Dining car work in the PRR's Dining Department was grueling, with waiters working 16 and 17 hours a day and sometimes sleeping in the dining car. For passengers, meals aboard a train were an exciting part of travel, but serving them demanded highly efficient rolling kitchens that prepared food to order and baked bread, rolls, and pies from scratch. In 1941 alone, the PRR served 3.9 million meals, and during the World War II years it served five times that many. This Altoona-built restaurant-on-wheels was among the PRR's Class D78 diners, built in Altoona between 1911 and 1929; in 1930, most of the railroad's 176 dining cars were of this type. A typical 1930's menu included double-rib lamb chop for 55¢, filet of lake trout for 75¢, liver and onions for 90¢, and sirloin steak for $1.75, while a one-day shopping list included 847 pounds of ham, 575 dozen eggs, 750 lamb chops, and 1,695 loaves of bread. At 81 feet long, the car originally seated 36 passengers, and it was later modernized to include a 32-seat dining area and a 10-seat lounge. At the height of railroad passenger travel, more than 1,700 dining cars operated in the US, and besides meals, diners sold Coca-Cola, playing cards, tobacco, aspirin, carbonated water, and Bromo-Seltzer.