Harvey Girls were an important part of our transportation history in our country, and there is a Harvey Girl component to our Orange Empire Railway Museum The Harvey Houses were contracted with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad (Santa Fe or AT&SF) to provide quality restaurants at selected Santa Fe depots. Typically railroads provided few or no dining facilities at depots, for people to dine in while they were waiting to make connections to other trains. Often there were cafes nearby, but passengers needed to be right at the depot with their heavy luggage which was a liability to leave unattended or to drag around down the street. Santa Fe was the first railroad to provide actual depot restaurants, and Fred Harvey wanted to do the business. So Santa Fe contracted with him, and Santa Fe built or rebuilt their primary depots for Fred Harvey. The Harvey Girls were a special kind of waitress, boarded by Harvey House under strict supervision during their off-duty hours, and they were trained to provide first-class service to train travelers with Harvey House serving first-class meals at a decent price. Harvey houses until the modern dining car came into service became famous in the communities they were located. Community residents as well as railroad employees kept the Harvey Houses going even after the modern dining cars and express transcontinental trains became the primary form of rail traffic, and indeed, it wasnt until the modern freeway came into being that the Harvey Houses began to decline and Fred Harveys enterprise closed down forever. Our Orange Empire Railway Museum keeps the legacy and history alive, with female museum members dressing in the authentic Harvey House uniforms which they own themselves. Our museum is building a Harvey House replica where our lady members will serve our Museums visiting public and volunteering museum members on certain days of our Museums operation. -- Libris (OERM Life Member Nr. 2170)
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 23:02:13 +0000
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