Does anyone know if meals were included in the Pullman fare in the pre-Amtrak days? Or did everyone just pay ala carte? Also, were coach passengers allowed in the dining car? Thanks in advance for any info on this.
Never got to eat in the Turquoise Room on the Super Chief, but the Lounges and most of the Diners were really good, and even the Lunch Counter served excellent food!Some of the premier trains on some roads had separate diner’s for Pullman or coach passengers. Also separate lounges.
This was often the case when previously all-Pullman, and all-coach streamliner’s, were combined into one long train, but not all cases...
Definitely confirm this. Not that much has changed under VIA; although they have experimented on and off with budget sleeper fares that did not include meals, all currently do - and coach passengers can still use the diner if space is available after all sleeper reservations have been taken. (There are sometimes two dining cars on peak-season Canadians as well.) One direction on my recent Ocean trip had a clear delineation between the sleeper and coach sections of the diner, but the other was wide-open.On Canadian National in the 1960s and 1970s, meals were included in the sleeping car fare but coach passengers were always welcome in the dining car. Sleeping car passengers did not have the option of purchasing sleeping car space which did not include the meals.
Surely you meant to say VIA took over? Amtrak did not ever take over that service you mention.We rode the Canadian National from Toronto to Vancouver the month before Amtrak took over.
No, dining was not included in sleeping car/Pullman fares. For one thing, the Pullman company got the the accommodation charge and not the railroad and most diners were railroad operated, not Pullman operated (although the rr got the First Class rail fare).
Second, Amtrak didn't introduce it until the 1980s and sleeping car accommodation charges were increased by a very close approximation of the price of meals for 2 when they did it. I was riding and remember being quite PO'd about it. It was actually done to boost dining car revenue. Many sleeper passengers were not eating all meals in the diner, and it was a way to funnel revenue to the diners regardless.
Finally, some railroads such as passenger-friendly Santa Fe offered an add on package that included meals. Santa Fe marketed it as the "One Price Ticket". As I recall, on the Super Chief the One Price Ticket was good for anything on the menu except the Champagne Dinner.
When a train carried one diner, generally all passengers were allowed to eat there, although many trains would carry a second dining option with more limited selection and lower prices such as a lunch counter diner. Some trains, such as Santa Fe's Super Chief/El Capitan, carried two diners. There were actually 3 food service venues on the Super Chief/El Cap, the Super Chief diner, the El Cap diner, and the Kachina Coffee Shop on the lower level of the El Cap lounge (for those familiar with their later incarnation as the Pacific Parlour Car, the Coffee Shop was in the space used as the movie theater). The Super Chief/El Cap from a service perspective was operated as two separate trains that happened to be coupled together and coach passengers were strictly not allowed in the Super Chief section.
Surely you meant to say VIA took over? Amtrak did not ever take over that service you mention.
On Canadian National in the 1960s and 1970s, meals were included in the sleeping car fare but coach passengers were always welcome in the dining car. Sleeping car passengers did not have the option of purchasing sleeping car space which did not include the meals.
My Grandpa,a 40 year SP Hand told me the same things, and my years of riding SP Trains up until A Day found all this to be Spot on!I know it's cited in some documentaries that on the Coast Daylight, the coffee shop made enough to cover the cost of the crews wages in transit. From what my grandpa told me about SP trains, the food service prior to 1960 was far superior to anything he's had on Amtrak. But no, food was generally not included in the fare prior to Amtrak.
Also food quality not only varied by railroad, but by class of train. Food was generally cheaper and less luxurious on the Challenger than it was on the City of San Francisco since the Challenger was the budget train of it's day. And the Lark had full dining service whereas a second class train might only have a coffee shop.
And that's not to say a SP coffee shop was equivalent to a cafe car on Amtrak. You could still get something like a burger or other simple hot meals at for less than a full meal. From my experience, the cafe car offers nothing like what was said to be offered in the past. A second point to this is that distance didn't affect dining service tiers for some railroads. The Daylight was a first class train and had a full triple section dining car, a second class train traveling the same route didn't. And local trains would only have non heated and non refrigerated foods. My grandpa told me that when riding the Senator (the SP predecessor to the Capitol Corridor) all they had was coffee and pre packaged snacks like Cracker Jack's.
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