In my experience in Europe, dining cars seem to be more of a Central (and maybe also Eastern) European thing.
Benelux doesn't have dining cars at all, and in France and Italy the best you can usually hope for is a cafe-car that will give you coffee or at most a microwaved snack to take back to your seat.
On the other hand, the German, Swiss and Polish railways still have services with true dining cars where you can sit at a table, a waiter will take your order, then bring you a good-quality hot meal served on a real plate with real silverware (and at least in Poland, actually cooked to order on the train).
Oddly, in some cases eating the dining-car food at your seat is seen as a more premium experience. On Swiss trains, only standard-class passengers need to use the dining car- a member of staff walks through the first class section taking food orders which are then brought to your seat. In my experience of Poland's flagship high-speed EIP services, there are no chairs in the restaurant car- you can either stand and eat at one of the small bar-type tables, or order your food to be brought to your seat.
The UK had dining cars on many of its long-distance trains, and they've been slowly phased out over the last decades. Two main causes:
Firstly, it's very difficult to make it profitable, given the limited number of passengers you can serve on a relatively short journey, the staff costs of running a kitchen plus waiting staff for ~10 tables and the limited price you can charge before the reputation of the train company starts to take a hit for "excessively expensive food".
Secondly, British trains on popular routes are now overfull. Capacity is bounded by trains/hour (fixed), maximum train length (fixed, by signal block and platform lengths), and capacity per coach. So we're optimising for the latter: thin seats to maximise density and a loss of luggage vans, kitchens, extra toilets, and other facilities that take up space but don't seat passengers.
The modern standard is a catering trolley that serves coffee and snacks at your seat. Because it lives in the aisle and moves, it doesn't take up revenue space. Because it mostly sells coffee and alcohol, it turns over a lot more per hour with only one staff member.
The food is still microwaved on the ICE and presumably in other countries too, but the presentation is fantastic. The experience of eating in a proper restaurant while seeing the landscape roll by is amazing and while not all services need a restaurant or can support one I don't expect restaurants to go away. More automation might mean more people can work on the presentation of the food while the kitchen can take up less space which should overall improve the economics of the onboard eating experience.
Exactly. It costs a lot of money to run a bullet train, and every seat is very valuable. They don't have space to waste on a kitchen or restaurant. They do sometimes have little food carts they'll push up and down the aisles that you can purchase meals from, though this depends on the route and time.
Riding a shinkansen isn't like riding some old-time long-distance train in Europe or North America; it's basically just like riding in an airliner, but on the ground and without TSA and the seats have more legroom. It's all about speed and convenience, not luxury.
There are, however, some luxury trains in Japan on some routes. They're not bullet trains though, and usually meant more for sightseeing travel.
> It's all about speed and convenience, not luxury.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. Gran class seats on a shinkansen are some of the fanciest I’ve seen. It’s not quite like a first class airliner, but I think that’s more related to the shorter journeys.
Maybe not so relevant to the economics of a dining car, but I have to take issue with “just as much of a bullet train”. Shinkansen are proper high speed rail with dedicated tracks, top speeds of 320km/h, and high speeds (260km/h or higher) across basically the entire network.
ICE trains run on the same lines used by slower services, and no train in Germany exceeds 300 km/h, with even that speed being attained only on quite small upgraded parts of the network.
The European rail network most similar to Shinkansen would be TGV.
That has very little to do with the ICE train itself though, which can do above 320 km/h just fine in regular service (on international connections though, since in Germany the global train speed limit is 300 km/h I believe).
While the high-speed tracks in Germany are indeed quite a bit of a patch-work, there are over 1000 km of track certified for >= 250 km/h (as of 2015; quite a number of more lines got finished since then, but I could not find the updated number that included them) and by now really rather long corridors are very high-speed.
The route from Munich (south of Germany) to Berlin is now mostly covered with upgraded routes for example.
I think the 4 hours for that route are quite competitive to Shinkansen times.
The fastest Shinkansen route (from the listed operating speed the only one that actually operates at 320 km/h; all others only operate at 260-300 km/h) is the Tōhoku Shinkansen line, which takes 3 hours and 20 minutes for the same distance traveled.
