Restaurant Car Supplies

[johnofwessex]

In the 'Steam' Era what were the arrangements for supplying Restaurant Cars?

 

I assume that it would not be possible to do all the cooking on board due to space/time/power constraints.

 

I know that the Caledonian Steam Packet Company had a bakery & prep kitchen at Gourock to supply the Clyde Steamers and Red Funnel had something similar at Southampton for their ships so were there prep kitchens/bakeries/outside suppliers providing prepared items for Restaurant Cars at major stations or was it all done 'on board'

[Trog]

There was a short platform right next to the power box at Euston known as the restaurant car dock. But I don't know how it was used. If restaurant cars were shunted in there for resupply, or kept there until needed in a train formation. Or if perhaps supplies were brought in and distributed from there to the restaurant cars as they sat in the passenger platforms.

[HillsideDepot]

An interesting question, and a topic I'll be interested to follow. My modelling era is a bit later, but I suspect steam era arrangements would be more applicable to the early 1970's than those which can be observed today. 

[Welchester]

There is an article in GWRJ issue 12, Kitchen Service, describing the work of the restaurant car service, which is well worth a read. Food was prepared and cooked on board; the restaurant car would have a pantry for prep and a kitchen. A normal composition would be cook, cook's assistant and kitchen boy.

[Compound2632]

Typical layout:

 

 

Embedded link to diagram of Midland Railway D436 first class dining carriage on LMS Society carriage drawings page. This first class carriage would have run with a third class dining carriage without kitchen, both being served from the kitchen of this vehicle. 

[The Johnster]

In my time in the job, the 70s, the restaurant car staff were mostly guys who'd cut their teeth on the big liners, which were coming to the end of their time and being replaced by cruise ships.  They were a great bunch, characters, but crooks to a man, on the make; they all had fiddles of one sort or another going on.  A common one was to provide your own supplies as well as the railways', usually not particularly legitimately acquired and sometimes from the railways' stores; of course, any profit from this stuff was trousered; they loved cash customers for that reason.

 

My great-uncle Ted was a restaurant car steward on the Barry-North Sheilds 'Port to Port Express', a double home job in which he boarded the car at Canton, assisted with loading supplies, and help prep the kitchen on the ecs run to Barry.  They then ran Cardiff-Banbury-Sheffield-Leeds-York-Newcastle-North Shields ecs Manors, and the GW crew stayed overnight in lodgings in Newcastle, while the NER boys stayed in Cardiff, a GW set and a NER set on alternate days passing at Sheffield and returning the following day.  Ted fitted the bill perfectly, always on the make, and after acquiring a professional bad back became a bookie's runner, but his background wasn't the liners, it was the Catering Corps at Aldershot during WW1.  This never prevented him regaling an infant Johnster about how he'd personally won this war, having shot down the Red Baron, blown up Hill 60, and designed the first tank on the back of a packet of Woodbines which he'd sent to Kitchener; it was all Ted really, you know.  There was plenty of fighting at Aldershot, of course, probably still is, just not against the Germans... 

 

The Port to Port did a full English, luncheon, silver service high tea in first class, and dinner, and it's successor, the 08.35 Cardiff-Newcastle, still did the full English and silver service high tea in the 70s.

 

Ted bigamously married his lodging house landlady in Newcastle after she'd proved particularly welcoming, abandoning her when his bad back ended his railway career.  The day she showed up in Cardiff with a couple of kids in tow to be unceremoniously booted out of the house* by Aunt Julie, his original wife, who ensured his home life was a misery from that moment on, is family legend; before my time, but gleefully related by mother, who loved a bit of scandal and gossip.  Great Aunt Julie was, I reckoned, the model for Giles' cartoon granny, more across than up, lethal with a brolly, and never took prisoners.  I learned most of my childhood Irish folk songs from her.

 

*my grandmother felt sorry for the poor woman, after all she was the victim in all this, and got grandfather to give her £50 and her train fare home. 

