For more than 100 years, from the debut of its first dining car in 1853 until the coming of Amtrak in 1971, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad enjoyed a reputation as the finest restaurant on wheels.
Generations of Marylanders who rode the "Beano" -- as locals pronounced it -- to New York or Chicago or Detroit still savor memories of pork chops Normandy, hush puppies, crab cakes, warm apple pie, dumplings, broiled shad or terrapin stew.
For former chef Percy Peters, 76, who spent 15 years cooking aboard the railroad's dining and office cars, the memories are as fresh as the rolls he baked daily in a coal-fired oven aboard trains traveling at 80 mph.
Peters cooked for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower, Wall Street moguls and movie stars, and thousands of ordinary people who rode the B&O in the time before airplanes and interstates changed train travel.
In the dining cars of such famed trains as the Capitol Limited, National Limited, Diplomat and Columbian, travelers were greeted with crisp white tablecloths, gleaming silver, the railroad's blue and white china, and impeccable service.
Exciting career
"It was all very exciting for me. I saw different places and met a lot of interesting people," Peters said the other day from his home in West Baltimore.
The last of nine children of a Louisiana farmer-contractor, Peters was raised in Folsom, a small town near New Orleans, that he described as having "four horses, three people and one dog."
He learned cooking from his mother -- "all of the basics," he said -- and after graduating from high school traveled to New York to take a job cooking on a ship that regularly sailed to South America.
"I made $55 a month for stirring up the hash for them. With all the fun I was having, I would have done it for nothing," he said.
A 1941 visit to Baltimore to see his brother, Dan Peters, a B&O chef, resulted in his being hired as a cook.
"When the superintendent of the dining-car department at Camden Station told me he was short a man, I took a physical and went to work that afternoon as a third cook on a troop train preparing vegetables and broiling," Peters said.
"I had never seen a dining-car kitchen before, and, compared to the galley on a ship, it was a hole in the wall," he added. "That kitchen was no more than 10 or 12 feet long. An overhead fan kept the heat down, or tried to. We had side vents that took some of the heat out, but not much. You'd be soaking wet in about 45 minutes, and then you'd go and change."
The galley crew consisted of a chef and two assistants, sometimes three. Six waiters took orders and delivered food, while a dining-car steward dressed in a blue serge suit with white vest oversaw the operation of the car.
Stoves were cast iron and heated with Reading anthracite coal, briquettes or pressed wood logs, and no two cooked alike, according to Peters. He got his promotion to chef one night when the chef on the National Limited got sick, and he was told by the steward, "You're it, Pete."
A chef's duties, in addition to supervising all of the food preparation by his fellow cooks, included handling all the baking and making coffee, gravies and sauces. He personally inspected each meal before it left the galley to be delivered to a passenger.
Cracked or chipped dishes were immediately withdrawn from use. "When I think what I threw away in B&O china and the prices I see that collectors pay for it today, I must have tossed a fortune into the garbage can," he said.
Since nothing was frozen or prepared in advance, a chef cut the steaks, dressed turkeys and made from scratch all pies, cakes and rolls. The finest ingredients were furnished from railroad commissaries. Unusual items were often bought from stall keepers in the Lexington Market.
"We could turn some good food out of those cast-iron pots and pans, and food always tastes better when it's cooked in them," Peters said.
It was common for Peters to prepare 275 to 350 meals a day, with days stretching from nine to 16 hours.
After serving as an Army cook in North Africa assigned to the 7th Army during World War II, Peters returned to the railroad.
The chief's chef
In 1949, he became personal chef to Howard E. Simpson, later president of the railroad, whose office car was the 100. When the 100 was used for presidential or other special trains, Peters went with it. He prides himself on having been aboard FDR's train and cooking for presidents Truman and Eisenhower.
"I prepared a seven-rib roast for Ike -- he was a beef man -- and he liked it cooked medium. He came back in the kitchen and said, 'That was very good beef,' " Peters recalled.
In 1957, when Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip traveled from Washington to New York aboard the 100, Peters was in charge of the diner.
"I remember making a watercress sandwich for her because she had eaten at the White House. The next morning I prepared scrambled eggs and bacon and Melba toast. She drank fresh-squeezed orange juice and tea," Peters said.