Railroads have nearly universally lost money on the dining car. In the 1880s they did it because it was a loss leader - people choose the train (vs carriage) for the nice meals - something they could do that the other travel options could not (it isn't clear if this made a difference but they thought it did).
Station meals make far more sense in general - there is a lot more space to work with. You can also put multiple options (rent space to different restaurants) in a station. The only downside of this is you need enough flex so that people can get off when hungry eat and get on a different train (meaning both empty seats for them and multiple train options). Still trains have different economics from airplanes and should attempt to run no more than 70% full.
I think hardly anyone would get off a train in order to eat, then get on a following train. At least in places like Japan and Europe, where a typical long journey is just a few hours.
It would mean arriving an hour (or more) later at the destination. It's usually preferable to eat at the destination, or make do with eating on the train (in a dining car, snacks sold on-board, or something purchased at the station or brought from home).
japan is small and europe doesn't do cross border rail well. I could see doing it onia boston to chicago trip (you have to get off in ny anyway) though really it only makes sense for trips where flying makes sense.
The German Railway company DB often works with well known chefs who have also worked for aviation, often for Lufthansa, so they can benefit a bit from their experience.
It’s worth noting that most of these dining cars in speech are detachable, and as such the operator decides which train service it should be added to. For example in Poland, not all intercity services have dining cars. This allows to strategically increase the profitability of services where dining car is expected to be popular.
I’d imagine that high-speed services operating the integral trainsets do not offer this flexibility, so they’d naturally opt for maxing-out seat capacity.
Also worth noting that just recently the European Sleeper, a new contender on the EU rail map, introduced a dining car with an interesting fix-prix approach to menu. I suppose they estimated they could make it profitable, but notably, they too only offer it on some of the services only. The reviews on YouTube seem to praise the quality and overall experience. I personally think that night trains in particular will see the dining cars a necessity.
Polish trains can have some really excellent dining cars. We take the Warsaw to Berlin regularly and they have fresh cooked food like friend eggs for breakfast, or breaded cutlet. Shorter distance trains have the standard snack bar.
The longest train journey possible in the Netherlands would be about 4 hours. People would rather just eat something at the train station.
Besides train are as packed as a Tokyo subway.
In 2013 we did the overnight train from Paris (~10pm) to Barcelona (~10am) - this was a recently revived option, and I think it only lasted a few years in operation - presumably the economics just weren't there, unfortunately.
The 'mini-twin' option, that included a sophisticated dining experience - perhaps not quite as the 1883 experience described in TFA, but really good.
We were escorted on board, shown our room, with two big comfy seats, politely encouraged to drop our bags and head down to the restaurant car, while they converted the room to sleep-mode. (Similar process, in reverse, in the morning.)
Cost was £289.00 for two people - flights would have been a bit cheaper but a whole lot more bother, and as usual once you factor in transport + accom + food for that period, flights get even less compelling.
Can recommend these more sedate options while travelling, but perhaps that's an increasingly rare luxury.
I must say when ever I have the chance I do really enjoy the Cff/sbb dining cars on the swiss network. A real sense of luxury to see the Alps go by drinking a ok coffee or decent beer in a nice environment. Feels nicer than bussiness class on a plane.
Sacramento in California has a truly fantastic railway museum and one of the exhibits is an old dining car you can walk through where each table is set with branded crockery from a different historic American rail operator.
In the USA the Great Northern continued to run its own commissaries even after most other railroads turned dining car operations over to the Pullman company. During the 1930’s, the Empire Builder famously would slow going over a particular bridge in western Montana so that the kitchen crew could “hoop up” a package of freshly caught trout. I find that factoid unreasonably charming.
Lot of transportation dining was luxurious at the first half of 20th century. Ocean liners were of course famous for their dinners, afaik zeppelins had at least decent food available, and airplane travel had some glamour too.
* An ocean liner provides transportation between a source and a destination. Historically they were often used to transport mail, thus RMS and variations (Royal Mail [Motor] Ship/Vessel; "Motor" was used when most ships were steamships. I can't find a canonical answer for "vessel" but examples tend to be small ships with short routes to islands, rather than going between continents).
* A cruise ship runs around in a circle visiting tourist spots, and generally don't have to be built as strongly.
Recent ocean liners operate as cruise ships for part of the year.