[kingfisher9147]

There is a book called dinner in the diner by Neil Wooler. It explains a lot about food on the train. I know working in the heritage sector that a lot of food is prepared ready to cook on a dining train. 

Mike 

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, kingfisher9147 said:

I know working in the heritage sector that a lot of food is prepared ready to cook on a dining train. 

 

That's how it's done now but there has been a great deal of technological change since the early 20th century heyday of restaurant car services.

[ikcdab]

15 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

In the 'Steam' Era what were the arrangements for supplying Restaurant Cars?

 

I assume that it would not be possible to do all the cooking on board due to space/time/power constraints.

 

I know that the Caledonian Steam Packet Company had a bakery & prep kitchen at Gourock to supply the Clyde Steamers and Red Funnel had something similar at Southampton for their ships so were there prep kitchens/bakeries/outside suppliers providing prepared items for Restaurant Cars at major stations or was it all done 'on board'

I don't see that "steam era" makes any difference.  The kitchens had gas and later electricity so there would have been no constraints to cooking and prepping food.  Indeed, the idea of cooking it off site and then getting it to the vehicle and serving it would have had more logistical difficulties. 

And some of the services had extensive menus, so predicting what would be needed in advance was difficult.

So yes, all prepped and cooked on board.

Ian 

[Mike_Walker]

And in the case of GWR's "Pullman" services it still is prepared and cooked on board from freshly sourced local ingredients.  Served with Silver Service too - the last surviving example on a "normal" service in this country although they are under pressure from the DfT to abandon it as a cost cutting move despite it being profitable.

[kevinlms]

26 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

That's how it's done now but there has been a great deal of technological change since the early 20th century heyday of restaurant car services.

Don't forget that the working hours of the British railways employees, got reduced in 1918 I believe. This would have changed the amount of work that could be done, unless overtime was paid.

Did this mean a certain amount of preparation of food, which could be done by lower paid women, at a station based kitchen?

[Oldddudders]

57 minutes ago, kingfisher9147 said:

There is a book called dinner in the diner by Neil Wooler. It explains a lot about food on the train. I know working in the heritage sector that a lot of food is prepared ready to cook on a dining train. 

Mike 

40-ish years ago Neil was late-first wife Deb's boss, as PR Manager for Travellers Fare. 

 

If you watch the BT film 'Blue Pullman' you will see a 1960s BR chef at work. In those days - and well into the '70s if not '80s and beyond - a BR onboard breakfast was a fabulous way to start your day. Full English, if you wanted, and then unlimited toast and coffee, in a first class coach more often than not, irrespective of your class of travel. And you cannot cook-chill bacon and eggs very well, so it has to be fresh. Luncheon on a late-60s Thames-Clyde Express, and even second dinner on a Euston-Glasgow service in the immediate run-up to Privatisation, were a very fine way to dine, even if on the latter I didn't really know what a Clootie Dumpling was. 

 

BR agonised about on-train catering, with hemlines going up and down regularly, as it were. A former management accountant, David Sumner, took on the role of 'modernising' on-train catering in the late '70s, seeking to use airline-style techniques, but I don't think it quite hit the intended spot. Prue Leith became a BR Board Member in 1977, to add gravitas to BR's approach to food.

 

As has been said, on-train staff and fraud were ever good friends. Attempts to introduce cash-registers always failed for some reason. The separation of on-train and station catering, initially from the BT Hotels Division, then from each other to individual organisations, in the 80s, was probably a good thing, although the BR sandwich remained a music-hall joke, even after it was prepared by the same supplier as M&S's revered product. 

