The Dinner Table Railroad of Gaston Menier

[Crow of Ryuzoji]

In 1887, the French chocolate magnate Gaston Menier installed a novel apparatus in his dining room that allowed meals to be transported straight from the kitchen to the table, without the need for servants or the passing of plates. A miniature electric railroad brought the fully prepared dishes to a stop directly in front of each guest. And when the meal concluded, the dishes were whisked away, back through a hole in the wall and out of site. The invention gave the meal “particular liveliness and intimacy,” noted one of Menier’s guests.

[Demetrius Forward]

I need one of these for my dinner table! Especially since the kitchen is diagonally opposite to the dining room..

[Tatsu]

That is one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  I want to set one up now. 

[James Harrison]

For some reason I'm now considering laying out my Hornby tracks from the kitchen into the dining room and back again... but I don't have enough 2nd radius curves d--n it!

[Wrath the Mad]

Aww! This reminds me of the erector/meccano railroad that my grandfather and I would build whenever I visited to deliver tea to my grandmother. I would get up early each morning and start building the tracks from the kitchen, down the hall, into the bedroom. Then Grumpa would get up and brew the tea which was placed on the platform railcar and delivered down the hall to Nana. How I miss them!

This is a wonderful and novel idea. Glad I'm not the only wierdo who thought of it!

[OldProfessorBear]

M. Menier may have done it first, I don't really know, but it has certainly been done many times since.

In fact, I distinctly remember a restaurant that had such a setup from my youth, though I don't believe I ever got to eat there.

[Von Gast]

It's quite popular with restaurants, usually using large scale trains. The problem is that the inevitable grease form the kitchen gums up the mechanisms.

I've used my garden railway to deliver drinks at barbeques before now. The main problem is finding large flatbed wagons that ride well enough to avoid spilling the cargo. I keep meaning to buy a couple of Bachmann flatcar kits for this as they're cheap enough not to worry about them getting the odd dousing in drinks!