Of course, every seat on an airplane back in the 'glamour days' cost probably more (adjusted for inflation/wages) than a business class ticket costs today. The experience on many airlines (internationally at least) is just as glamorous or even more so if you pay a similar amount!
What actually happened is that a much cheaper, bare-bones product made flying available to much more of the population.
If you watch aviation channels on YouTube, the middle eastern airlines keep trying to outdo themselves with private enclosed suites/apartments on long haul aircraft.
Seconded. As an introvert who took a cross-country trip on Amtrak for fun in 2023 (BOS - LAX), I thought I’d hate having to share a small booth with total strangers.
Turns out it gave me confidence in defending my positions to strangers, improved my small talk game, and exposed me to viewpoints I’d never consider otherwise.
And the food was amazing, too. Way better than anything I’ve had on a plane or in an airport.
I find it odd that they force you to sit with other people. I walked into a nearly empty Empire Builder dining car and was still forced to sit with people. Why not ask for people's preferences?
During that trip, the company at breakfast was a nightmare. I sat across from two very drunk young men who were traveling on there father's money. At one point they started a fight with our waiter. Thankfully, our dinner companions made up for it by being delightful.
I completely agree about the quality of the food. For dinner I ate the steak, and it was quite good.
If you make reservations in advance you can get seated alone (if it works out) - they usually sit smaller parties together so as to not have to breakup the parties of four, etc.
My favorite Amtrak dining car "meet your neighbor" experience: taking the Southwest Chief between Chicago and (in our case) Santa Fe/Lamy, and having dinner with a couple of guys from LA, one a fashion designer, the other a rapper/beat producer.
So there I was, a late 50s anglo-american white programmer having a polite disagreement with a mid-30s african-american rapper about why Kanye West was either shit or a genius. For the record, I was in the shit camp.
I just got back from a short vacation on Amtrack. It was my first sleeper car experience -- I slept poorly, but the dining was not too bad. Much better than airplane food and with an excellent view of the fall foliage.
I took the Lake Shore Limited between Boston and Chicago and got a sleeper car and the full-service dining car was the most depressing dining experience I had in years.
There's also the Gerald of Wales service, now run by Transport for Wales.
(GWR is no relation to the original company of the same name, by the way. It's a modern creation, named to capitalise on the positive associations of Brunel's memory.)
I read recently that there used to be three classes in trains (at least in the Netherlands) until the 1940s, when the nicest one was removed.
That seems like a shame! Although, the worst one used to have no windows and steam blowing into the compartment, so I guess the situation has improved somewhat.
After watching the old murder on the orient express I too was fascinated by the dining aspect and looked at what was available today to relive the experience the movie depicted (minus the murder, hopefully)
The quoted price was in the 10s of thousands of euros for a week.
Really puts it in to perspective how luxurious those things were.
If anyone is interested, you can look up Rovos Rails. They have dining car like shown on the articles. Truly unique experience and even better for those of you who want to disconnect, as there is no cellphone service for most of the journey.
Late 70s, early 80s in Europe we'd take the train for 1200 km (about 750 miles). First my parents and grandparents would drive their cars onto the train, then we'd go inside a cabin. There were 1st class and 2nd class cars/cabins. Then for dinner we'd go eat in the restaurant car.
This wasn't a luxury thing that said: we had a Lada (btw shittiest car brand ever and the Lada Niva, the 4x4, is the shittiest, scariest, piece of turd of a 4x4 ever made: this thing will flip over at 12 mph in S-turn no question asked and if you think Lada made good cars you know jack shit about cars). OK, ok, now I digress: maybe it's because my parents had a Lada and it was an utter piece of junk that I now drive a high-end luxury car: surely a seven years long psychoanalysis would figure that one out.
So yup, loading the Lada on the train and eating in the restaurant car.
The people doing the same around that time were typical middle class (and I don't dispute TFA saying that before that it used to be the height of luxury).
> if you think Lada made good cars you know jack shit about cars
There are people that think Ladas are good cars?
All it takes is watching Russian/Eastern Europe dash cam compilations to know that Lada cars are complete and utter garbage. Terrible handling and they absolutely shatter like glass in a crash. Crumple zones are great, but the entire car shouldn't be a crumple zone.
