I just read the article on cooking food on steam engines in the April '06 issue of trains, and even though I'm not brave enough to try the scoop, I do agree that a boiler is ideal for cooking. I think the ultimate steam locomotive food is White Castle. They're steam grilled to begin with, and you can cook them on the backhead in their little boxes, not requiring any post packaging. The only problem with the Castles is that when you buy them in the morning, they are way too tempting to not sneak a few while you wait for operating pressure- a fine breakfast!! The cab does tend to get stinky as the day goes on. Pop tarts do not work as their packaging which looks like foil is not, so eggos work better for breakfast. Skyline Chili 3-ways works good too, and smells better than White Castles.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

Chris,

In the Disney Movie "The Great Locomotive Chase", the boy cooked bacon over the fire door. I also think that they had some coffee if I remember correctly heated on the backhead.

I was also wondering if you could do a favor for me. In the Museum is Atlantic and Gulf #3. Could you take a photo of the builders plate on the front of the engine for me. I am trying to make a Rogers 2-6-0 and it has a round type plate on the side of it. I can not make out the writing in the photo so the engine in the museum may reveal what is writen on it.

You may send it to me off line at mnfrailhist@hotmail.com

Thanks a million.

JD Johnson, Morehead and North Fork Railroad.

[quote="Chris Salmonson"] The cab does tend to get stinky as the day goes on. Skyline Chili 3-ways works good too, and smells better than White Castles. [/quote]

Sheesh. White Castles and chili......I can imagine that the cab could be more than a little stinky. We don't allow any of that sort of cuisine in the cab of Milwaukee Road 261 as it could be deadly in that enclosed vestibule cab, not to mention the possibility of a methane gas explosion!

;>)

Don C.

One trip from Essex to Deep River on the VRR was enough to nicely "steam" a half-dozen foil-wrapped ears of corn. They were placed in the sliding cylinder access plates of #40. They had to come out before the return trip, as working upgrade through Richard's Curve made 'em too well-done. And #97, being superheated, really overcooked the corn!

Foil-wrapped potato pancakes on the scoop in NH&I #9's firebox; a few minutes inside the door, during the station layover, was just right. And the applesauce was nice and cold out of the cooler.

Didn't some Class One recently prohibit placing cans of food on cab heaters, due to a few yahoos forgetting about dinner being cooked and being violently reminded that it was "ready"?

Does anyone out there do any authentic caboose cooking, perhaps during Railfan days or public "open house" events?

I think the plate that is on the Sam Hill right now is a commerative one, the same that was on the 1929 photo that Bob Yarger showed.



Now about those Castles, for some reason our roundhouse has two gag fart machines floating around, I can't see why they are necessary after all our White Castle consumption!

Rumor has it that there is a fowl odor now in the Western Coal & Coke #1 tender at MCRM after snow train weekend.

During my time in Alaska this past summer I was exposed to cooking a full meal(for quite a number of people...6 or so) in the cab of the 73. Passed down from the engineers of the steam era, everything has a specific place based upon the amount of heat being radiated. I know I am forgetting some items but we had ribs(pork), baked chicken, hot dogs, brautwerst, corn on the cob as well as a variety of side dishes. ANd all of this was simmering away while we sailed along at 35mph(at times...usually about 30) through the high flats of Canada on our way to Lake bennett.....on right of way second only to the northeast corridor.

Even if the cuisine isn't allowed in the 261 cab, the after-effects have occasionally been dropped there as I have had the unfortunate experience of walking into a fresh cloud of it with no warning. Now if we could harness those fumes as a coal saver..... :-)

Yeah. Eat healthier ;)

Kids and their pre-packaged food. Why in my day we ground our own flour, slaughtered our own hogs, and roasted our own coffee beans in the cab! Sometimes we even raised chickens on the tender! While firing - upgrade! In the snow, the hot sun beating down on the cab! And the engineer expected us to keep the water up, and check for signals, and keep his ceramic cup topped up with hot coffee!

You younguns got it so easy today . . .

Where's Weaver? Weaver, show this kid how to cook!




JAC

Oh my Lord, what I would give to have a digestive system today that could accomodate those old " murder-burgers", "gut-grenades" or "stomach torpedoes".

Surprised no one mentioned Pizza's. Frozen or re-heated, they made for some interesting cuisine.

Potatoes wrapped in foil also worked pretty good, I've been told.

Of course, no one could complain about what the boys in the cabooses were dreaming up either, which is yet another chapter of "RR Grub".

Gotta love it, as well as that new Trains issue.

Hmm ... What a fascinating thread!

Let's see ... Linn and I cooked breakfast on a scoop in 90 once. There were hash browns, bacon, eggs ... I think that was it. Strasburg crews have warmed hamburgers, stews, and chili on headers. 89 has an especially elegant header for setting pierced cans of whatever. The bonnets and valve handles serve to retain the cooking containers.

On the 17th past, baked beans and beef franks were simmering in an enameled roast pan on the caboose stove, along with an enameled coffee percolator that sent John Craft into a doxology on the merits of enameled cookware and his good late grandmother. The beans and franks were served with potato rolls and deli pickles.

JAC, I don't know where you found that picture of my Uncle Earl. I owe all of my railroad culinary skills to him.

"Railroad Magazine", probably in 1955-65, ran an article, I think by E. A. "Frog" Smith, where he went hiking in the South woods with a female and found 2 abandoned "pole" logging road steam engines. (The driver treads were concave to run on wooden log rails.) He demonstrated to the lady how to cook on a scoop over a wood fire in the firebox. For sanitary reasons, he lined the scoop with newspaper.

Many years ago, I read of engine crews heating a tie plate, or other flat chunk of metal, in the firebox to use as a grill for steaks. Can't remember the source. Never got a chance to try it, the extent of my locomotive cooking experience is heating beans & franks on the backhead. I do, however, have a couple of good recipes for chili & mulligan stew that work equally well on a caboose stove, or on the campfire at a Civil War reenactment. Anyone interested, PM me.

Two gag fart machines? What else could be contained within the confines of the roundhouse?

Well, I haven't ever done any real cooking in the firebox of 261 because I don't want to get that involved. I have more important things to attend to. But in the days before the crew had a chef, 24 hour food avialable and a dining car to eat it in, I have on occasion heated up a nasty can of Dinty Moor on the stoker pot. Open the can just a crack and let it sit there for a while. Also have reheated old pizza there. The same can be done using heat from valves and other things mounted on the backhead, but it takes longer.
Not advisable to scoop coal in while the food is there.
Often wanted to try cooking a whole pizza in there. One of these days...
Mark D.

Very early in my experience at the Huckleberry (about 1979) the proper technique for this was demonstrated to me by Dennis Daugherty. A tie plate is too small to to this properly. Take a follower plate out of a draft gear pack, this will be about 2 1/2" thick by 14" x 8". Put it on the bank in the rear of the fire box til it gets barely dark red heat. Take it out, and put it on the deck. Scrub off with the squirt hose and wire brush or some waste; cool one end off more than the other, this way you can use the correct temp for what you are cooking; and as the plate cools, you move toward the hotter end. Dennis did steaks for us; cant remember how we did the side dishes. In the article in Trains, I was suprised not to see this technique, as it is far superior than trying to cook on the shovel.

Dennis is ex USATC ROB out of Ft. Eustis, I suspect he learned this there.

Steve Zuiderveen