JOHN MICA'S CONCEPT DOESN'T RIDE THE RAILS?

I'm referring to a Florida congressman who thought Amtrak was spending too much money on food service and once waved a half-eaten McBurger at a passing train.  In part we have the joke of first class catering on overnight trains these days because of those efforts.

Did you know, though, dear reader, that McDonald's did operate a snack car?  In Germany?  "It sounded like a great idea—until it wasn't."  Some of what went wrong might be attributable to German crew districts, but apparently I'm not alone, or perhaps it's my Prussian coming out, in wanting proper food service in the diner.

McDonald's reputation for cheapness made it a hard sell to German travelers, especially the wealthy, by then accustomed to better meals on other routes. And despite the perception of fast food being cheap to produce, service proved anything but inexpensive for the DB and McDonald's to provide.

Power consumption was said to be twice that of a standard DB dining car, at 90 kilowatts, and logistically, the operation proved unusually demanding. Resupplying was reportedly done via restaurants along the route, complicating inventory management, and if one of the five kitchen crew showed up late to their shift—say, after the train had left—they effectively hadn't shown up at all. Assuming kitchen staff didn't transfer between trains at a predetermined meeting point, their shifts would end with them across the country from where their day started, requiring McDonald's to either pay for accommodation or a return trip.

The cars started running in 1992, which was during the heady early days of airline deregulation in an expanded Europe, and that didn't help building a clientele.