Continental in Quebec. Go there. Keep them in business. They have Steak Diane, and a bunch of other Continental classics cooked table side. Not to be missed.
The Orient Express is a fancy fantasy tour, like a high-end cruise; great for Poirot re-enactors. But Europe's network of sleeper trains is slowly expanding again, and now features at least one dining car service. The best part is that while not cheap, they are certainly affordable.
I've been on the actual Orient-Express (which was a modern Euronightlines train) before it was withdrawn. I travelled on my InterRail pass. It has nothing in common with the luxury train service branding itself Orient Express.
Ah, true, as JWZ calls it, "brand necrophilia". Seeing that page again reminds me of my bucket list item of going from London to Instanbul by train (or trains, I guess). But it'd be funny because I would pass the city I currently live in.
High-speed rail in Europe (TGV (France), ICE (Germany), AVE (Spain), Le Frecce (Italy), Eurostar (UK-FR-BE), Lyria, (FR-CH), Nightjet (AT-DE-CH), etc. are generally up-scale transport. Ticket prices are not exactly cheap. The ultra-wealthy might use private jets, but rail is fast enough for inter-city travel, generally less problematic than commercial flight, enables work en route, and tends to have better dining amenities aboard.
In Soviet Union... well, I'm not actually sure what were the rules for having a dining car on a train, but all trains I rode had one. And I was very poor. So poor I couldn't always afford a ticket.
But, the system worked differently. There were "coupe" cars: the car is divided into small compartment for four people each. Each compartment has a door, a table the four have to share. Two double-decked beds. Upon request fitted with a hammock-like net that served as a crib.
Then there were "platz-kart" cars: similar idea, but six people per compartment. No doors (you could see into compartments adjacent to yours). These also had "third floor" of beds (so, potentially could house nine people, but the top floor didn't have padding and was originally designed for luggage).
Then there were "common" cars: these were usually the same as "platz-kart", but the third floor counted as a legitimate sitting place.
Then, as times got worse, the "common" class of cars became more prevalent, and sometimes these would be repurposed short-distance train cars that didn't have any place to sleep at all (just chairs, like on a plain, or wooden benches).
Any train had all kinds of cars, what was different was the proportion (as Soviet Union was headed towards its collapse, there were fewer and fewer "coupe" cars and more "common" ones). But, even in the worst times of the late 90's there still were dining cars. At some point train stuff stopped serving tea, which was the hallmark of any train travel: it came in special cups with heavy steel holders and with two bricks of sugar with the picture of train...
In my last visit to the dining car, the only dish on the menu was pelmeni (Russian-style wantons) with vinegar (a more upscale version is served with sour-cream) and vodka for dessert... Even by the standards of the day it was sad. But, hey, they still had a dining car!
In my experience in Europe, dining cars seem to be more of a Central (and maybe also Eastern) European thing.
Benelux doesn't have dining cars at all, and in France and Italy the best you can usually hope for is a cafe-car that will give you coffee or at most a microwaved snack to take back to your seat.
On the other hand, the German, Swiss and Polish railways still have services with true dining cars where you can sit at a table, a waiter will take your order, then bring you a good-quality hot meal served on a real plate with real silverware (and at least in Poland, actually cooked to order on the train).
Oddly, in some cases eating the dining-car food at your seat is seen as a more premium experience. On Swiss trains, only standard-class passengers need to use the dining car- a member of staff walks through the first class section taking food orders which are then brought to your seat. In my experience of Poland's flagship high-speed EIP services, there are no chairs in the restaurant car- you can either stand and eat at one of the small bar-type tables, or order your food to be brought to your seat.
The UK had dining cars on many of its long-distance trains, and they've been slowly phased out over the last decades. Two main causes:
Firstly, it's very difficult to make it profitable, given the limited number of passengers you can serve on a relatively short journey, the staff costs of running a kitchen plus waiting staff for ~10 tables and the limited price you can charge before the reputation of the train company starts to take a hit for "excessively expensive food".
Secondly, British trains on popular routes are now overfull. Capacity is bounded by trains/hour (fixed), maximum train length (fixed, by signal block and platform lengths), and capacity per coach. So we're optimising for the latter: thin seats to maximise density and a loss of luggage vans, kitchens, extra toilets, and other facilities that take up space but don't seat passengers.
