Dining Car Society
TOYX’s Dining Car Society preserves the history of the classic railroad dining car experience through the restoration, operation, and interpretation of vintage railroad dining artifacts and equipment.
Try the Erie Lackawanna’s coffee!
We’ve recreated the Erie Lackawanna Railroad’s original 1960s coffee blend that was served on the railroad’s dining cars. Grab a bag and enjoy it yourself!
About the Dining Car society
American railroads provided some of the best meals in the country from the late 1800s through the 1970s aboard a wide-roaming fleet of railroad dining cars. The ability to serve hundreds of passengers three restaurant-quality meals a day while traveling at speeds up to 100 miles per hour is a story worth telling and worth recreating. These five-star meals utilized the finest locally sourced ingredients and were freshly prepared on board the moving train. They were served on heavy china at a table with the finest linens, polished silver, and elegant glassware. The chefs, waiters, and stewards were well-versed in providing the best level of service and hospitality possible.
The Dining Car Society (DCS) was formed in 2001 as the Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society (ELDCPS) to preserve the history of the classic railroad dining car experience through the restoration, operation, and interpretation of vintage railroad dining artifacts and equipment. The name was changed to DCS in 2022, and in early 2024, DCS merged with Operation Toy Train of New York to form TOYX, Inc. DCS continues today as a project of TOYX.
DCS currently operates original Lackawanna dining car #469. The restoration of this car is nearly complete, and the car is available for use as a rolling restaurant. The DCS strives to maintain as much authenticity as possible and operates the #469 exactly as the Lackawanna did, utilizing detailed reproductions of the original pattern china, flatware, coffee pots, teapots, sugar bowls, and water pitchers.
On-Board Dining EVENTS
The Dining Car Society occasionally hosts special meal events on board our restored Lackawanna Railroad dining car. We typically cook authentic railroad recipes from the 1930s through the 1960s, sourced from railroads all over North America.
We don’t have any events planned right now, but sign up for our newsletter to stay tuned for future announcements!
The Dining Car Society has a mobile flat-top grill setup, called that we bring to events at other museums and historical events. We call this “Beyond the Budd,” a nod to taking our preservation work outside our Budd-built dining car. We make classic burgers and hot dogs alongside railroad recipes that travel easily, like the Erie Lackawanna’s barbecue sauce, to let a wider audience experience the history of North American railroad cuisine.