Guests stopping at the Penn Yan Diner in Penn Yan, New York, may be visiting a piece of Galion transported 380 miles to the northeast.
On the other hand, maybe not.
According to a profile of the Diner in a story featured Thursday on the website of WYRK Radio in Buffalo, the restaurant was manufactured by the Galion Dining Car Company right here. The story by Kadie Daye entitled “Hidden Diner You Must Visit In New York State,” the Diner came to Penn Yan in 1925 and is now one of the last dining cars in America.
Galion had its own Galion Dining Car at 334 Harding Way East, visited in 1939 by Hollywood comdienne Martha Raye. The Dining Car actually sponsored a baseball team which played its “home” games at Seccaium Park.
The book “American Diner Then and Now” calls the company history “elusive.” The book “Diners of New York” goes on step further, stating that there is no proof it ever existed, and a company may have named a dining car model the “Galion.”
What’s truth and what’s fiction? To date, no one knows.
