In my experience in Europe, dining cars seem to be more of a Central (and maybe also Eastern) European thing.
Benelux doesn't have dining cars at all, and in France and Italy the best you can usually hope for is a cafe-car that will give you coffee or at most a microwaved snack to take back to your seat.
On the other hand, the German, Swiss and Polish railways still have services with true dining cars where you can sit at a table, a waiter will take your order, then bring you a good-quality hot meal served on a real plate with real silverware (and at least in Poland, actually cooked to order on the train).
Oddly, in some cases eating the dining-car food at your seat is seen as a more premium experience. On Swiss trains, only standard-class passengers need to use the dining car- a member of staff walks through the first class section taking food orders which are then brought to your seat. In my experience of Poland's flagship high-speed EIP services, there are no chairs in the restaurant car- you can either stand and eat at one of the small bar-type tables, or order your food to be brought to your seat.
The food is still microwaved on the ICE and presumably in other countries too, but the presentation is fantastic. The experience of eating in a proper restaurant while seeing the landscape roll by is amazing and while not all services need a restaurant or can support one I don't expect restaurants to go away. More automation might mean more people can work on the presentation of the food while the kitchen can take up less space which should overall improve the economics of the onboard eating experience.
The UK had dining cars on many of its long-distance trains, and they've been slowly phased out over the last decades. Two main causes:
Firstly, it's very difficult to make it profitable, given the limited number of passengers you can serve on a relatively short journey, the staff costs of running a kitchen plus waiting staff for ~10 tables and the limited price you can charge before the reputation of the train company starts to take a hit for "excessively expensive food".
Secondly, British trains on popular routes are now overfull. Capacity is bounded by trains/hour (fixed), maximum train length (fixed, by signal block and platform lengths), and capacity per coach. So we're optimising for the latter: thin seats to maximise density and a loss of luggage vans, kitchens, extra toilets, and other facilities that take up space but don't seat passengers.
The modern standard is a catering trolley that serves coffee and snacks at your seat. Because it lives in the aisle and moves, it doesn't take up revenue space. Because it mostly sells coffee and alcohol, it turns over a lot more per hour with only one staff member.
It’s worth noting that most of these dining cars in speech are detachable, and as such the operator decides which train service it should be added to. For example in Poland, not all intercity services have dining cars. This allows to strategically increase the profitability of services where dining car is expected to be popular.
I’d imagine that high-speed services operating the integral trainsets do not offer this flexibility, so they’d naturally opt for maxing-out seat capacity.
Also worth noting that just recently the European Sleeper, a new contender on the EU rail map, introduced a dining car with an interesting fix-prix approach to menu. I suppose they estimated they could make it profitable, but notably, they too only offer it on some of the services only. The reviews on YouTube seem to praise the quality and overall experience. I personally think that night trains in particular will see the dining cars a necessity.
Polish trains can have some really excellent dining cars. We take the Warsaw to Berlin regularly and they have fresh cooked food like friend eggs for breakfast, or breaded cutlet. Shorter distance trains have the standard snack bar.
The longest train journey possible in the Netherlands would be about 4 hours. People would rather just eat something at the train station.
Besides train are as packed as a Tokyo subway.
Late 70s, early 80s in Europe we'd take the train for 1200 km (about 750 miles). First my parents and grandparents would drive their cars onto the train, then we'd go inside a cabin. There were 1st class and 2nd class cars/cabins. Then for dinner we'd go eat in the restaurant car.
This wasn't a luxury thing that said: we had a Lada (btw shittiest car brand ever and the Lada Niva, the 4x4, is the shittiest, scariest, piece of turd of a 4x4 ever made: this thing will flip over at 12 mph in S-turn no question asked and if you think Lada made good cars you know jack shit about cars). OK, ok, now I digress: maybe it's because my parents had a Lada and it was an utter piece of junk that I now drive a high-end luxury car: surely a seven years long psychoanalysis would figure that one out.
So yup, loading the Lada on the train and eating in the restaurant car.
The people doing the same around that time were typical middle class (and I don't dispute TFA saying that before that it used to be the height of luxury).
> if you think Lada made good cars you know jack shit about cars
There are people that think Ladas are good cars?
All it takes is watching Russian/Eastern Europe dash cam compilations to know that Lada cars are complete and utter garbage. Terrible handling and they absolutely shatter like glass in a crash. Crumple zones are great, but the entire car shouldn't be a crumple zone.