[mark54]

BR did experiment with pre-prepared and pre-cooked frozen food in the mid 1950’s using “Frood” which was a trading name of Lyons Frozen Foods. The idea was that as much preparation as possible was done prior to loading so that the on-board kitchen could be compact and meals could be prepared quickly. Cafeteria Car Type C M675E (CAF) was the prototype. All the Restaurant-Cafeteria Cars (RCAF) were so fitted. The frozen food was loaded into the Cars in trolleys. The Sept 1954 Trains Illustrated article called “British Railways new Cafeteria-Restaurant Cars” describes food available on a St Pancras to Bedford demonstration run in July.

[The Stationmaster]

You have to separate wjbhat is involved into several different areas which were dealt with in different ways.  Basic kitchen equipment had to be removable for heavy cleaning - at the depot I managed in the 1970s this was done in baths of a caustic soda solution followed by (obviously) a very thorough rinsing.  That was work down at a rolling stock depots.  

 

The next stage was what in the WR was called 'stocking' which basically meant the crockery, linen and utensils etc but i believe also included things like saucepans etc if they were not a part of the car's equipment.  At Paddington tghis was done on Platform 1 A and diners were worked up as a special ECS 'for stocking' and there was always one on a Friday to prepare extra cars for the weekend services (in the days when such things ran).  No doubt this could have c been done by depots but it would need platform level access.

 

The final stage would be loading foodstuffs and this was normally done on the WR at the departure station platform - again platform level access was needed so at Paddington the foodstuffs came by trolley from the Restaurant Car stores.  All meal preparation was done in the car from the raw ingredients which meant that nothing need be wastefully cooked as everything was cooked to order although in some cases - see the Blue Pullman film - some items were prepared in advance in the car ready for later workings in the day.  But basically hot meals were freshly cooked to order although some items such as veg could be cooked in advance.

 

As Dudders has mentioned the BR breakfast was an absolute delight - and a marvellous feature in particular on the West Highland sleeper where the car was attached, with its crew, at Glasgow Queen Street - and lashings of extra toast were always on offer.   Another speciality of the restaurant car service although the first (I think) to disappear was Afternoon Tea while on the Western Pullman services at the appropriate time High Tea was served - steak sandwiches were my particular favourite when travelling home from Cardiff on Friday afternoons while was working there in 1967.

 

alas, as already noted things have cangeda lot.  The GWR Travelling Chef service did a cooked breakfast on a par with what you experienced in earlier but alas it was discontinued and insome respects was replaced by the Pullman service but that is restricted to fewer trains.  And alas the GWR Pullman service no longer includes breakfast, a sad loss (but no doubt one driven by economics) as it was a superb offer and, again, on a par with on train breakfasts of days gone by.

[The Johnster]

The logistics are quite complex even before you start talking about pre-prepared food.  The kitchen is small, cramped, and moving, but capable nonetheless of cooking fresh ingredients to provide meals in sittings, which a steward walked up and down the train announcing, but one had to provide clean table linen, cutlery, and crockery after each sitting for the next one, the dirty linen going into bins to be laundered at the destination station overnight.  During the day, the laundries dealt with stuff from the sleepers, but were a 24/7 operation.  Big stations, the London termini, York, Temple Meads, Waverley, and the like had laundry facilities that also handled the attached hotel's stuff.  Mike has detailed the cleaning of kitchen equipment in acid baths.  Crocks and cuttles were washed on board.  There was also food waste to consider, potato peelings and leftovers, also binned to be disposed at the depot.  Dirty washing up water was decanted on to the 4', not the worst substance to be dropped here!

 

The long distance runs like the Port to Port or Plymouth-Glasgow must have taxed the car's capacity to contain dirty linen and food waste, and I imagine some was dropped off at stations before the final destination.  No chance on the non-stop Flying Scotsman, Elizabethan, Royal Scot, or Caledonian, but these faster trains meant that the car was in business for shorter periods than some of the cross-country runs. 

