Research Notes - Back issues of the "Wagoneer"

History Updates

Currently  The "Great Lakes Dining Car Wagoneer" Edition 2010-11 : The newsletter that focuses on the history of the lunch wagon and dining car in the Great Lakes Region. This year, we focus on Ward & Dickinson 

If you would like the 2009-2010 Edition, please send an email or a postcard to the address at the bottom of this page.
Choose your history...

1) History of the Great Lake Region dining car manufacturers.
[click here]

2) Database of lunch wagons and diners in selected upstate NY and western Massachusetts cities. Now including the Indiana, Michigan and Ohio databases!  [mostly online] ** 6/10/06 - Now Fully searchable by name and city. **
[click here]

3) History of New York diners. A look at all the information I have on diners in New York state.  Buffalo's and the Capital Distric have been moved here.
[click here]

4) My look at the Mid-West.  Including Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and in the future, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.
[click here] {Work in progress, will happen after #3 gets more completed.}

5) Diner Exodus - diners that once did business in New York State and now reside in other states.
[click here]



 
 

Research Notes

 July 2023: Putting as much of my text material on-line. Starting with New York state.  Chautauqua County's first run through is (almost) done.

  December 2010: Forgot to update page - A little of everything. A bunch more on the Ward & Dickinson Company that I am slow to put online. Diners of New York - the book has come out, and is doing decent. Have had a few book signings. Continue to work on the idea of a Great Lakes book.

  April 2006: I am trying to find family of Arthur Halladay and M (Morris?) Whitehouse. who ran General Diners for about a year, in 1940 in Oswego, NY.  In a few weeks, I hope to get out to Oswego and Watertown to check into some more stuff.  Hopefully building permits.  Update: No luck with either family.

October 2006: Finished writing Diners of New York with Mario and Lucille Monti, for Stackpole Books.  Have typed in information for first 100 Ward & Dickinson diners built. Trying to figure out best way to use the data, and create some type of web pages. No luck with General Diners, building permits in Oswego were not helpful. No actual blueprints.  Time to start next edition of Great Lakes Dining Car Wagoneer

January 2007: Have been working on the Buffalo city directory work a little bit more, and working on finishing up the Sanborne map research for New York City, which is quite a job.  This will be online now! - Check it out

April 2007: The NYC information is online. It is no where near complete. But it is a good start. Easily 40 hours of research time put into collecting information.  I am also working on a database of Ward and Dickinson diners that will be fully searchable by city, state and name.  Currently, I am populating the database and will then work on the search program afterwards.

July 2008: The Ward & Dickinson database is online, and fully functional. There is still more data to enter, but that is going to have to wait until later.  Diners of New York will be available to the public Septmeber 2008.  I am working on Buffalo, NY history. It is coming along very slowly.  I have also entered all current diners into a database so that all the NY Diners diners are actually in a database, and people can comment on specific diners quite easily now.  

October 2008: I quickly put together the Buffalo region diner list for when the book comes out.


Great Lakes Dining Car Wagoneer

Past Issues!

- 2002/3 Edition -=
=- 2003/4 Edition -= 
=- 2004/5 Edition -=
=- 2005/6
Edition -=
=- 2006/7
Edition -=

=- 2008/9 Edition -=

=- 2009/10 Edition -=

To receive a copy. Send email to
travel  [at] nydiners.com or regular mail to:
Mike Engle, 
182 Speigletown Rd. 
Troy, NY 12182