Interior of a standard sleeping-car of to-day

While the dimensions of the car were largely set, improvements in its construction have gone steadily forward, as has been told in an earlier chapter. The interior of these luxurious modern cars has not been neglected. From the beginning they have been elaborate in rare woods and splendid textile fittings. The advancing era of American good taste has done much toward softening the over-elaboration of car interiors—the sort of sleeping car that George Ade used to call “the chambermaid’s dream of heaven.” The newest cars present the quiet elegance and good taste of a modern residence. Nothing that may be added in wealth of material or of comfort is omitted, but the foolish draperies and carvings that once made the American car the laughing-stock of Europeans have already gone their way.

To make for luxury all manner of devices have been added to these cars. The superintendent sometimes hears complaints from a traveller that the sharp curves on some mountain division have spilled the water on his bath-tub; and the switching-crews at the big terminals know that turntables are kept busy turning the big observation platform cars so that they will “set right,” and the big piazza-like platform will rest squarely at the rear of the train. For those persons who wish to pay for the luxury there are staterooms, and the best of these staterooms have the baths and big comfortable brass beds. After many years of unsatisfactory experiment the electric light has come into its own upon the railroad train; and even upon unpretentious trains the night traveller no longer has to wrestle with the difficulties of dressing or undressing in an absolutely dark berth.

Once the problem of housing folk at night had been met and solved, another rose. If travellers might sleep upon a train, why might they not eat there, too? The American eating-houses had met with a degree of fame. There are old fellows who will still tell you of the glories of the dining-rooms at Springfield, at Poughkeepsie, at Hornellsville, and at Altoona. But the eating-house scheme had its great disadvantages. For one thing, it caused a delay in the progress of through fast trains to halt them three times a day while the passengers piled out of the cars and went across to some lunch-counter or dining-room to ruin their digestions in the twenty minutes allotted for each meal. For another thing, the process of clambering in and out of the comfortable train in all sorts of weather was unpopular. The well-established and equally well-famed eating-houses along the trunk-line railroads were doomed from the time that the Pioneer won its first success.

No more should a train tie up at meal-time than a steamboat should tie up at her wharf for a similar purpose. The first dining-cars were called hotel-cars; and the first of these, the President, was placed in operation by the Pullman company on the Great Western Railway—now the Grand Trunk—of Canada, in 1867. The hotel-car was nothing more or less than a sleeping-car with a kitchen built in at one end and facilities for serving meals at tables placed at the berths. It was well enough in its way, but travellers demanded something better, something more hygienic than eating meals in a sleeping place.

Pullman went hard at his problem, and in another year he had evolved the first real dining-car, the Delmonico, which went into regular service on the Chicago & Alton Railway. The Delmonico was a pretty complete sort of a restaurant on wheels, and not far different from the dining-car of to-day.

To-day there are 750 successors to the old Delmonico in daily service on the railroads of the United States. A small regiment of men earn their livelihood upon them; some genius, handy with a lead pencil, has estimated that these serve some 60,000 meals—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—every day. The amount of food and drink consumed is a matter that is left to the statistician.

The average full-sized dining-car seats 40 persons, but that does not represent the business it does. Unless the car can be completely filled two or more times at each meal, it is not considered a profitable run. The European method of reserving seats at “first table” or “second table” has never obtained in the United States, and the wise man on a popular train sacrifices his dignity and hurries toward the dining-car at the first intimation that the meal is ready.

To take care of the hungry folk a dining-car crew of nine men is kept busy. The car is in absolute charge of a conductor or steward, who is held sharply accountable by the dining-car superintendent of the road for the conduct of his men and of his car. He signs a receipt for the car equipment before starting on his run out over the line, and he must see to it that none of that equipment, not a single napkin or spoon out of all his stock, is missing at its end. He is held in as strict account for the appearance and behavior of his men. The waiters must be neatly dressed, must have clean linen; the conductor himself must be something of a Beau Brummel, carrying a certain polite smile toward each one of the road’s patrons, no matter how disagreeable or cranky he or she may be. For all of these things and many others—maintaining a sharp guard over the car’s miniature wine-cellars, adding “specials” to the bill-of-fare for a given day, acting as a cashier for the service—he receives a princely salary, varying from $75 to $110 a month.His crew, as far as the passengers see it, consists of five men, almost always negroes. Back in the tiny kitchen is the chef, with two assistants, preparing the food. The kitchen is tiny. It is less than five feet wide and fifteen feet long, and the three men who work within it must have a place for everything in it, including themselves. Obviously there is no room for the waiters, and these receive their supplies through a small wicket window.

If the kitchen is tiny, it is also marvellously complete. An ice-box fits upon and takes half the space of the wide vestibule platform; the range has the compact dimensions of a yacht’s range; sinks, pots, and kettles fit into inconceivably small spaces. Yet in these tiny cubbyholes one hundred, ofttimes many more dinners, of seven or eight courses each, are carefully prepared, with a skill in the cooking that is a marvel to restaurateurs.

The table d’hÔte dinner—the famous “dollar dinner”—of the American railroad has almost disappeared. The constant increase in foodstuffs is most largely responsible for this. The Pullman Company long ago gave up this particular feature of passenger luxury, save in a few isolated cases. It had ceased to be a particularly profitable business, this serving of fine meals for a dollar each; and so the railroads themselves took it up and prepared to make it a cost business for the advertising value to them. Each railroad plumed itself upon its dining-car service—some of them still do—and each was willing to lose a little money, perhaps, to induce travel to come its way because of the superior meals it served upon its trains. But as the price of food-stuffs continued steadily to rise, the advertising feature of these meals began to be more and more expensive, and the dollar dinner quickly disappeared. A high priced À-la-carte service took its place, and the railroads sought to establish their commissary upon a money-making basis.

