Meals on Wheels: Train museum showcases Dining in Style exhibition

Long before there was Brightline and Amtrak, local folks wanting to ride the rails had to rely on companies such as the Atlantic Coast Line and the Tavares and Gulf. One of the most memorable experiences of any passenger train ride was enjoying a fancy meal in the dining car.

The Central Florida Railroad Museum, in downtown Winter Garden, takes visitors back to the golden age of passenger trains and gives them a glimpse at the finer side of transportation dining in its new exhibition, “Dining in Style: The Golden Age of the Railroad Dining Car. The display was produced by members of the Central Florida Railway Historical Society: Ken Murdock, Holly Matzelle, Jerry Honetor, Dutch Johnson, Rick Sumner and Mike Forrester.

“We’ve never done anything like this (exhibition), and it just seemed like the right time for the society to put together such an exhibition based on so much of what we have in the museum,” said Forrester, society president.

The exhibit includes dining car tableware, menus, books, and promotional and reference material used by the railroads from the 1930s through the 1960s.

A large percentage of the pieces in the showcase came from the family of Chapman S. Root, whose grandfather invented the Coca-Cola bottle. Root refused to fly after his father was killed in an airplane crash. He started buying railroad passenger cars in the early 1970s, and they soon became the mode of transportation for family vacations. … His railcar collection eventually grew to four plus a yellow Chessie caboose, which is on display at the Winter Garden Heritage Museum on Plant Street. Two of his passenger cars and some of his railroad memorabilia are on display in Daytona.

After his death in 2000, the family donated a large amount of his railroad china and other memorabilia to two museums, Forrester said, including the railroad museum in Winter Garden.

“The dining car was a hub of activity on the train,” explains an exhibit sign. “Breakfast, lunch and dinner were social events, and guests often wore their finest attire while enjoying their meal, which they selected from an extensive and train-specific menu.”

Atlantic Coast Line’s Florida special menu, from about 1968, offered a selection of hot meals — ranging in price from charcoal broiled sirloin steak and onion rings for $5.50 to roast leg of young lamb with mint jelly for $3.50 — as well as a la carte items, including sliced ripe Florida tomatoes for 60 cents, celery and olives for 40 cents, sardines in oil with cole slaw for $1.80, and shrimp cocktail for 85 cents.

“From table linens and sparkling silverware to delicious entrees and impeccable service, dinner in the diner was truly a memorable occasion during a trip,” the exhibit shares. “The refined luxury that travelers experienced from the late 1930s through the 1960s was the golden age of passenger trains.”

Lending the dining cars their reputation for excellent food were the dedicated crews — the chefs and waiters who worked long hours in small, hot kitchens preparing and service four-course meals prepared from scratch — all while moving at 90 mph.

The glory of traveling by railcar reached its peak in the 1960s and never regained its momentum. This was when the interstate highway system was being built and airlines were adding routes, creating alternate modes of transportation for travelers.

In an attempt to keep rail travel alive, Congress created Amtrak to operate all long-distance passenger trains, as well as the northeast corridor between Washington, D.C., and Boston. Amtrak was in charge of all but two passenger train routes in the country by 1971. Today, it continues dining car service, but the services vary by train — and the menus likely are quite different from those offered during the golden age of the dining car.