The modern standard is a catering trolley that serves coffee and snacks at your seat. Because it lives in the aisle and moves, it doesn't take up revenue space. Because it mostly sells coffee and alcohol, it turns over a lot more per hour with only one staff member.
The food is still microwaved on the ICE and presumably in other countries too, but the presentation is fantastic. The experience of eating in a proper restaurant while seeing the landscape roll by is amazing and while not all services need a restaurant or can support one I don't expect restaurants to go away. More automation might mean more people can work on the presentation of the food while the kitchen can take up less space which should overall improve the economics of the onboard eating experience.
Airplanes have the “serve luxurious food with no space or kitchen” down to a T.
One interesting case is Japan where a full dining car is a rarity and you’re expected to buy station meals when you depart.
I think Japan Railways figured out that a car full of passengers is worth a lot more than a kitchen/restaurant for the other 11 cars.
Exactly. It costs a lot of money to run a bullet train, and every seat is very valuable. They don't have space to waste on a kitchen or restaurant. They do sometimes have little food carts they'll push up and down the aisles that you can purchase meals from, though this depends on the route and time.
Riding a shinkansen isn't like riding some old-time long-distance train in Europe or North America; it's basically just like riding in an airliner, but on the ground and without TSA and the seats have more legroom. It's all about speed and convenience, not luxury.
There are, however, some luxury trains in Japan on some routes. They're not bullet trains though, and usually meant more for sightseeing travel.
> It's all about speed and convenience, not luxury.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. Gran class seats on a shinkansen are some of the fanciest I’ve seen. It’s not quite like a first class airliner, but I think that’s more related to the shorter journeys.
As a counterpoint, German ICEs are just as much of a bullet train as Shinkansen are and they have full dining cars.
It might not actually be profitable, but it sure is sweet.
Maybe not so relevant to the economics of a dining car, but I have to take issue with “just as much of a bullet train”. Shinkansen are proper high speed rail with dedicated tracks, top speeds of 320km/h, and high speeds (260km/h or higher) across basically the entire network.
ICE trains run on the same lines used by slower services, and no train in Germany exceeds 300 km/h, with even that speed being attained only on quite small upgraded parts of the network.
The European rail network most similar to Shinkansen would be TGV.
That has very little to do with the ICE train itself though, which can do above 320 km/h just fine in regular service (on international connections though, since in Germany the global train speed limit is 300 km/h I believe).
While the high-speed tracks in Germany are indeed quite a bit of a patch-work, there are over 1000 km of track certified for >= 250 km/h (as of 2015; quite a number of more lines got finished since then, but I could not find the updated number that included them) and by now really rather long corridors are very high-speed. The route from Munich (south of Germany) to Berlin is now mostly covered with upgraded routes for example. I think the 4 hours for that route are quite competitive to Shinkansen times. The fastest Shinkansen route (from the listed operating speed the only one that actually operates at 320 km/h; all others only operate at 260-300 km/h) is the Tōhoku Shinkansen line, which takes 3 hours and 20 minutes for the same distance traveled.
Spain is also pretty fast.
Railroads have nearly universally lost money on the dining car. In the 1880s they did it because it was a loss leader - people choose the train (vs carriage) for the nice meals - something they could do that the other travel options could not (it isn't clear if this made a difference but they thought it did).
Station meals make far more sense in general - there is a lot more space to work with. You can also put multiple options (rent space to different restaurants) in a station. The only downside of this is you need enough flex so that people can get off when hungry eat and get on a different train (meaning both empty seats for them and multiple train options). Still trains have different economics from airplanes and should attempt to run no more than 70% full.
I think hardly anyone would get off a train in order to eat, then get on a following train. At least in places like Japan and Europe, where a typical long journey is just a few hours.
It would mean arriving an hour (or more) later at the destination. It's usually preferable to eat at the destination, or make do with eating on the train (in a dining car, snacks sold on-board, or something purchased at the station or brought from home).
japan is small and europe doesn't do cross border rail well. I could see doing it onia boston to chicago trip (you have to get off in ny anyway) though really it only makes sense for trips where flying makes sense.
