Re: The Phoebe Snow's food & beverages

O.K., here's an obscure question....What brands of beer were commonly served/available on board ?

( and I'm still looking for the vendor who had the contract for supplying toilet paper rolls for Phoebe's rest rooms )

I am sure Genesee (Rochester, NY) was one of the beers, as was probably Rolling Rock (Wilkes Barre, PA) along with some national brand or two.

My Phoebe Snow menus and Taven-Lounge beverage cards only list it as "Beer and Ale". No specific brands are listed (unlike the wines and hard liquor.

I have a menu that lists Reingold, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Budweiser and Miller High Life

henry6 wrote:I am sure Genesee (Rochester, NY) was one of the beers, as was probably Rolling Rock (Wilkes Barre, PA) along with some national brand or two.

Rolling Rock was and is brewed by Latrobe Brewing in Latrobe, PA, along the currently NS, ex-Conrail, ex-PC, ex-PRR mainline.

Right you are, Sam. I was trying to remember a beer from Wilkes Barre that was all over NE PA and NJ in the 40's and 50s. I wasn't old enough to drink then, so I don't really remember.

A little off this thread, but one treat was free peanuts in the Obs Lounges. But, the stewards would only serve them on the tables and not in the carpeted area with upholstered furniture. I remember one of those stewards was named Peter Gourie, lived on W. 69th St. Manhattan. I took photos of him once and sent them to him. We swapped Christmas cards for a few years.

These guys went HOB-BUF and back five and six days a week working the OBS lounges. They stopped serving after about Brick Church eastbound, because they had to tally up their sales and a requisition list for replenishing the lounge for the next day.

[quote="henry6"]Right you are, Sam. I was trying to remember a beer from Wilkes Barre that was all over NE PA and NJ in the 40's and 50s. I wasn't old enough to drink then, so I don't really remember.[/quote]

Hmmm, how about Stegmaier? Or maybe Gibbons? Then there was Standard Tru-Age Beer, which would fit right into that time frame. What I'm guessing is that since several national breweries were located in Newark, much of what was carried on DL&W/EL trains were national brands, with maybe the exception of Rheingold. Rheingold was pretty much New York's "official" beer during the 40s/50s/60s, so that would make some sense, right?

One very fond memory is of ordering cereal in the diner, and discovering that the little silver pitcher accompanying my shredded wheat wasn't milk, it was cream. And I, too, remember the free potato chips.

STEG! That's the one!!!

sween -

You glean a good guess/point abour the DL&W and the proximity to the once thriving breweries in Newark and vicinity.

The Budweiser brewery is still going strong near Newark Airport. The Rheingold brewery in East Orange, which closed in the mid-1970's, was a longtime DL&W/E-L client off the Morris & Essex. AIR, there was a Pabst brewery in Newark up until the late 1960's or so too....