The attempt has not been very successful. For the lifting of the dining-car prices and the attempt to reduce running expenses has, on some roads in particular, hurt the reputation of these “restaurants on wheels,” and so in due season hurt their patronage; brought their patrons from folk who went out of their way to eat on dining-cars to folk who eat there only because of dire necessity. And these last still have found prices high and the result is to be eventually a return to former methods in part—slower trains stopping again for meals at important stations, the faster trains returning to the table d’hÔte. Beginnings have been made along that line recently. The dollar dinner may never return to some roads—although it remains a joy and a delight to travellers upon the New Haven system—but the “regular dinner” at least, capable of quick service in a crowded car, bids fair to have a renaissance.

While the problem of dining-car economy, and profit even, remains a problem, the idea is nevertheless being steadily extended all the while to branches and to trains that could not support full-sized dining-cars. To meet these needs smaller cars—generally called cafÉ-cars—in which the dining-compartment is much reduced in size, have been built and operated. In these two cooks, two waiters and a steward form the working force and the fixed charges of the outfit are correspondingly reduced. They are further reduced in the operation of the so-called broiler-coach, which is nothing more or less than a day-car with a kitchen built in, the entire service being performed by one or two cooks and a like number of waiters. Some sleeping-cars and some parlor cars still have kitchens where a single accomplished negro may act as both cook and waiter, and these cars are designated commonly as buffet sleepers or buffet parlor cars.

The dining-car department of the railroad will probably have more to do than supervise the operation of these various sorts of equipment. Restaurants and lunch-rooms at terminals and stations along the line may fall under its direct supervision, and it will probably also conduct the cuisine of the private cars of the railroad’s officers.

The dining-car department has direct charge of all the men employed on cars and in the lunch-rooms; it sees to it that the railroad’s culinary equipment is fully maintained; it buys food and drink, linen, silver, china, kitchen supplies of every sort. The routing of the cars is carefully planned to secure the most economical use of them. Few trains running from New York to Chicago will carry a single diner throughout the entire trip. These trains will use two, sometimes three cars during a single-way trip between the cities. A single car will generally make the daylight run with the train, to be dropped at night to continue its course west again at daylight upon some other train needing meal service. The first train will pick up a fresh diner in the morning to carry into Chicago. In this way, a diner may take a week or more to make the round trip from New York to Chicago. Obviously, her commissary must meet all needs along the way. Staple supplies, liquors, dry groceries are all placed aboard the car at the terminals. Fresh meats and vegetables are picked up along the route. This town has an especial reputation for its chickens; this for its grapes; this other for its celery. The dining-car department knows all these, and it selects under the rare opportunity of a housewife who has a market nearly a thousand miles long within which to do her marketing.

Just as the glorious comfort of the American river steamboat of the fifties was responsible for the plans for eating and sleeping aboard the railroad trains, so it was responsible for the introduction of a finer luxury in railroad travel, until to-day, when the resources of the general passenger agent are taxed to discover some new ingenious joy to add to the pleasure of going by this particular line. The full development of the protected vestibule platform and the opportunity it afforded of easy intercourse between the coaches of a train led to many new devices to make the long cross-country trip of the traveller more than ever a thing of joy. First came the buffet-car, with all the conveniences of a man’s club; and the car-builders have shown remarkable ingenuity in imitating the mission-like grillroom interiors, despite the many limitations placed upon them. No club was complete without a barber-shop, and soon every fast-rushing limited of any consequence had a dusky servitor whose sharp-bladed razor was warranted not to cut even when the train struck a sharp curve at fifty miles an hour. Stationery, books, and magazines became features of the buffet-car. After that there came a stenographer, whose services were free to the patrons of the train.

Most of these things were for the comfort of men, who form the majority of patrons of the railroad. But a considerable portion of femininity travels, and it sent in a complaint that its comfort was being neglected. The general passenger agents gave quick ear. The men’s buffet, with its comfortable adjuncts of smoke and drink was at the forward end of the train, the women were considered in the big, comfortable observation cars at the rear. They were given more stationery, more magazines, even a caseful of books, running from the severe standard works to the gayest and lightest of modern fiction. Ladies’ maids were installed upon the trains, and the girl running from New York up to Albany could have her nails manicured while upon the train.

These are all details, but each goes to make the comfort of the traveller upon the American railroad train. Such comfort is not equalled in any other country in the world. From the moment he steps from his cab, the American traveller passing through the magnificence of superb waiting-rooms enters palatial trains, superior to the private trains of royalty upon the other side of the ocean. A corps of well-trained attachÉs look to his comfort and his ease, every moment that he is upon the train, whether his ride be of an hour’s duration or a four-days’ run across the continent. Other railroaders whom he does not see, engine crews, changing each few hours upon his run, signalmen in the towers along the route, telegraphers, despatchers, train walkers, car inspectors help in their small but important ways to make his trip one of comfort and of safety. The entire organization of the railroad lends itself to that very purpose.

The railroad does not stop at the mere exercise of its great function as a carrier; it does not even stop with the exercise of its every ingenuity toward safety in its transportation; it goes a little further and gives to the man or woman who rides upon its rails, a degree of luxurious comfort equal to if not even greater than that man or woman can receive at any other place.