Muswellbrook Railway Refreshment Rooms' Dining Rooms. Photo: NSW Railway Archives
When the Melbourne and Hobson’s Bay Railway Company launched Australia's very first passenger rail service between Melbourne and Sandridge (Port Melbourne), they soon became aware that, while passengers were waiting for their trains to arrive, or for the locomotive to take on coal and water, people needed something to fill in the waiting time, and what better to keep them occupied than by offering them something to eat and drink> William Peter McGirr successfully applied for a liquor license in April 1855 to sell beverages at Sandridge station, and so the refreshment room was born.
By 1856, a railway refreshment room had been opened at Flinders Street station, which by then was quickly becoming a hub for the new privately-owned railway lines. Lines to St Kilda, Williamstown and Sunbury soon followed, and along with their stations came refreshment rooms. By the time the railway reached the regional centre of Seymour in 1873, catering to traveller's needs had become big business. Seymour station's refreshment rooms included a buffet and a seated dining room catering for up to 260 people at a time. At its peak it had a staff a staff of 34 people.
A fruit kiosk in Spencer Street Station, 1926. Photo: Victorian Railways Photographic Negatives Collections.
It didn't take long for the Railway Commissioners to realise that, just as there was a market for dining at a leisurely pace in a dining room, there was also a market for takeaway food among by the growing number of city commuters who used the train to get to and from work. Consquently, a fruit kiosk was first introduced in Flinders Street Station in 1923, with other stations following its lead soon after. Strange as it may seem today, Mr Clapp, the Chairman of the Victorian Railways Commissioners, who introduced the fruit kiosks, was criticised in an article in the Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, in 1926 for "defacing the Flinders street station with posters and fruit stalls".
The boom in providing refreshments to train passengers wasn't limited to Victoria. As lines were bult in other states, so were refreshment rooms. At first they were on private premises across the street from the railway station, but once the various governments took over the ralway networks, they saw the financial advantage of building refreshment rooms into their station premises, with many leasing out the catering services to private enterprise.
The earliest rooms in New South Wales were at Sydney, Mittagong, Penrith, Mount Victoria and Singleton. The direct administration of that state's Railway Refreshment Rooms by the Railway Commissioners began on 1 July 1917, and under their jurisdiction, railway refreshment services developed and expanded over the next 40 years. Those decades represented a golden era for the railways. Owning a motor vehicle was out of the reach of the average Australian family, and travelling by train was by far the easiest, quickest and most comfortable means of transport available. Whereas the use of a refreshment room was a neccessity for travelling salesman who used trains to visit their clients in far off places, for the working class family whose use of trains was less frequent, and often was restricted to getting to their annual holiday destination, having a sit-down meal at the railway station's refreshment rooms before departure was not only the perfect start, but often it became an integral part of their holiday experience.
Interior of a NSWGR AB90 dining car. Photo: NSW Railway Archives
In the post war period the role of the Refreshment Rooms gradually changed. A mobile tea and light refreshment buffet was introduced on to the steam platforms at Sydney's Central Railway Station in 1948. Buffet dining cars were inaugurated in 1950 when they were added to the new eight car Riverina Expresses. The following year a dining service was added to the Northern Tablelands Express. Furthermore, diesel locomotives were not only faster than their steam counterparts, they did not have to make frequent and lengthy stops. Table service was replaced by counter service, set menus were encouraged for time economies and in the mid to late 1950s some rooms closed, often doing away with tables and chairs altogether to focus on takeaways.
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