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diner, restaurant resembling the railroad dining car that is its source. In the mid-19th cent., the first dining cars that appeared on trains were nothing more than an empty car with a fastened-down table. George M. Pullman, who had begun producing sleeping cars in 1858, soon began designing a dining car. By 1868, Pullman had designed the luxuriously and meticulously appointed "club car." After 1900, these dining cars were sold and turned into roadside restaurants. In the 1920s and 30s, the diners that served America's growing highway system became a symbol of automobile travel. Diners from that era were sometimes art deco in design. Instead of the tables and white tablecloths of the early dining cars, they commonly had booths along one wall and a long counter down the other.
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