 

Most of this has been rationalised out of existence long ago, but still survived into the 70s and partially into the 80s.  It was grouped under 'Traveller's Fare' with station buffets in the late 60s, by which time the station buffets had a dreadful rep for poor quality, the real origin of the British Rail sandwich joke, and were very different to the restaurant car trade.  That said, I had considerable respect for Temple Mead's platform 3 cheese and ham toasties served in impressive surroundings, and Paddington would do you an acceptable chicken'n'chips at what was a reasonable price, at least for the capital.  Traveller's Fare invented the BLT sandwich, a tasty branch line terminus between slices of bread.  The station buffets could produce good stuff when they put their minds to it; I once worked a military special from Swindon to Carmarthen Jc, a German panzer division heading for the Pembrokeshire ranges, tanks on warflats and a BCK next the 47 for the accompanying officers and men*.  These were booked to be given packed lunches at Cardiff, from the down side buffet, which was no better than it ought to be, but they'd made these up fresh; I managed to wangle one, and it was top-notch fodder!

 

Railways were at one time a remarkably diverse and all-encompassing enterprise, the biggest owner of horses after the army, and were involved with hotels, shipping (passenger and cargo), air services, travel agency, bus services, cartage, road haulage, warehousing, cold storage, docks, waterways and dredging, parcels collection and delivery, the Severn Tunnel car ferry, catering to livestock and horses, vetinary services, stables, laundries, restaurants, river ferries, and a host of other activities, all carried out in-house and mostly away from the public gaze and awareness.  Not to mention the use of railway workshops as arms factories in wartime; Swindon works built the X-craft miniature submarines that attacked the Tirpitz, for example.  Crewe had it's own steelworks, railway-employed furnacemen.  As a sideline, some of them occasionally ran trains...

 

*One of their leutnants was an enthusiast and fellow Sven Hassel fan, and rode in the van with me chatting.  At Cardiff, he lent me his hat, so that when the platform foreman gave me the right away I was able to respond, wearing the hat of course, with 'Panzer Roll!!!', despite going the wrong way for invading Poland.  You only get one chance in your life for this sort of thing, and I couldn't resist...

 

The Panzer Divisions' use of the Castlemartin ranges as part of NATO had initially provoked some local opposition from the older generation, perhaps understandably, but after a tank transporter ran away down the hill into Haverfordwest with failed brakes and the German driver delberately crashed it into a retaining wall to avoid running it into a crowded school playground, heroically sacrificing himself in the process, all that stopped. 

[Mark Saunders]

I remember the fuss when toast was taken off the menu and continental type pastries were the only options left!

[bécasse]

Talking of "on the fiddle", I had been to Weymouth one day for one of Derek Shorter's Channel Islands Services (Sealink) meetings and it was convenient for several of us to return to London on the boat train. One of "us" had run out of fags and he went to the Buffet Car to buy a packet, on returning he opened the packet to get out his dreaded weed but was clearly puzzled by something. Suddenly he said "that's funny, there is no Government Health Warning, I haven't seen a packet without one for ages". Now it just so happened that another of "us" was a senior London-based Custom's official and he was distinctly inquisitive, declaring after examination that the packet had come from a duty-free pack - which, of course, should definitely not have been on sale on the train, and which he assumed had originated from the bonded store at Melcombe Regis. He said that there had been suspicions that the store was "leaking" but they had never been able to prove it. The train called at Southampton and the guard was persuaded, with some difficulty, that the train had to be held there briefly while an "urgent operational phone call" was made, fortunately the guard assuming that the Custom's official was just another Sealink senior manager. The train was met at Waterloo by quite a posse - at least a dozen uniformed Custom's officers and several BT policemen - who proceeded to thoroughly and apparently very successfully "rummage" the buffet car which seemingly contained enough duty-free packs to supply the needs of a good number of trains out of Waterloo.

 

I never did hear what happened to the Buffet Car attendant but apparently Custom's and Excise were quite happy that news of their operation was more than enough to stem the leak.

