Surely there have been other cars placed into such service since the most recent earlier comment on this thread, which was in 2002?



- Wm Osborn

The "Concho" is being made into a restaurant in Texarkana. The Concho was restored at the Arkansas Railroad Museum for use behind 819.
http://txktoday.com/news/downtown-texarkana-track-new-restaurant/

When I was traveling, I saw a diner with 2 cars in Cincinnati near the river and ferry landing back in 1989.

Don't forget all the Pullman Pie shops of the 1960's, nor all the Spaghetti Warehouses and the Oregon version ( can't remember the names). Dallas still has a Spaghetti Warehouse in operation.

Most of the recent McDonald cars started after a man in Lewisville, TX. bought a Dallas streetcar in 1988 through me and made it into a party room. Gone now. I will find a photo and send it later. He also had an Irving, TX location with a caboose.

And a small diner in Lowell that had a delicious lunch for very little money way back in the 1990's.

harry

William,

Please post more photos of the Pride of Texas. It's looking great (from what little I can see on Winner Winner's site.)

Maybe start a new thread showing some "before", "during" & "after" photos? You've put a ton of work into it.

No one mentioned caboose hotel at Strasburg?

The carferry Lansdowne is long gone, and I think the MILW beaver tail cars are too. Standard story of restaurant conversion gone wrong, and eventual scrapping. Major history loss.

Former L&N four axle heavyweight coach #2007 has been converted to an elegant restaurant car from a burned out hulk by A.M. Booth's Lumberyard, a dining, entertainment and event venue in Huntsville, Alabama. http://www.amboothslumberyard.com/

Alan Maples

Somewhat surprised no one has mentioned the Clinton Station Diner in Clinton, NJ. Very visible from I-78. Former Blue Comet observation car CNJ 1179 sticks out the side and you can indeed eat in it.

https://www.clintonstationdiner.com/

Old thread!

Anyway, here is an updated photo of former bar/diner car Scranton Railway Co. #324 at the ECTM in Scranton.



There is also the Salted Rim in Bethany, DE (I think the cars are lettered for Baltimore)



And Hotel Fiesole in Skippack, PA features a former Reading Birney car as a dining room.

This car has been mentioned here before in a thread about existing ATSF Budd stainless cars. The El Tren Grill Mexican Restaurant (formerly the Erie Grill) in Tallmadge, Ohio, just East of the town circle has that former Santa Fe coach available for parties of 25-35 by reservation only for a $50 fee. Adjoining it is a B&O I-5 caboose. Both sit on the former Erie main behind the main restaurant building. Further railroad-related content - the folks who own this restaurant used to have another Mexican restaurant near BE tower in Berea that was pretty good, and I have heard good reviews about this place. It's really too bad that place is no longer there because the restaurant in the old Berea station changed hands a couple of years ago and got much more expensive, with a much more limited menu.

Link to their website about the car: http://www.eltrengrill.com/fiesta.html

Hi
If you are at the Valley Railroad in Essex, Ct, now called the Essex Steam Train and Riverboat, you can eat in there Cafe Car. The coach is ex DL&W built by Pullman in 1914, it was originally numbered 500. The coach was built as a 72 seat open platform coach, it ran on the DL&W & Erie-Lackawanna until 1971, in local service in New Jersey
After the coach was brought by the Valley Railroad, in 1972 it was converted into a grill car and has remained in that service ever since.
Also sometime during its time in railroad service the car got renumbered to 565.

Back in the day, before SR joined Amtrak, the Southern Crescent was placed in Washington Union Station well before its departure time; well enough that you could have dinner in the dining car while it was still in the station. One railfan club had "Dinner in the Diner" events to do just that.

Phil Mulligan

My bad. I forgot to mention B&O RR Museum's B&O 1951, a 1956 Budd RDC-2 that was built with a kitchen and tables as the food service car for the Phila-Pittsburgh Daylight Speedliner.

B&O RRM for a while used it as a snack bar for the visitors.

The kitchen is between the baggage apartment and the exhaust duct, the 6 tables seating 24 are half the other (longer) end and 24 reclining coach seats are the rest of the other end. 2 RDC-1's with 90 reclining coach seats each were the rest of each train with 1 commuter-type RDC added between Washington and Cumberland on busy days.

Yes these were the prototypes for Reading Company's RDC-2 9165 and RDC-3 9166, where the baggage and mail apartments were converted to breakfast (AM) and beverage (PM) counters for Phila-Jersey City/Newark service on the Crusader and Wall Street trains. RBMN is using 9166 this summer in its Reading-Jim Thorpe trains.

http://www.rbmnrr-passenger.com/summer/

Now back to the original subject: is there a museum out there that's currently using the tables of a parked dining or café car for food service?

Phil Mulligan

Updating the post about the two MILW Skytops which were in restaurant service on the hull of the GTW carferry Lansdowne until it sank at dock on Lake Erie, the superstructures of the two cars were saved. Cut in half and separated at about interior floor level, the four pieces are now in residence at the railroad museum at Montevideo, MN. I have seen them. It is my hazy understanding that the intent was/is to acquire a pair of MILW coaches, remove what doesn't look like a Skytop and attach the preserved pieces.

BTW, looked at the museum's website. The most recent posting says that the museum has acquired title to its seven acre site which includes an operational 90' turntable.

Alex Huff

There's a restaurant in southern New Mexico that has a passenger coach incorporated into the dining room. I forget exactly where it is, probably the cross roads where you get off I-10 if you're heading to Silver City. Only reason I remember that was I ate there on a trip to Silver City.