Balt,
Your father or grandfather may have worked with this woman. Good story here.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/olive-dennis-train-comfort-engineer
matthewsaggie Balt, Your father or grandfather may have worked with this woman. Good story here. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/olive-dennis-train-comfort-engineer
Suspect my Grandfather would have worked with her during the design and construction of The Cincinnatian as he was Supt. of the Dining Car Dept. from 1937-1957. The Cincinnatian was placed in service in January 1947. Ms. Dennis was the design engineer credited with the design of The Cincinnatian.
At the time The Cincinatian was placed in service my father was a Yardmaster on 'The Curtis Bay Railroad' and shortly thereafter was promoted to Asst. Trainmaster at Newark, OH.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I rode the Cincinnatian and it was an excellent train. Not as fancy as the light weight Budd streamliners but an excellent product. Originally designed for a day train between Cincinnati and Washington, it was reassigned to a Cincinnati to Detroit operation. Rebuilt with heavy weight cars, coaches with "sleepy hollow seats" (very comfortable) it had a snack bar coach baggage car behind the engine, and an observation lounge dining car on the endand was pulled by a streamined pacific engine. Back in the fifties I rode it from Toledo to Cincinnati and my fellow railfan and I ate in the diner. Upon finishing our meal, the waiter brought out two siver plated bowls filled with warm water and gave us nice clean napkins. Fortunatly for me, my buddy knew what finger bowls were and so we did what was proper and cleaned our fingers. A truely higher than Amtrak grade of service. The train had a train stewardess for the women and childen.
Didn't know the B&O had Ms. Dennis involved in the design but I think she deserves more appreciation than she got. Thanks for the post.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.