If your experiences are similar to mine, you have probably never been in a 'chair car' and you can't remember if you've ever walked through a club car.
Certainly, regarding the optional aesthetic presentation of alcoholic beverages, VIA would have jettisoned this book of instructions in favour of a more practical 1970s set of procedures by the time I first ordered a beverage in any Park car lounge.
The following images were published by the CPR in 1963.
The distinguished gentleman with the pipe probably had a couple of decades of service, on the outside looking in, with the CPR before he was finally granted retirement. Relatively few images were ever published in promotional material showing the interior of the Park car 'Mural Lounges'.
An so, year after lonely year, our friend swayed with the acquired ease of a veteran passenger train conductor as he waited for that open seat in the lounge which always eluded him.
Forever 'Mural Lounge Patron Thirteen'.
If the CPR had given up four accommodation spaces in the car (and the nine fares applicable to them)
Mural Lounge Patron Thirteen could have found himself carousing happily in an enlarged bar area.
In the 1950s, it was probably only a small fraction of all transcontinental passengers who were interested in murals painted by members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Consequently, being 'snugly ensconsed' in the Mural Lounge was less appealing than seeing Canada from Main Lounge.
The dome itself was probably not a licenced area,
but at least one VIA attendant used 'his understanding' of the liquor law
to shoo an aspiring signal reader from the dome after dark.
 |
| from: The Canadian; James W Kerr; 1986; DPA-LTA Enterprises. |
 |
| from: The Canadian; James W Kerr; 1986; DPA-LTA Enterprises. |
In spite of the visual tricks played by an advertising artist's skill, or a convex camera lens (above), the Mural Lounge was a rather claustrophobic and smokey enclosure as shown in an ordinary documentation photo (below).
 |
| from: Murals from a Great Canadian Train; Ian Thom; 1986; VIA Rail. |