During the late 1960s the railroad explored ways to reduce costs. One of the least popular decisions the railroad made was to replace the dining cars. As Richard Wright explained: The Automate car was the out come of Southern Pacific removing dining cars from there named trains. The triple unit diner in the winter time had low occupancy, and Southern Pacific asked the union that they only wanted to open one wing of the triple unit diner car and to cut the personal. The union said 'no' that they had to operate under the contract they had to operate a full dining crew for the triple unit diner. Southern Pacific said 'well then we're going to remove the diners and put something in its place' that was the automate car. The president at that time was Donald J. Russel. He said 'try and find a convenient way to where they would only require one attendant in the automate car.' So the mechanical department searched for something and they said 'lets go with vending machines.' They said the new york automates were very successful and we outta just put the same equipment in the car. The first automate car was a Daylight car the rest were ex-sleepers that they re-built into automates for each of there named trans. The public did not like that, but the public wasn't eating in the dining car anyways. Mr Russel said he went aboard all of the trains and said everyone was packing there lunch. He said there's no need to have a dining car anymore.


This Pic was taken my my dad.