The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 4 (July 1, 1939)
The Railway Catering Department
The Railway Catering Department.
The catering department of a modern railway is charged with a most responsible task, and not only can efficient catering produce valuable profits, but it can also perform wonderful service in popularising rail movement. The catering departments of the Home railways last year earned a net profit of £522,634, while indirectly they probably brought
a profit of at least as much again in attracting and retaining passenger business. The four group lines now own 680 restaurant cars and 93 buffet cars, the latter being attached to trains where the demand is not quite sufficient to justify the running of a full restaurant car service. Last year some 3,500,000 lbs. of meat; 2,500,000 lbs. of potatoes; 260,000 lbs. of buter (mostly from New Zealand); 80,000 lbs. of coffee; and 75,000 lbs. of tea, were consumed in the restaurant and buffet cars. Refreshment rooms at all principal stations have been vastly improved and modernised in recent years, while there has been marked betterments at all the railway hotels up and down the country. These hotel improvements include big works like the rebuilding of the G.W. Company's Royal Hotel, Paddington, and the modernisation of the same company's Fishguard Bay establishment. At the Felix Hotel, Felixstowe—a delightful beach resort in Norfolk—the L. & N.E.R. has installed a new cocktail lounge; while the L. M. & S. has modernised its Caledonian Hotel, Edinburgh, and established at Leeds a new central laundry serving all the company's hotels and capable of dealing with 50,000 articles
a week. This year, by the way, marks the jubilee of the introduction of the first railway dining-car in Britain. This was placed in service on the former Great Northern (now L. & N.E.) Railway, between London and Leeds, in November, 1879.
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Overseas visitors passing through Customs at Southampton Docks, Southern Railway.
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New 3-cylinder 4-6-0 Express Passenger Locomotive, Great Southern Railway, Ireland.