Nostalgia & History > Midweek Menu - Delaware & Hudson

The Delaware & Hudson holds a special place for fans when it comes to dining. When New York State sponsored the resumption of service from New York to Montreal, the D&H geared up by hiring new dining car department employees and even creating a new china pattern, essentially the last original pattern for an American railroad.

But in the pre-Amtrak days, the D&H offer "old school" dining car service at its finest. Supposedly their baked-in-the-diner apple pie was superb!

Image 1: Lunch service on the Laurentian, the daylight train in 1964.

Images 2 & 3: Menu from the late 1950's. A real meat and potatoes selection, but finished with the apple pie. I do recall having one of the best chef salads ever on the 1974 era Adirondack.

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Photo 1: The standard china from the 1940's through the 1960's was "Canterbury" pattern. This was a stock pattern from nearby Syracuse China, with the D&H shield added to customize it.

Photo 2: The 1974 "Adirondack" The service plate saluted the company's origins as a canal company, and its claim of being America's oldest continuously operated transportation company. The other pieces in this pattern did not have the center artwork.

Hope you enjoyed the all to brief look at the D&H dining car operation.

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I'll have a 90 cent Martini, thank you.

TJY

njmidland Wrote:
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>
> Photo 2: The 1974 "Adirondack" The service plate
> saluted the company's origins as a canal company,
> and its claim of being America's oldest
> continuously operated transportation company. The
> other pieces in this pattern did not have the
> center artwork.
>
>

The graphic on the 1974 china was actually created for the 1973 sesquicentennial of the D&H, issued as posters and on other printed matter that year.
Photo: an image of a 1973 poster in my collection.

Art House
Gettysburg, Pa.

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Grilled Frankfurters as an entree item. How things have changed!

Thanks for this series of menus and dining car photos. It's a feature I now look forward to each week.

Hot dogs and baked beans was a staple family meal when I was a kid! Eating that meal on a train of any kind would have been like heaven to me! It wasn't until I was 21 and Uncle Sam drafted me that I had the only meal I ever had in a dining car, 2 eggs over lite with ham and toast, OJ and coffee with the taxpayers picking up the tab! Not quite heaven.
Gonut