Train travel made another humongous leap forward in 1930 when it debuted as the first passenger cars fully equipped with air conditioning.
The B&O Railroad debuted the first passenger train with AC on April 28, 1930, when the Martha Washington model dining car was unveiled in Baltimore. It was a sensation that The Baltimore Sun said turned train travel into a “resort on wheels.”
As the 1930s chugged along, train companies found themselves being forced to push the envelope, even more, when it came to the amenities they offered on their routes.
That meant major upgrades in areas like dining cars, which were the social hubs for all train rides, and no one did dining cars better than the B&O Railroad Company.
The Royal Blue line was the flagship train for B&O and was known for having the best of the best dining cars for its route between New York City and Washington, D.C.
LNWR dining car on an American boat train, 1908.
Railroads played a large role in the development of the United States from the industrial revolution in the Northeast (1810–1850) to the settlement of the West (1850–1890).
The American railroad mania began with the founding of the first passenger and freight line in the nation of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1827 and the “Laying of the First Stone” ceremonies and the beginning of its long construction heading westward over the obstacles of the Appalachian Mountains eastern chain the following year of 1828.
It flourished with continuous railway building projects for the next 45 years until the financial Panic of 1873 followed by a major economic depression bankrupted many companies and temporarily stymied and ended growth.
Although the antebellum South started early to build railways, it concentrated on short lines linking cotton regions to oceanic or river ports, and the absence of an interconnected network was a major handicap during the Civil War (1861–1865).
Interior of a luxury dining car, 1910.
The North and Midwest constructed networks that linked every city by 1860 before the war. In the heavily settled Midwestern Corn Belt, over 80 percent of farms were within 5 miles (8 km) of a railway, facilitating the shipment of grain, hogs, and cattle to national and international markets.
A large number of short lines were built, but due to a fast developing financial system based on Wall Street and oriented to railway bonds, the majority were consolidated into 20 trunk lines by 1890. State and local governments often subsidized lines, but rarely owned them.
The system was largely built by 1910, but then trucks arrived to eat away the freight traffic, and automobiles (and later airplanes) to devour the passenger traffic.
After 1940, the use of diesel electric locomotives made for much more efficient operations that needed fewer workers on the road and in repair shops.
A first-class dining car on the Britain’s Great Eastern Railway—also known as GER, as shown on the embroidered seat cover, 1912.
The observation and lounge car on Northern Pacific’s transcontinental U.S. railroad line, 1926.
A new restaurant car was launched on the Paris-Lille railway in France, 1959.