Japanese ekiben split the difference since they are all take out boxes; and there are some pretty luxe ekiben.
The German Railway company DB often works with well known chefs who have also worked for aviation, often for Lufthansa, so they can benefit a bit from their experience.
It’s worth noting that most of these dining cars in speech are detachable, and as such the operator decides which train service it should be added to. For example in Poland, not all intercity services have dining cars. This allows to strategically increase the profitability of services where dining car is expected to be popular.
I’d imagine that high-speed services operating the integral trainsets do not offer this flexibility, so they’d naturally opt for maxing-out seat capacity.
Also worth noting that just recently the European Sleeper, a new contender on the EU rail map, introduced a dining car with an interesting fix-prix approach to menu. I suppose they estimated they could make it profitable, but notably, they too only offer it on some of the services only. The reviews on YouTube seem to praise the quality and overall experience. I personally think that night trains in particular will see the dining cars a necessity.
Polish trains can have some really excellent dining cars. We take the Warsaw to Berlin regularly and they have fresh cooked food like friend eggs for breakfast, or breaded cutlet. Shorter distance trains have the standard snack bar.
The longest train journey possible in the Netherlands would be about 4 hours. People would rather just eat something at the train station. Besides train are as packed as a Tokyo subway.
In 2013 we did the overnight train from Paris (~10pm) to Barcelona (~10am) - this was a recently revived option, and I think it only lasted a few years in operation - presumably the economics just weren't there, unfortunately.
The 'mini-twin' option, that included a sophisticated dining experience - perhaps not quite as the 1883 experience described in TFA, but really good.
We were escorted on board, shown our room, with two big comfy seats, politely encouraged to drop our bags and head down to the restaurant car, while they converted the room to sleep-mode. (Similar process, in reverse, in the morning.)
Cost was £289.00 for two people - flights would have been a bit cheaper but a whole lot more bother, and as usual once you factor in transport + accom + food for that period, flights get even less compelling.
Can recommend these more sedate options while travelling, but perhaps that's an increasingly rare luxury.
I must say when ever I have the chance I do really enjoy the Cff/sbb dining cars on the swiss network. A real sense of luxury to see the Alps go by drinking a ok coffee or decent beer in a nice environment. Feels nicer than bussiness class on a plane.
Sacramento in California has a truly fantastic railway museum and one of the exhibits is an old dining car you can walk through where each table is set with branded crockery from a different historic American rail operator.
Here are a couple of photos: https://gist.github.com/simonw/b077396a0c27b32312d2a18eebd49...
Really awesome, thank you for sharing
In the USA the Great Northern continued to run its own commissaries even after most other railroads turned dining car operations over to the Pullman company. During the 1930’s, the Empire Builder famously would slow going over a particular bridge in western Montana so that the kitchen crew could “hoop up” a package of freshly caught trout. I find that factoid unreasonably charming.
Lot of transportation dining was luxurious at the first half of 20th century. Ocean liners were of course famous for their dinners, afaik zeppelins had at least decent food available, and airplane travel had some glamour too.
Queen Mary 2, the only still-existing ocean liner, is still famous for its dinners and generally sense of luxury.
For the lazy:
* An ocean liner provides transportation between a source and a destination. Historically they were often used to transport mail, thus RMS and variations (Royal Mail [Motor] Ship/Vessel; "Motor" was used when most ships were steamships. I can't find a canonical answer for "vessel" but examples tend to be small ships with short routes to islands, rather than going between continents).
* A cruise ship runs around in a circle visiting tourist spots, and generally don't have to be built as strongly.
Recent ocean liners operate as cruise ships for part of the year.
Of course, every seat on an airplane back in the 'glamour days' cost probably more (adjusted for inflation/wages) than a business class ticket costs today. The experience on many airlines (internationally at least) is just as glamorous or even more so if you pay a similar amount!
What actually happened is that a much cheaper, bare-bones product made flying available to much more of the population.
If you watch aviation channels on YouTube, the middle eastern airlines keep trying to outdo themselves with private enclosed suites/apartments on long haul aircraft.
I crossed the Atlantic on the SS United States when I was 4. I wish I remembered more of that trip!
Yup we reached peak civilization in the first half of the 20th century. It's all downhill from there.
