From Streamliner to Trolley
This post started out by talking about companies that manufactured "real" diner buildings, and the fact that instead some people used decomissioned railroad, interurban, or trolley cars as the basis for their restaurant buildings. And they often played up a train or transportation connection in architectural touches or in the restaurant's name. Some people even built their own buildings from scratch. Even then, the draw to mimic aspects from American transportation was strong. Here's a diner I visited today that has it all! It morphed from a home-made double-ended streamliner train-style diner to a trolley. Now that's progress! :-}
The streamliner diner look was patented by Roland L. Stickney. Apparently, he was an automobile designer. Here's the patent via patent-room.com. Notice that is shows port-hole windows and not the slits that the streamliner diners ended up with (see prior posts). The porthole shape ties in "moderne" ocean liners as well, and we know that portholes sometimes appeared in railroad stock and on plenty of Lionel cabooses:
From 1945 to 1950, Donald Evans -- a Salisbury, Massachusetts man -- built a rare double-ended streamliner himself. The chrome center door that he used came from an earlier diner built by the Worcester Lunch Car Co. and owned by his brother. Perhaps by the time he finished in 1950, the moderne design craze had started to move on to the chrome craze? Regardless, it was called Evans' Streamliner, suggesting that the look and appeal continued a bit longer. Here's a black and white print of a John Baeder painting after the diner was moved to Lowell to its current location and renamed (from an online auction site). It was painted light blue and moved in 1956:
Click here to see its red phase and read the restaurant's history (scroll down about mid-page for Gorham Street Diner). This post contains photos of its amazing transformation in 1981 from a double-ended streamliner to a ... trolley car! (It doesn't get much better than this.)
https://dinerhotline.wordpress...s-circa-early-1980s/
So, had the lore of the train faded from memory while the trolley image surged ahead? Was a trolley more familiar to the city dwellers of Lowell? Here is the Trolley Stop in 1991 (my photo). Notice the railroad bridge on the right that says "Welcome to Prince Spaghettiville":
And here's the diner as it looks today. Just as I pulled up, the MBTA (Boston) Commuter Rail went by. It would have made a great shot had I not been driving:
With all the hoopla on the side about "Lowell's Historic" ... you'd think that this building was an actual trolley car but we know better. Inside there are two paintings of the streamliner version in red -- one with Rock Island and Maine Central boxcars visible on the four-track girder bridge. There's also a nice photograph of a U.S. Mail trolley from I believe the Boston area. In the full shot from today, if you look closely at the entrance windows, you can see fake etched glass. All in all, it's very nicely done and a pleasant place to visit. The windows were amazingly clean and I would have loved to have taken a photograph from a window in the "trolley" entrance of a train going by. But that would have been a long wait (Saturday PM schedule).
For those of you who missed seeing rivets and real converted RR/interurban/trolleys, here's an "art shot" of the girder bridge:
Question to ponder: Why do you think trolleys as an image for food establishments are so popular? When the railroad declined and buses and autos ascended, were trolleys somehow seen as something in between? Is it easier for later generations to identify with them because they ran on streets like city buses or are used to move tourists about?
Tomlinson Run Railroad
