Hey Jim!
Thanks! Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to myself or boring you guys to tears :-). And I wish I had more photos.
You know, it's an interesting thing about those military kitchen cars. How neat you got to see one up close. Just poking around following my general interests per this post has turned up what seems to be several ex-military kitchens that have survived. The 1950 "Colonial Hearth" at Connecticut's Valley RR is one that comes immediately to mind, but there have been others. Perhaps their practical application as a kitchen car meant that some lasted longer than other types of rail cars?
James Porterfield's excellent book _Dining by Rail_ devotes considerable text to the increased demand on the kitchen crew and no doubt provisions stocking efforts during the WWII years when service personnel had to be transported AND fed by the nations and services' railroads.
What didn't seem to happen (as far as I can tell) is that wanna be restaurant owners were NOT buying old kitchen cars -- military or otherwise -- as a way to get a ready made kitchen for a diner or restaurant. Diner buildings on the other hand, came well equiped with both the kitchen and dining area. If you bought a retired trolley or rail car, you were free to mimic a diner's interior visible kitchen, build your kitchen out from the side of the car, or design whatever you wanted. I'd guess those rail car kitchens would be pretty beat or out-dated.
There's an example of a converted trolley in Shafter, California whose owner mimicked a diner building by taking up space with the kitchen bar inside the trolley car body. It was a 1910s? Pacific Electric #466, formerly a Fresno Traction Car and Peninsula RR (?). It became a diner in 1943 and the Red Wagon Cafe is still going strong. I'll add a link to pictures when I have time later.
I dunno about teaching budding chefs "performance" art like how to entertain patrons while cooking (=grin=) but the ability to work under pressure AND be observed certainly sets the diner cook apart from the dining car chef. It's a great idea. 
Johnson and Wales Culinary School has a culinary arts museum and they have sponsored diner events and at least one exhibit in the past. Diner fans are a lot like railfans! The school takes pride in Providence, Rhode Island's history as the birthplace of the first horse drawn diner. I wonder whether they have any railroad cookbooks, dining car artifacts, and the like in their collection?
The closest I came to your frat experience was during my first year of college. I got a summer job as a short order cook (no height jokes, please) at the Officer's PX Snack Bar at Fort Devens, MA. It was set up very much like a diner range out in the open for cooking burgers, chicken, fries, onion rings, pizza, and etc. But I think the long bar area parallel to the grill was only for the servicemen to order and then line up to pay at the cash register; there was a separate area for table seating. Fort Devens was decomissioned years ago and the PX and snack bar long gone, but the large train yard on the base is now a busy Norfolk Southern intermodal yard with connections to Pan AM and commuter train tracks.
Thanks for your encouragement and stories.
Tomlinson Run Railroad