Edited December 28, 2022 by bécasse

[The Stationmaster]

21 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The logistics are quite complex even before you start talking about pre-prepared food.  The kitchen is small, cramped, and moving, but capable nonetheless of cooking fresh ingredients to provide meals in sittings, which a steward walked up and down the train announcing, but one had to provide clean table linen, cutlery, and crockery after each sitting for the next one, the dirty linen going into bins to be laundered at the destination station overnight.  During the day, the laundries dealt with stuff from the sleepers, but were a 24/7 operation.  Big stations, the London termini, York, Temple Meads, Waverley, and the like had laundry facilities that also handled the attached hotel's stuff.  Mike has detailed the cleaning of kitchen equipment in acid baths.  Crocks and cuttles were washed on board.  There was also food waste to consider, potato peelings and leftovers, also binned to be disposed at the depot.  Dirty washing up water was decanted on to the 4', not the worst substance to be dropped here!

 

The long distance runs like the Port to Port or Plymouth-Glasgow must have taxed the car's capacity to contain dirty linen and food waste, and I imagine some was dropped off at stations before the final destination.  No chance on the non-stop Flying Scotsman, Elizabethan, Royal Scot, or Caledonian, but these faster trains meant that the car was in business for shorter periods than some of the cross-country runs. 

 

Most of this has been rationalised out of existence long ago, but still survived into the 70s and partially into the 80s.  It was grouped under 'Traveller's Fare' with station buffets in the late 60s, by which time the station buffets had a dreadful rep for poor quality, the real origin of the British Rail sandwich joke, and were very different to the restaurant car trade.  That said, I had considerable respect for Temple Mead's platform 3 cheese and ham toasties served in impressive surroundings, and Paddington would do you an acceptable chicken'n'chips at what was a reasonable price, at least for the capital.  Traveller's Fare invented the BLT sandwich, a tasty branch line terminus between slices of bread.  The station buffets could produce good stuff when they put their minds to it; I once worked a military special from Swindon to Carmarthen Jc, a German panzer division heading for the Pembrokeshire ranges, tanks on warflats and a BCK next the 47 for the accompanying officers and men*.  These were booked to be given packed lunches at Cardiff, from the down side buffet, which was no better than it ought to be, but they'd made these up fresh; I managed to wangle one, and it was top-notch fodder!

 

Railways were at one time a remarkably diverse and all-encompassing enterprise, the biggest owner of horses after the army, and were involved with hotels, shipping (passenger and cargo), air services, travel agency, bus services, cartage, road haulage, warehousing, cold storage, docks, waterways and dredging, parcels collection and delivery, the Severn Tunnel car ferry, catering to livestock and horses, vetinary services, stables, laundries, restaurants, river ferries, and a host of other activities, all carried out in-house and mostly away from the public gaze and awareness.  Not to mention the use of railway workshops as arms factories in wartime; Swindon works built the X-craft miniature submarines that attacked the Tirpitz, for example.  Crewe had it's own steelworks, railway-employed furnacemen.  As a sideline, some of them occasionally ran trains...

 

*One of their leutnants was an enthusiast and fellow Sven Hassel fan, and rode in the van with me chatting.  At Cardiff, he lent me his hat, so that when the platform foreman gave me the right away I was able to respond, wearing the hat of course, with 'Panzer Roll!!!', despite going the wrong way for invading Poland.  You only get one chance in your life for this sort of thing, and I couldn't resist...

 

The Panzer Divisions' use of the Castlemartin ranges as part of NATO had initially provoked some local opposition from the older generation, perhaps understandably, but after a tank transporter ran away down the hill into Haverfordwest with failed brakes and the German driver delberately crashed it into a retaining wall to avoid running it into a crowded school playground, heroically sacrificing himself in the process, all that stopped. 

1.  There were not laundries at all destination stations - linen was worked to/from the cetral laundry points (e.g York laundry) with each station being supplied by sufficient hampers containing the necessary mix of laundry for whatever use was planned.   Similarly for example there was no laundry at Old Oak Common and its sleeping car linen was supplied from various different locations over the years as the number of laundries were rationalised, the same applied for all other WR stations which loaded linen to sleeping car services.

