Good evening all,There was a "Victorian Station" located on NY State Route 25A in Stony Brook L.I. New York. It was just north and east of the Nichol's Road Long Island Railroad overpass on the Port Jefferson line. The Stony Brook LIRR station is west of the restaurant by about 3/4 of a mile and serves SUNY Stony Brook as well as the village. The last time I was by the place, (6 -7 years ago), it still had the boxcar and caboose outside and the menu was all Turkish! You've got me wondering now, I'm gonna have to take another look!de Don, n2qhvRMLI

"There was a Victorian Station on NY Rte. 25A in Stony Brook, L.I. It was north and east of the Nichol's Road LIRR overpass on the Port Jefferson line. I'm gonna have to take another look!"Hi,I look forward to what you find out about the caboose.Thanks, Roger

I remember the one on the NorthEast corner of Grant Ave. & Roosevelt Blvd. (U.S. Rte. 1) in Philadelhia's Far NorthEast being built about 1976. It had 5 boxcars and a Southern baywindow caboose. The caboose was bought in red paint, and V.S. added a fake wood coupola. When the chain went bankrupt, a different chain restaurant took over and put lots of wood siding over most of the equipment. They couldn't entirely disguise the caboose. Later, when the place was torn down to make room for a mid-rise medical office building, you could see that the railroad cars were still behind the fake walls, but lots of the sides had been removed during remodeling. The demolition contractor was using an antique baggage cart to haul trash.The King of Prussia, Pa. branch on deKalb Pk. (U.S. Rte. 202), had about the same timeline.

HI: There was one in Atlanta Georgia on Peachtree Road right next to the Brookwood Station which is the stop for Amtrak. It was taken down in the mid 80's. My wife and I had our engagement party there and it was a booming business. Had to wait on line to get into the place. Wish someone would come up with a new concept using the old diner cars. Thanks Stu

folks,

There were several of them here in California; but they were all gone by the time I moved out here in the mid-1980s.

I am a post card collector and have found several address for them and when I went looking for the San francisco address it had been re-developed into an Office Max store.
I do not know what happened to any of the cars it may have had.

Up north of here in Cordellia, there is a restaurant that has some cars along the side of the building; it may have been a victoria Station at one time, now it is an Italian restaurant with a antique mall and an RV sales lot on the outside. I guess the owner is trying to make money any way he can!
i do not imagine he is selling a lot of RVs these days.

I never ate in one; but with the lack of interest in British preservation over here it is unlikely that the Vritish railroad theme worked well with many American rail fans or attracted many regular patrons.

Ted Miles

We discussed the restaurant chain and its builder rather extensively, early this year.
http://rypn.sunserver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28709&p=135393

I was not aware that the Cordelia antique shop and RV store was once a Victoria Station. It is different from the others in many ways, and it does not have the signature Bay+Cupola caboose. It does have a nice heavyweight baggage car on freight car trucks, and a preservation worthy heavyweight Pullman Obs-sleeper. I think the baggage might be WP and obs is former ATSF. Many of the boxcars were retired with roofwalks intact and would be good for any museum. If this particular establishment were liquidated, I hope the equipment gets preserved. Another obs and a full dome (both SP) are at an establishment in Rocklin, CA.

A "traditional" Victoria Station is still a restaurant at Highway 80 and Riverside in Roseville, CA.

Out west there were many Victoria Stations that did not follow a formula. Early on they purchased the passenger cars that had accompanied the Flying Scottsman on its US tour, so some locations had real British passenger stock rather than cabooses and box cars

The Chain was headquartered in San Francisco, on the north edge of Telegraph hill. The headquarters building was a former flour mill, served by the State Belt. At their headquarters they had the Pullman solarium observation (popularly known as the Devon Bell) as a conference room. A few years ago the building’s owner decided to remodel and gave the car to the Swanage Railway (www.swanagerailway.co.uk) and Cris Hart of San Francisco Trains ( www.sanfranciscotrains.org/ ) and I (under the auspices of the SPCRR, www.spcrr.org ) handled the preparation, loading and shipping from this end with SF trains serving as a shipper of record and the SPCRR providing the liability insurance …

The car has since been restored and returned to service.

Victoria Station had purchased a very large lot (reportedly the contents of a warehouse) of sign, timetables, lanterns and such from British Rail. When the chain failed the remaining items were sold to a San Francisco antique dealer who more commonly dealt with Sports Memorabilia... I assume he wholesaled it out...

The antique store in Cordillia was built as a antique store in the late 1970’s and was never a Victoria Station.

My recollection was that the railroad theme building in Cordelia, CA, was built originally as a restaurant. It never was a Victoria Station. I ate there once. The word mediocre is lavish praise for the quality of the food; anyone for grey pot roast? The food changed format several times. Then the restaurant started sharing space with antique dealers. Gradually antiques replaced food. Today the building is an antique dealer mall. The railroad cars are individual shops.

Written by an "insider" at the Victoria Station chain, the book "Prime Rib & Boxcars - Whatever Happened to Victoria Station?" is available from the author at http://www.vicsta.com/

Jim Tatum.

There was a resturant like that in Vancouver, WA, very close to the NP/MLW/SP&S station still in use by Amtrak. They tore it all down in 2006. Was that one of them as well? I got into the area long after it was being used, sadly and never heard of this chain until this week as I never lived near an area that had one...