In 2013 we did the overnight train from Paris (~10pm) to Barcelona (~10am) - this was a recently revived option, and I think it only lasted a few years in operation - presumably the economics just weren't there, unfortunately.
The 'mini-twin' option, that included a sophisticated dining experience - perhaps not quite as the 1883 experience described in TFA, but really good.
We were escorted on board, shown our room, with two big comfy seats, politely encouraged to drop our bags and head down to the restaurant car, while they converted the room to sleep-mode. (Similar process, in reverse, in the morning.)
Cost was £289.00 for two people - flights would have been a bit cheaper but a whole lot more bother, and as usual once you factor in transport + accom + food for that period, flights get even less compelling.
Can recommend these more sedate options while travelling, but perhaps that's an increasingly rare luxury.
I must say when ever I have the chance I do really enjoy the Cff/sbb dining cars on the swiss network. A real sense of luxury to see the Alps go by drinking a ok coffee or decent beer in a nice environment. Feels nicer than bussiness class on a plane.
In the USA the Great Northern continued to run its own commissaries even after most other railroads turned dining car operations over to the Pullman company. During the 1930’s, the Empire Builder famously would slow going over a particular bridge in western Montana so that the kitchen crew could “hoop up” a package of freshly caught trout. I find that factoid unreasonably charming.
Lot of transportation dining was luxurious at the first half of 20th century. Ocean liners were of course famous for their dinners, afaik zeppelins had at least decent food available, and airplane travel had some glamour too.
* An ocean liner provides transportation between a source and a destination. Historically they were often used to transport mail, thus RMS and variations (Royal Mail [Motor] Ship/Vessel; "Motor" was used when most ships were steamships. I can't find a canonical answer for "vessel" but examples tend to be small ships with short routes to islands, rather than going between continents).
* A cruise ship runs around in a circle visiting tourist spots, and generally don't have to be built as strongly.
Recent ocean liners operate as cruise ships for part of the year.
If you watch aviation channels on YouTube, the middle eastern airlines keep trying to outdo themselves with private enclosed suites/apartments on long haul aircraft.
Of course, every seat on an airplane back in the 'glamour days' cost probably more (adjusted for inflation/wages) than a business class ticket costs today. The experience on many airlines (internationally at least) is just as glamorous or even more so if you pay a similar amount!
What actually happened is that a much cheaper, bare-bones product made flying available to much more of the population.
Sacramento in California has a truly fantastic railway museum and one of the exhibits is an old dining car you can walk through where each table is set with branded crockery from a different historic American rail operator.
Seconded. As an introvert who took a cross-country trip on Amtrak for fun in 2023 (BOS - LAX), I thought I’d hate having to share a small booth with total strangers.
Turns out it gave me confidence in defending my positions to strangers, improved my small talk game, and exposed me to viewpoints I’d never consider otherwise.
And the food was amazing, too. Way better than anything I’ve had on a plane or in an airport.
My favorite Amtrak dining car "meet your neighbor" experience: taking the Southwest Chief between Chicago and (in our case) Santa Fe/Lamy, and having dinner with a couple of guys from LA, one a fashion designer, the other a rapper/beat producer.
So there I was, a late 50s anglo-american white programmer having a polite disagreement with a mid-30s african-american rapper about why Kanye West was either shit or a genius. For the record, I was in the shit camp.
Amtrak's dining car prices (for coach passengers) have gone up, and the food hasn't been spectacular, but the experience of eating while watching the world go by is hard to beat. Breakfast might be the best meal.
I just got back from a short vacation on Amtrack. It was my first sleeper car experience -- I slept poorly, but the dining was not too bad. Much better than airplane food and with an excellent view of the fall foliage.
I took the Lake Shore Limited between Boston and Chicago and got a sleeper car and the full-service dining car was the most depressing dining experience I had in years.
Amtrak seems to be very run down and barely alive. It's horribly slow and they wait for freight trains even when passenger rail supposedly has the right of way. People on the train by definition aren't going anywhere fast.
But I still like the dining car and observation car.
Readit News
Benelux doesn't have dining cars at all, and in France and Italy the best you can usually hope for is a cafe-car that will give you coffee or at most a microwaved snack to take back to your seat.
On the other hand, the German, Swiss and Polish railways still have services with true dining cars where you can sit at a table, a waiter will take your order, then bring you a good-quality hot meal served on a real plate with real silverware (and at least in Poland, actually cooked to order on the train).
