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1 hour ago, gfweb said:

The Hopper art is a coffee shop not a diner. 

 

I don't think that wiki thing gets it right. Horse drawn carts have nothing to do with diners. 

 

"Weak coffee" oh really?

 

"Originally prefab" oh really? Maybe later when there was a shortage of railroad cars. 

 

.....

 

I haven't seen any evidence that American diners were originally railroad dining cars. Some apparently were repurposed horse-drawn streetcars. However, there clearly were companies who specialised in making diners for transport and installation on site. Did you read the Smithsonian article I linked above? "This 1956 photograph was taken during the short time that two Nite Owls sat cheek-by-jowl in Fall River, MA. Soon the old lunch wagon was carted away and demolished, replaced by the gleaming diner."

Of course the whole internet could have it wrong, "The concept of the diner began when Water Scott, a Rhode Island entrepreneur, repurposed a horse-pulled wagon into a car that served sandwiches, coffee, pies, and eggs to people late at night. He quit his job as a printer to sell food from the wagon. Soon other companies followed to produce lunch wagons or early diners."

Weak coffee - yes really.

The comparison to British caffs is merely in terms of cultural setting. They are clearly not the same thing.