p51 posted:There was a diner in downtown Aberdeen, MD that I'm not sure was a RR car, but it looked like one. The pace was a 50s-60s time capsule, and I loved eating there when I was still stationed at the Proving Ground.
>> p51/Lee,
>> Thanks for your excellent post and sharing your photos. This is great. The New Ideal Diner was an actual diner building with a train-car feel built in 1952 by the Jerry O'Mahoney Co. of NJ. Looks like it is gone but here are some interesting links:
>> http://retroroadmap.com/spot/t...md-you-are-my-ideal/
>> http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...-20140831-story.html
>> http://msa.maryland.gov/megafi...df/msa_se5_15169.pdf
There was a neat restaurant at Vancouver, WA just inside the insanely-busy wye where the old SP&S met the old NP.
=snip=
>> You may be in luck here. Washington state has a high number of railcars used as restaurants. I'll see what I have and post more later. Nice picture, by the way.
My all-time favorite, though, would have to be another long-closed-before-I-got-there one, the Tweetsie Diner in Newland, NC.
>> Gosh, I can see why it would be your all-time favorite. This RR was new to me. I'm a fan of narrow gauge and can't imagine how a narrow gauge car was converted to a restaurant. But if the original diners were horse-drawn wagons, clearly it's possible.
>> What a great photo of you and a fantastic car-turned- building. The unusual clapboard treatment reminds me of some of the "updating/modernizing" that gets done to authentic diner buildings. There's one that is so bad, that it has an award for bad taste named after it. I'll scan and post a pix of the Lou-Roc shortly.
>> For those like me who are curious to learn more, here are links to the current Tweetsie Railroad, including a nice interactive history timeline:
>> https://tweetsie.com/explore-t...vent-charter-granted
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweetsie_Railroad
>> Thanks again for your contribution, Lee.
See my inline comments in p51's note above, prefaced with >>. (On my iPad and in a rush.)
TRRR
