To Relive the Experience: The Augusta Heritage Center at Davis & Elkins College — home as well to the Cen- ter for Railway Tourism — is nationally fa- mous for its ten week-long programs focus- ing on preserving and offering instruction in traditional folk music, dance, arts, crafts, and lore. This year this writer was invited to offer a mini-course on railroad cuisine. Running August 4 through 7, 6:00 to 7:15 p.m., it first notes that meals served on America’s trains began with road kill and peaked with high cuisine prepared by some of the nation’s best chefs. In between, railroad dining cars made numerous contributions to the nation’s pantry, culinary practices, and food culture. My goal is to offer an informative and enter- taining look at that history that includes a variety of media and the following subjects: Day 1: The dining experience, from soot


(1830s) to soufflé (1930s), on America’s pas- senger trains is presented, including the evo- lution of techniques to feed passengers on trains whose schedules lengthened and speeds increased steadily for over 100 years. Atten- tion is paid to the pressures that drove these developments, and the sometimes humorous, but always delicious, outcomes that resulted. Day 2: At its peak, the rail dining experi-


ence was generally regarded as among the best in the country, equal or superior to that found in resorts, hotels and country clubs. How the railroads pulled this feat off, and the innovations they contributed to American society and dining practices as a result — a number of which persist to this day — are identified, perhaps even demonstrated. Day 3: For a railroad chef, working in a


kitchen with three other cooks in a moving space that measured 8 feet by 18 feet, to feed 200 or more people three meals a day re- quired a unique and innovative approach to cooking. In addition to outlining how this was done, a cooking demonstration will pro- duce a quality entree —yes, you can have a bite — in 15 minutes. Day 4: A look at contemporary rail dining practices, from Amtrak’s Culinary Advising Team, to high cuisine on a private rail car. The class, in teams of two, will prepare a lite meal from the menu of Amtrak’s Los Ange- les-Seattle Coast Starlight, using ingredi- ents from California’s Central Valley. These details can be found at http://tinyurl.com/o9m4ybr by scrolling down to Week 5 and clicking on the course ti- tle. There is a tab at the top of the website with which to register, or call 304/637-1209, 800/ 624-3157 x1209. But don’t tarry. There are but twelve spaces available.


Here’s a Thought Schedule a visit to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, then head to Elkins for a week of mountain arts and crafts, great music, and an immersion in the experience of taking a meal “in the cars.” For even more fun, recall that the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Rail- road runs several excursions out of Elkins, that Elkins is a trailhead the 26-mile Al- legheny Highlands Rail Trail that follows the ex-Western Maryland Railway right-of- way north to Hendricks, and is home to the new West Virginia Railroad Museum.


An Update January’s column reported on a new venture, the Phoebe Snow Company, that offers au- thentic replica food mixes and coffees for var-


ious dining car departments. Since then, the company has expanded its product line, and will soon also expand its product categories. New food mixes include one for the Boston


& Maine Railroad’s New England Brown Bread and the other for the New Haven Railroad’s Johnny Cakes, with stone-ground white corn meal. The new coffee blend must have once been — given that the company bedded 100,000 passengers every night — the equivalent of today’s Starbucks: Pull- man Company Coffee. Asked the obvious question — how is it


the are coffees different — spokesman Tim Stuy notes that, just like fine dining estab- lishments today, railroad dining car depart- ments and their superintendents strove to offer a distinctive coffee to accompany their meals. “By doing research into the records of a railroad’s dining car department, when they exist,” Stuy says, “and in those of the old American Association of Dining Car Su- perintendents, we are able to identify the beans a railroad specified, as well as the length of the roasting process. That’s what determines the flavor.” For some products, happenstance can be a


factor. “The owner of the company that pro- vides one of the ingredients for the Johnny Cake mix just happened to comment one day that his company once made a bread mix for the Boston & Maine Railroad. It turned out to be the brown bread mix.” Instructions for preparing the Johnny Cakes, incidentally, offer both the traditional New England method for pan-frying the cakes, and the New Haven’s oven-baked procedure. What’s next? “We’re about to release Pos-


tum, the ‘healthy coffee alternative’ once manufactured by C.W. Post, the cereal man- ufacturer.” Today it is offered by Eliza’s Quest Foods, with the Phoebe Snow Compa- ny entering into a distribution arrange- ment. And the company is close to releasing a five-piece place setting of replica china, in cooperation with the aforementioned Rail- road Museum of Pennsylvania. It duplicates Raymond Loewy’s distinctive olive green and rust orange pattern design created ex- clusively for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broadway Limited. Another piece in the col- lection will be the Pennsy’s ivory and red-or- ange Gotham Service Plate. For more information or to place an order,


visit www.phoebesnowco.com or call 908/ 509-1760.


Case Closed Recently (February 2014) we shared a read- er’s inquiry into whether the New York Cen- tral System used Rome apples on its dining cars for the baked apple on its menus. A reader, one with faster access to my early work than I have, replied with an excerpt from my January 1993 column — memo- rable to me for being my first column in RAILFAN & RAILROAD. It reported on Jake’s Junction, a restaurant then occupying the ex-Illinois Central streamliners sitting in front of the National New York Central Rail- road Museum in Elkhart, Ind. In February I wrote that owner Jake Szarwark “boasted that his baked apples were the real deal,” bought from the same orchard the New York Central used. So here it is, from the R&R of January


1993, page 24: “. . . for dessert Jake recom- mends a baked cinnamon apple, Central- style: cored, filled with brown sugar and cin- namon red hots, baked to perfection and


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