That's precisely why the 1st class carriage has always been marshalled with the dining car between it and the standard class carriages. Apart from the difficulties that would be caused by moving the catering away from the one part of the train where they still do some business, having a continuous flow of passengers walking through 1st class would disturb the ambience for people paying extra for peace and quiet to work or relax. The way things are going CIE will kill off the demand for 1st class travel at about the same time that Rail Gourmet throws in the towel with rail catering.
When dining cars first evolved they were divided in half by a partition with door - 1st class diners in one end and 2nd/3rd in the other - this continued on right into the 1950s CIE built dining cars. Incidentally, these were the last dining cars to be well thought out and everything else since has been dreadful. The De Dietrich dining cars should win an award for bad design.
|