There are dining cars on Amtrack. Not the hight of luxury but not bad on a long trip...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTGywoIytSw
I actually love the Amtrak dining cars and being forced to make new friends. The food sure beats the snack car.
Seconded. As an introvert who took a cross-country trip on Amtrak for fun in 2023 (BOS - LAX), I thought I’d hate having to share a small booth with total strangers.
Turns out it gave me confidence in defending my positions to strangers, improved my small talk game, and exposed me to viewpoints I’d never consider otherwise.
And the food was amazing, too. Way better than anything I’ve had on a plane or in an airport.
I find it odd that they force you to sit with other people. I walked into a nearly empty Empire Builder dining car and was still forced to sit with people. Why not ask for people's preferences?
During that trip, the company at breakfast was a nightmare. I sat across from two very drunk young men who were traveling on there father's money. At one point they started a fight with our waiter. Thankfully, our dinner companions made up for it by being delightful.
I completely agree about the quality of the food. For dinner I ate the steak, and it was quite good.
If you make reservations in advance you can get seated alone (if it works out) - they usually sit smaller parties together so as to not have to breakup the parties of four, etc.
My favorite Amtrak dining car "meet your neighbor" experience: taking the Southwest Chief between Chicago and (in our case) Santa Fe/Lamy, and having dinner with a couple of guys from LA, one a fashion designer, the other a rapper/beat producer.
So there I was, a late 50s anglo-american white programmer having a polite disagreement with a mid-30s african-american rapper about why Kanye West was either shit or a genius. For the record, I was in the shit camp.
Amtrak - bring America together, slowly.
The rail bar car beats the airplane cart service anyday.
I'd occasionally take the train from Vancouver, BC to Seattle when visiting a girlfriend, and I was far less messed up after I got there.
I just got back from a short vacation on Amtrack. It was my first sleeper car experience -- I slept poorly, but the dining was not too bad. Much better than airplane food and with an excellent view of the fall foliage.
It might beat airplane food but just barely. I rather eat McDonald's.
I took the Lake Shore Limited between Boston and Chicago and got a sleeper car and the full-service dining car was the most depressing dining experience I had in years.
Great Western Railway in the UK still operates a Pullman dining car on select services between London Paddington and Plymouth or Swansea: https://www.gwr.com/travelling-with-us/pullman-dining
There's also the Gerald of Wales service, now run by Transport for Wales.
(GWR is no relation to the original company of the same name, by the way. It's a modern creation, named to capitalise on the positive associations of Brunel's memory.)
I read recently that there used to be three classes in trains (at least in the Netherlands) until the 1940s, when the nicest one was removed.
That seems like a shame! Although, the worst one used to have no windows and steam blowing into the compartment, so I guess the situation has improved somewhat.
To be fair, the difference of the remaining classes in the Netherlands is mostly density of people, there is no functional difference.
They recently increased 1st class prices to reduce demand, because lack of crowding is the main selling point.
After watching the old murder on the orient express I too was fascinated by the dining aspect and looked at what was available today to relive the experience the movie depicted (minus the murder, hopefully)
The quoted price was in the 10s of thousands of euros for a week.
Really puts it in to perspective how luxurious those things were.
If anyone is interested, you can look up Rovos Rails. They have dining car like shown on the articles. Truly unique experience and even better for those of you who want to disconnect, as there is no cellphone service for most of the journey.
Today we have trains of nothing but luxury(ish) dining - I remember https://www.kydinnertrain.com/ , I assume others exist?
Though obviously not the same, as these are meant solely for dining and sight-seeing, not actual travel.
Napa Valley has its wine train:
<https://www.winetrain.com/>
There are others in Peru, India (Delhi to Agra), Venice, South Africa, Japan, Australia, and Scotland:
<https://www.cntraveler.com/story/luxury-trains-with-the-best...>
Late 70s, early 80s in Europe we'd take the train for 1200 km (about 750 miles). First my parents and grandparents would drive their cars onto the train, then we'd go inside a cabin. There were 1st class and 2nd class cars/cabins. Then for dinner we'd go eat in the restaurant car.