2.  Normal practice was to take off crockery and cutlery when a car was not going to be in service for a while - maybe only a few days gap in some cases.

3. Food waste was normally taken off at destination stations (or intermediately if there was a long journey), generally carriage cleaning depots didn't have the facilities or staff to deal with food waste from catering vehicles and it was best dealt with at platform level, not in  a carriage servicing depot with no platforms.

4. On longer trips, especially where cars needed to serve two meals (and sometimes even three although that was rare) foodstuffs would be loaded intermediately according to what the Chef and Senior Steward required

[seraphim]

The original HST catering vehicles featured keg beer. One of the official histories comments that this was discontinued due to "internal control issues" which sounds like a euphemism if ever one was.

[pH]

On 28/12/2022 at 06:20, The Stationmaster said:

…

 

2.  Normal practice was to take off crockery and cutlery when a car was not going to be in service for a while - maybe only a few days gap in some cases.

3. Food waste was normally taken off at destination stations (or intermediately if there was a long journey), generally carriage cleaning depots didn't have the facilities or staff to deal with food waste from catering vehicles …

Not ‘normal practice’ but …

 

In the 1960s, I knew a relief signalman who worked Shields 1 and Shields 2, just west of Shields Road station on the ex-Glasgow and Paisley Joint line, and beside Bellahouston carriage sidings on the Canal Line - Shields Road depot is now on that site. The dining cars off the Thames-Clyde were serviced there. The booking boys from those boxes would be sent over to the carriage sidings to get ‘leftovers’ off the Thames-Clyde cars for the evening meals in the boxes. And it would be served on BR plates, using BR cutlery.

 

Not railway-related, but still transport-related: One of my cousins worked in the cleaning and maintenance staff at Prestwick airport (again in the 1960s) when Prestwick was the airport serving Glasgow for transatlantic flights. They used to dine on the unused food that was being thrown out off incoming flights - he remembered the T-bone steaks off PanAm as being particularly delicious. (As I remember, that food was actually meant to be incinerated.)

Edited December 29, 2022 by pH

[kevinlms]

4 hours ago, pH said:

 They used to dine on the unused food that was being thrown out off incoming flights - he remembered the T-bone steaks off PanAm as being particularly delicious. (As I remember, that food was actually meant to be incinerated.)

Certainly not allowable in Australia, the quarantine service would be horrified at the thought of that! Remember Australia doesn't have Foot & Mouth and similar diseases that would decimate Australia's wildlife & threaten the meat export market.

[pH]

1 hour ago, kevinlms said:

Certainly not allowable in Australia, the quarantine service would be horrified at the thought of that! Remember Australia doesn't have Foot & Mouth and similar diseases that would decimate Australia's wildlife & threaten the meat export market.

As I said … I think food coming off incoming flights was supposed to be incinerated!

[45125]

22 hours ago, seraphim said:

The original HST catering vehicles featured keg beer. One of the official histories comments that this was discontinued due to "internal control issues" which sounds like a euphemism if ever one was.

One of the maintenance requirements was to draw off a fixed amount of the appropriate beverage and check that a half pint was dispensed. One can only guess how many times that got checked on the appropriate exam at certain depots😀.

 

Al Taylor

[kevinlms]

12 hours ago, pH said:

As I said … I think food coming off incoming flights was supposed to be incinerated!

Depends on the reason of why they said it was to be incinerated. Plenty of countries do allow fresh food in.

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, 45125 said:

One of the maintenance requirements was to draw off a fixed amount of the appropriate beverage and check that a half pint was dispensed. One can only guess how many times that got checked on the appropriate exam at certain depots😀.

 

Al Taylor

Well at least there would be little danger of that check getting overlooked !