COOKING ON RAILWAY TRAINS.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17343, 3 January 1922, Page 2

COOKING ON RAILWAY TRAINS.

There was installed recently on one of Ensland's main lines a unique service, that of electric cooking for the dining-cars. The train thus unusually equipped, itself possesses many exceptional features. It consists of five coaches, which are run on six bogies only, these bogies being placed underneath the junction of two carriages, thus linking up the carriages on wnat is known as the articulated system. This arrangement gives very easy running, and makes it possible to suorten the connexions between the carriages. In the kitchen all the cooking is done electrically. The equipment includes a water boiler, a grill, a steaming oven, a roasting oven, vegetable boilers, steaming pans, hot plates, hot cupboards, fish fryers, kettles, etc. This kitchen is capable of furnishing meals for seventy-eight persons at one sitting; and over one hundred dinners have been cooked and served on one trip. The electrical energy for the cookers is obtained from the dynamos driven through belts from the axies of the carriage. These generators work in conjunction with a battery of eighty cells, carried in boxes below the under frames. In addition to the cooking apparatus, there is a hot-water tank of 44 gallons capacity, which is heated up at terminal stations by connecting with the station electricity supply. The apparatus, which has been.in service for some time, has been giving complete satisfaction, and the pioneering enterprise of British railway engineers in this, as in so many other directions, is likely to be followed in various parts of the world.