This wasn't a luxury thing that said: we had a Lada (btw shittiest car brand ever and the Lada Niva, the 4x4, is the shittiest, scariest, piece of turd of a 4x4 ever made: this thing will flip over at 12 mph in S-turn no question asked and if you think Lada made good cars you know jack shit about cars). OK, ok, now I digress: maybe it's because my parents had a Lada and it was an utter piece of junk that I now drive a high-end luxury car: surely a seven years long psychoanalysis would figure that one out.
So yup, loading the Lada on the train and eating in the restaurant car.
The people doing the same around that time were typical middle class (and I don't dispute TFA saying that before that it used to be the height of luxury).
> if you think Lada made good cars you know jack shit about cars
There are people that think Ladas are good cars?
All it takes is watching Russian/Eastern Europe dash cam compilations to know that Lada cars are complete and utter garbage. Terrible handling and they absolutely shatter like glass in a crash. Crumple zones are great, but the entire car shouldn't be a crumple zone.
I doubt they'd meet any USA safety standards.
Continental in Quebec. Go there. Keep them in business. They have Steak Diane, and a bunch of other Continental classics cooked table side. Not to be missed.
https://restaurantlecontinental.com/en/
One of the best restaurants on the planet, and zero pretentiousness. ~_*
The food on VIA rail is still pretty good.
"when wealthy people rode trains, they were accommodated"
Back then, sure. But last month a dining car was introduced by European Sleeper with completely normal prices on the Brussels–Prague sleeper train:
https://www.europeansleeper.eu/dining-car
The Orient Express is a fancy fantasy tour, like a high-end cruise; great for Poirot re-enactors. But Europe's network of sleeper trains is slowly expanding again, and now features at least one dining car service. The best part is that while not cheap, they are certainly affordable.
The whole article feels like an ad for the relaunch of the Orient Express next year.
I've been on the actual Orient-Express (which was a modern Euronightlines train) before it was withdrawn. I travelled on my InterRail pass. It has nothing in common with the luxury train service branding itself Orient Express.
https://www.seat61.com/history-of-the-orient-express.htm
Ah, true, as JWZ calls it, "brand necrophilia". Seeing that page again reminds me of my bucket list item of going from London to Instanbul by train (or trains, I guess). But it'd be funny because I would pass the city I currently live in.
> Instanbul
We found Eric Adams’ HN account. And got a clue about where he really lives!
High-speed rail in Europe (TGV (France), ICE (Germany), AVE (Spain), Le Frecce (Italy), Eurostar (UK-FR-BE), Lyria, (FR-CH), Nightjet (AT-DE-CH), etc. are generally up-scale transport. Ticket prices are not exactly cheap. The ultra-wealthy might use private jets, but rail is fast enough for inter-city travel, generally less problematic than commercial flight, enables work en route, and tends to have better dining amenities aboard.
In Soviet Union... well, I'm not actually sure what were the rules for having a dining car on a train, but all trains I rode had one. And I was very poor. So poor I couldn't always afford a ticket.
But, the system worked differently. There were "coupe" cars: the car is divided into small compartment for four people each. Each compartment has a door, a table the four have to share. Two double-decked beds. Upon request fitted with a hammock-like net that served as a crib.
Then there were "platz-kart" cars: similar idea, but six people per compartment. No doors (you could see into compartments adjacent to yours). These also had "third floor" of beds (so, potentially could house nine people, but the top floor didn't have padding and was originally designed for luggage).
Then there were "common" cars: these were usually the same as "platz-kart", but the third floor counted as a legitimate sitting place.
Then, as times got worse, the "common" class of cars became more prevalent, and sometimes these would be repurposed short-distance train cars that didn't have any place to sleep at all (just chairs, like on a plain, or wooden benches).
Any train had all kinds of cars, what was different was the proportion (as Soviet Union was headed towards its collapse, there were fewer and fewer "coupe" cars and more "common" ones). But, even in the worst times of the late 90's there still were dining cars. At some point train stuff stopped serving tea, which was the hallmark of any train travel: it came in special cups with heavy steel holders and with two bricks of sugar with the picture of train...
In my last visit to the dining car, the only dish on the menu was pelmeni (Russian-style wantons) with vinegar (a more upscale version is served with sour-cream) and vodka for dessert... Even by the standards of the day it was sad. But, hey, they still had a dining car!