Lake City PA’s All Aboard Dinor was once a bustling train depot: Christine’s Chronicles

It is presently known as the All Aboard Dinor, but in previous centuries, it was known as the Girard Station and served a very different and important purpose.

As a train station, this depot opened in 1852 and closed its doors in 1957. It sat vacant and unused until 1993, when it was remodeled and reopened as a dinor.

“Lake City Borough’s original name in 1850 was Girard Station because it was a little more than a railroad stop,” according to https://lakecityboro.org/government/history/

In 1862 the Girard Station was indeed a busy place, buzzing with excitement about President Abraham Lincoln’s visit. Regarding that president’s stop here: “At Girard station several baskets of splendid fruit and flowers were presented to the Presidential family. No little sensation was produced at this point by the unexpected apparition on the train of Horace Greeley, equipped with a valise and his well known red and blue blankets. He was at once conducted into the car of the President, who came forward to greet him. He got off again at Erie, after traveling about twenty miles with the company.” Quote is from the New York Herald, February 17, 1861 as posted at oldtimeerie.blogspot.com.

So if you make All Aboard Dinor a delicious destination as a scheduled stop for something to eat, take a moment to imagine what it might have been like to walk into that same structure 100 years ago to purchase your ticket to Erie or Ashtabula.

This windowway was most likely the ticket window when the dinor was a train depot in previous centuries.

This model train runs along a track just beneath the dinor’s ceiling with cars that display advertising for local businesses.
All Aboard Dinor in Lake City, PA is situated right next to an active railroad track so diners can see and feel trains thundering by its old-time windows.
This interior view offers a glimpse of what the windows and doorway might have looked like when it was an active train depot.
Trainumentary 22 features the aerial model train that runs inside of the All Aboard Dinor in Lake City, PA. Watch Trainumentaries 1-20 on Youtube.
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