Oddly, in some cases eating the dining-car food at your seat is seen as a more premium experience. On Swiss trains, only standard-class passengers need to use the dining car- a member of staff walks through the first class section taking food orders which are then brought to your seat. In my experience of Poland's flagship high-speed EIP services, there are no chairs in the restaurant car- you can either stand and eat at one of the small bar-type tables, or order your food to be brought to your seat.
One interesting case is Japan where a full dining car is a rarity and you’re expected to buy station meals when you depart.
Firstly, it's very difficult to make it profitable, given the limited number of passengers you can serve on a relatively short journey, the staff costs of running a kitchen plus waiting staff for ~10 tables and the limited price you can charge before the reputation of the train company starts to take a hit for "excessively expensive food".
Secondly, British trains on popular routes are now overfull. Capacity is bounded by trains/hour (fixed), maximum train length (fixed, by signal block and platform lengths), and capacity per coach. So we're optimising for the latter: thin seats to maximise density and a loss of luggage vans, kitchens, extra toilets, and other facilities that take up space but don't seat passengers.
The modern standard is a catering trolley that serves coffee and snacks at your seat. Because it lives in the aisle and moves, it doesn't take up revenue space. Because it mostly sells coffee and alcohol, it turns over a lot more per hour with only one staff member.
I’d imagine that high-speed services operating the integral trainsets do not offer this flexibility, so they’d naturally opt for maxing-out seat capacity.
Also worth noting that just recently the European Sleeper, a new contender on the EU rail map, introduced a dining car with an interesting fix-prix approach to menu. I suppose they estimated they could make it profitable, but notably, they too only offer it on some of the services only. The reviews on YouTube seem to praise the quality and overall experience. I personally think that night trains in particular will see the dining cars a necessity.
This wasn't a luxury thing that said: we had a Lada (btw shittiest car brand ever and the Lada Niva, the 4x4, is the shittiest, scariest, piece of turd of a 4x4 ever made: this thing will flip over at 12 mph in S-turn no question asked and if you think Lada made good cars you know jack shit about cars). OK, ok, now I digress: maybe it's because my parents had a Lada and it was an utter piece of junk that I now drive a high-end luxury car: surely a seven years long psychoanalysis would figure that one out.
So yup, loading the Lada on the train and eating in the restaurant car.
The people doing the same around that time were typical middle class (and I don't dispute TFA saying that before that it used to be the height of luxury).
There are people that think Ladas are good cars?
All it takes is watching Russian/Eastern Europe dash cam compilations to know that Lada cars are complete and utter garbage. Terrible handling and they absolutely shatter like glass in a crash. Crumple zones are great, but the entire car shouldn't be a crumple zone.
I doubt they'd meet any USA safety standards.
The 'mini-twin' option, that included a sophisticated dining experience - perhaps not quite as the 1883 experience described in TFA, but really good.
We were escorted on board, shown our room, with two big comfy seats, politely encouraged to drop our bags and head down to the restaurant car, while they converted the room to sleep-mode. (Similar process, in reverse, in the morning.)
Cost was £289.00 for two people - flights would have been a bit cheaper but a whole lot more bother, and as usual once you factor in transport + accom + food for that period, flights get even less compelling.
Can recommend these more sedate options while travelling, but perhaps that's an increasingly rare luxury.
* An ocean liner provides transportation between a source and a destination. Historically they were often used to transport mail, thus RMS and variations (Royal Mail [Motor] Ship/Vessel; "Motor" was used when most ships were steamships. I can't find a canonical answer for "vessel" but examples tend to be small ships with short routes to islands, rather than going between continents).
* A cruise ship runs around in a circle visiting tourist spots, and generally don't have to be built as strongly.
Recent ocean liners operate as cruise ships for part of the year.
What actually happened is that a much cheaper, bare-bones product made flying available to much more of the population.
Here are a couple of photos: https://gist.github.com/simonw/b077396a0c27b32312d2a18eebd49...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTGywoIytSw
Turns out it gave me confidence in defending my positions to strangers, improved my small talk game, and exposed me to viewpoints I’d never consider otherwise.
And the food was amazing, too. Way better than anything I’ve had on a plane or in an airport.
So there I was, a late 50s anglo-american white programmer having a polite disagreement with a mid-30s african-american rapper about why Kanye West was either shit or a genius. For the record, I was in the shit camp.
Amtrak - bring America together, slowly.
I'd occasionally take the train from Vancouver, BC to Seattle when visiting a girlfriend, and I was far less messed up after I got there.
Meeting random passengers can be an added bonus.
But I still like the dining car and observation car.