Nostalgia & History > Midweek Menu - Atlantic Coast Line

When you think about it, the Atlantic Coast Line's dining cars were frequented by a large span of people from the Northeast and the Midwest in addition to people living in the region it served. As a key link in trains making their way to Florida, the ACL provided an amount of dining car service well out of proportion to its size.

Photo 1: Breakfast menu for the "City of Miami"
Photo 2: "Florida Special" lunch menu
Photo 3: Dinner menu for the "City of Miami"

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Photo 1: Interior of an ACL diner - ready to let you know you are on your way to Florida! Circa 1950.
Photo 2: Heavyweight ACL diner.

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Photo 1: This menu holder really shows off the art of railroad silver.
Photo 2: The "Palmetto" pattern used during the heavyweight era.
Photo 3: The "Flora of the South" pattern was the standard pattern in the post WWII era.

I hope you enjoyed a look at the ACL's dining car operations. As a shameless plug, the Phoebe Snow Company has recreated the bake mix the ACL used for its famous fruit scones!

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The first menu (breakfast) appears to be dated December 1963, and that would explain why the Florida East Coast RR is not listed at the bottom of the page. The third menu (dinner) appears to be dated April 1961, and the FEC is listed.

Looking at these menus,why in the hell can't Amtrash do the same?

Uncle Joe
Seffner,Fl.

I think the kinds of customers Amtrak serves on their long distance diners are not looking for a white table cloth dining car but a Bob Evans or Big Boy. That being said, Amtrak should add a waiter and a cook on every train to provide better service, increased food quality, and broader menus. People want quality healthy meals and they will gladly pay for that. Friendly service will bring in more revenue and repeat riders. Word of mouth by satisfied customers is the best kind of advertising.

Posted from iPhone

My thanks to all for the "Mid-week Menus!" It is most interesting to see what was offered back in the day on various railroads. I may try to figure out how to scan some of my menus to add to this weekly event. Thanks to all who have participated in this!

Best wishes,

ShastaDaylight

ShastaDaylight Wrote:
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> My thanks to all for the "Mid-week Menus!" It is
> most interesting to see what was offered back in
> the day on various railroads. I may try to figure
> out how to scan some of my menus to add to this
> weekly event. Thanks to all who have participated
> in this!
>
> Best wishes,
>
> ShastaDaylight

I have found that collecting railroad menus has been a lot of fun. Thy don't take up a lot of room (the china and silver does!) and non-railroad people find them interesting as well. Our company tries to provide a few items that recall these dining car meals as well. At home, we use our china and silver for holiday meals and we have a few favorites recipes from these menus that we serve.

Tim

Thanks for the response.

My wife and I do much the same thing. We have B&O Blue china for special occasions (paper plates for when we want to imitate modern-day Amtrak...). I agree, the menus, as well as recipes, are fun to share with others, and my wife enjoys "reverse engineering" various railroad dishes from the past. (She does really good with Fred Harvey/Santa Fe French Toast!)

Thanks again for sharing the menus!

Best wishes,

ShastaDaylight

I, too, am enjoying these weekly menu posts. Thanks for sharing them.

On the 1st one, the Palm Cafe on the City of Miami, it mentions "Open For Continuous Service." Does anyone know if this means that the dining car was open all day, from breakfast right through the close after dinner? If so, that would eliminate the need to post a store-bought store in the car's door window, "Closed," as an otherwise excellent Lead Service Attendant on the Empire Builder likes to do.

Also, I see that ACL was selling its "Mainliner" French salad dressing. I don't know if Seaboard Air Line also sold its salad dressing, but my parents told me that ACL successor Seaboard Coast Line sold its French dressing aboard its dining cars, right up until Amtrak Day.

I continue to really enjoy the Midweek Menus, and these three were real gems. I also wondered about the "continuous service" mentioned in the first menu. Any thoughts on that?

That image of the ACL diner interior was just wonderful. I have always liked the turned four-seat tables on the one side, with the aisle-facing two-seat banquettes on the other. A relaxed, convivial, almost club-like feeling as compared to traditional squared-up tables on both sides, further enhanced by the tropical-theme decor. Imagine enjoying a wonderful dinner and breakfast the next morning in one of those diners enroute to sunny Florida after leaving the cold, snow and bluster of the Midwest or Northeast. What a way to go!

MC
Muskegon, Michigan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/17 15:46 by ironmtn.

Count me as another big fan of mid week menus. The City of Miami menu was dated 1963....I'm wondering if this was the dining car, or perhaps, a "lessor" cafe type service. The SP Starlight had an "all night" coffee shop car...I don't think that lasted for long, but the all night Tavern lounge lasted until the end on this train.

And, responding to an older thread, I learned something about inter-line diners......that menus, in some cases, were specific to the train. As a kid, we rode the secondary pass-eligible trains, which tended to have diners and lounges changed out for each railroad, and, I suppose, served generic railroad specific dishes.

It comes as a surprise that the venerable Florida Special would serve such a sandwich oriented lunch menu.....this was an all-Pullman luxury train.

AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA

Great photos, thanks for posting them. Just love those dishes!

Like so many others, I won't say "EVERYTHING" was better back then, but I will say that a whole lot sure was.

Hope you are all well,

Allen Drucker

> Looking at these menus,why in the hell can't Amtrash do the same?

High-income people were still taking the premium Florida trains in 1963, and there were enough of them (in sleepers, of course) to keep the diner busy. Those trains had 4 or more sleepers in the consists. $1 in 1963 is equivalent to about $8 today. The prices on these menus correspond to $12 per person at breakfast, $20 per person at lunch, and $30+ for dinner items. That's not cheap, but for the high-income clientele price was not a concern. I suspect that even in 1963, the dining cars were being operated at a loss -- but the premium Florida trains were making a small profit overall, so the railroads tolerated the loss.

That's not the market today. Amtrak's diner prices today are about the same as IC/ACL diner prices back then. The quality of Amtrak food is lower, but that's true at the airlines too. I doubt there is an Amtrak diner anywhere in the system that covers its direct costs, and that's true for most LD trains as a whole (the possible exception being 52/53). Amtrak doesn't have the degree of flexibility to subsidize dining cars like IC and ACL did.

The issue is, how many customers are willing to pay the diner prices. That's certainly not the clientele that rides the Palmetto. If the 2015 Silver Star had had four or more sold-out sleepers in its consist, then there would have been enough patronage to keep the diner going. The underlying problem is that Florida market has become cost-conscious. In pre-Disney Florida (1963), Miami to West Palm Beach was an upper-class hangout. Now the mass market wants $39 nonstop flights to Florida on Southwest.

The Palm Beach Post has an article about the early days of the Dixie (noted) Highway, and how it drew middle class passengers away from the Florida East Coast railroad. Even in those days, cost conscious vacationers and new residents looked for alternatives.

The east branch of the Dixie Highway paralleled the FEC almost all the way from Jacksonville, rarely more than a few hundred feet away from the tracks.