The Dining Cars Cafe, originally known as Mullen’s Dining Cars, was a unique roadside landmark established in 1946 just north of Buellton, California. Founded by Edward Mullen, a veteran railroad dining car steward, the novelty restaurant was constructed using two retired 1911-era streetcars from the Los Angeles Railway system. Mullen integrated these vintage trolleys directly into the building’s architecture, hoping to attract the booming population of postwar motorists traveling along Highway 101 between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Despite the clever concept and an iconic neon sign advertising chicken dinners and breakfast, the restaurant struggled to compete with the overwhelming local popularity of Pea Soup Andersen’s. The diner’s fate was ultimately sealed in the mid-1950s when the California State Highways Department realigned and widened Highway 101, effectively bypassing the restaurant and making it highly inconvenient for drivers to pull off. Unable to capture necessary tourist traffic, the business changed hands a few times before closing its doors for good in 1958.
For over five decades, the abandoned structure sat in a state of picturesque decay, becoming a popular subject for vintage roadside photographers and curious travelers. The site was finally cleared in 2012 for redevelopment, but pieces of the historic diner were fortunately saved rather than destroyed. Today, the two vintage streetcars reside at the private Bitter Creek Western Railroad in Arroyo Grande, California, while the original neon sign was preserved for display inside the Roadside Cafe (now closed) in Orange, California.