The refreshment branch of New Zealand Railways was a significant undertaking. Over many years the department made available refreshment room leases throughout the railway system, some being replaced when NZR commenced dining car operation on key services. Dining cars were eventually superseded as a war time economy measure, with those lines reverting back to refreshment room operations. These consisted of either counter refreshment rooms or sit-down dining rooms, providing travellers nourishment at all hours of the day and night. Eventually running all rooms
themselves, the food sometimes came under vicious attack by the patrons, with head office sometimes the recipients of terse letters or returned food!
Author Alison McKee also covers various individual refreshment rooms, railway bookstall operations, foods favoured and shunned by patrons, railway picnics, special occasions, railway crockery, hostess service, sale of liquor, royal tour dining, rationing, footplate food, and numerous recipes of the era.