More diners to more RR museums
Good to see Sterling 4105, previously used for non-foodservice retail as Balloon Boutique, (formerly Riley Bros.) in Lynn, MA has found a new home. Who better to take care of vintage diners like this than a railroad museum. This is as good a place as any for this long unused 1941 diner, which hadn’t served a meal in three decades. Diner people shouldn’t frown on this latest move as a bad idea. Yes, it’s on private property in an out of the way area and only open for limited use, but it’s being maintained, and is serving food once again. Sure beats the fate of some 60+ other long shuttered vintage diners now sitting up on cribbing scattered around the country.
It has become evident over the past 15+ years that taking on small diners such as this is next-to-impossible to make a go of as a commercial undertaking. Diners of this size (under 40 seats) are often well cared for in the hands of RR musuems and dedicated private collectors who restore and preserve them in a safe setting. What old diners should not become are tourist info. booths where they are sure to be renovateed, and left unattended in some vacant windswept lot for vandals to damage or destroy. Diners re-used as non foodservice Chamber of Commerce boosting Info booths may at first sound like a nice idea, but in reality, they never work out. To the best of my knowledge, not one diner-as-info.-booth installation has ever survived once the initial enthusiasm subsides.
This re-use of the former Balloon Boutique reminds me of the Englewood, another identical Sterling now wasting away on cribbing on Rte. 1 in Salisbury, MA. Seems Dave Pritchard isn’t having much luck offloading his lot of diners. Why he ever bought all those diners we’ll never know. Of the 5 diners he’s had for sale for the past 6+ years, only the Miss Newport has found a new home, now restored and operating as the Miss Mendon. This leaves the former Chubby’s (O’M) the Englewood (Sterling 4113), the Olympia (Fodero) and Monarch (O’M) languishing in his yard for sale. The sooner these diners find new caretakers, the better.