"Santa Fe dining cars are known the country over for that famous Fred Harvey food ... courteous service ... shining silver ... linens as white as the snow of the Rockies. Whether it's beefsteak or brook trout or pheasant á la Périgueux, you'll have a meal to remember. In fact, it's almost worth taking a trip just to eat a Fred Harvey meal on a Santa Fe diner!"
(The Saturday Evening Post / ca. 1958)
In 1853, at the age of 17, Fred Harvey, from Liverpool in England, emigrated to America, where he earned his first money as a busboy in a well-knwon New York restaurant. Almost 25 years later (1876), he opened restaurants along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad line, which became famous as Harvey Houses and are today considered as the first restaurant chain in the USA.
The deal that Fred Harvey struck with the railroad company commonly known as the Santa Fe (Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad) ensured that train passengers would be served meals at the Harvey Houses during their stopovers. However, unlike usual, Harvey Houses focused on high quality in their food and service.
Fred Harvey was looking for young, attractive and competent women between the ages of 18 and 30 to become part of the waitress staff, offering them a good salary along with room and board. They subsequently became known as the Harvey Girls and had even a movie with Judy Garland in "The Harvey Girls" (1946) dedicated to them.
Fred Harvey eventually expanded his brand to include the dining cars of the Santa Fe Railroad, and when he died in 1901, he left behing 45 restaurants, 15 hotels and 30 dining cars on the Santa Fe line in the southwestern United States.
a heart-breaking engine burning down deep in your chest.
I've been left and I've been used,
I've been stepped on, I've been bruised.
There ain't a train around that can hit as hard as you.
On June 28, 2024, Jackson Dean released a song which used the legendary train as the main theme for the painful end of a relationship. Unstoppable like the train, she seems to have left him. And all that remains is the lonely signal of a train disappearing into the distance, which Jackson Dean transforms into the chorus of the song.
At entertainment-focus.com he describes the inspiration for the song: "Before I made my way to Nashville, I lived in an old cinderblock shack on my grandfather's land in Maryland. Every night around midnight, I'd hear a freight train passing by. One night, the whistle got me thinking about where it came from, where it was going, and how that paralleled my own journey. We wrote the song inspired by that moment."
It is the second new song from an upcoming album that fans have had to wait almost 2 years for. After the first, hard-rocking single 'Don't Come Looking' from his debut album "Greenbroke" (2022), which climbed to number 3 on the Radio (Billboard Country Airplay) chart, the follow-up single 'Fearless' took over a year to reach number 11. So eventually all obstacles are cleared for new music from Jackson Dean and his distinctive voice.
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