The Blue Train Diner

We stumbled upon a really cool diner in Sea Point after Sunday Mass at the Church of Our Lady of Good Hope down the street. The Atlantic Express Restaurant.

The Atlantic Express is housed in a carefully restored South African Railway carriage and based on the theme of a dining coach. The original coach was manufactured by the Birmingham Carriage and Wagon Company in England and was assembled in the Salt River Works of the South African Railway.

It was placed in service on the 4th of December, 1920 and was one of 10 coaches made. The carriage operated mainly on the Cape Town main line. More than 60 years to the day after it first went into service, the carriage opened its doors again, but this time to serve as a stationary diner.

The mid-Atlantic region where Vince and I lived in the USA is diner country and the Atlantic Express reminded me of another diner we sometimes frequented in Clinton, New Jersey. The Clinton Station Diner Restaurant. Like the Atlantic Express, the Clinton Station uses a carriage from an old railway as a dining car.

Like the Clinton Station, the Atlantic Express still had all its old brass fittings like this unused brass ashtrays.

But unlike the Clinton Station, the Atlantic Express windows had these really cool etchings of springbok.

Breakfast at the Atlantic Express was the perfect way to end our Blue Train visit to Cape Town. The kitchen car was even called The Blue Train! I mean, really.