(The following article by David Mannweiler was posted on the Indianapolis Star website on April 23.)
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — In 1937, the Pennsylvania Railroad lost $1 million serving food on its trains.
The average meal check was $1.24, James D. Porterfield writes in his book “Dining By Rail.” The meal cost $1.61.
“Dining cars nearly always operated at a loss,” he writes.
In the ’40s and ’50s, when trains were the king of transportation, dining cars came with starched and ironed white linen tablecloths and napkins, a fresh flower in a silver vase, china with the railroad’s logo and crystal glassware.
But even then, they were pretty money pits. The 1,400 dining cars in use in 1957 took in $62 million in revenue and still lost $29 million.
On Monday, Amtrak will introduce Simplified Dining Service to try to cut $10 million from its projected loss of $120 million this fiscal year in its food and beverage service.
Amtrak will reduce dining car personnel, introduce disposable, off-white plastic plates and begin serving “more foods prepared off-site and finished on the train,” said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.
In other words, pre-cooked meals reheated in the train kitchen’s oven.
By the end of May, full-service, order-off-the-menu railroad dining will be gone in the U.S., except on two long-distance Amtrak trains.
Amtrak’s aim is to cut more than 100 kitchen and wait staff. “With benefits, those workers can make $30 an hour,” Magliari said. “Each position eliminated will result in significant savings.”
Congress made Amtrak do it.
“We had no choice,” Magliari said. “Our federal appropriation this year from Congress has a requirement for a ‘significant’ improvement in the costs of our food service.”
The New York-to-Chicago Lake Shore Limited that crosses northern Indiana will lose its chef-run galley Monday, along with two of its three dining car workers. The Indianapolis-to-Chicago Cardinal train lost its full-time dining car a long time ago and offers only sandwiches and snacks.
Hungry Hoosier railroad fans have one option left. Once a month, the Indiana Transportation Museum in Noblesville serves a four-course, $60 meal on its 36-seat 1930 Louisville & Nashville Railroad dining car enroute to Tipton.
“If you want to eat a ‘live’ meal cooked by a chef in a railroad dining car kitchen and served on a moving train, you have to find something like this,” said museum chairman David Wilson. “It’s just a marvelous thing.”