Breakfast in America

We enjoyed breakfast at the Omelette Café, Manassas. It had certain other attractions in addition to the tasty omelettes - and the grits and beans that our grandson got stuck in to. A railway runs alongside the rear of the building. When we arrived, a diesel locomotive on a short permanent way train was just pulling out of the loop but I couldn’t get out of the car quickly enough to take the picture. I had to make do with the repeated, characteristically mournful hooter that so typifies the American railway scene, as the train slowly disappeared into rural Virginia.

Beginning life as the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, it changed its name to the Orange, Alexandria and Manassas Railroad in 1867. The line was later taken over by the Southern Railway System and when that concern joined with the Norfolk and Western, it became part of the present-day Norfolk Southern. Amtrak now runs a locomotive-hauled commuter service to Washington on this route.

The close association between the town and its railway is represented in a series of murals in the Omelette Café. I have seen this notion featured elsewhere in America, on occasions. It seems entirely appropriate to me that local enterprises should choose to display their railway heritage so emphatically in this way.