After this came the dining-car, which was still another step beyond the hotel-car. It was a complete restaurant, having a large kitchen and pantries in one end, with the main body of the car fitted up as a commodious dining-room, in which all the passengers in the train could enter and take their meals comfortably. The first dining-car was named the "Delmonico," and began running on the Chicago & Alton Railroad in the year 1868. The comforts and conveniences of travel by rail on the main lines now seemed to have reached their culmination in America. The heavy T-rails had replaced the various forms previously used; the improved fastenings, the reductions in curvature, and the greater care exercised in construction had made the trip delightfully smooth, while the improvements in rolling-stock had obviated the jerking, jolting, and oscillation of the cars. The roadbeds had been properly ditched, drained, and ballasted with broken stone or gravel, the dust overcome, the sparks arrested, and cleanliness, that attribute which stands next to godliness, had at last been made possible, even on a railway train. [Illustration: Dining-car (Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad.)] The heating of cars was not successfully accomplished till a method was devised for circulating hot water through pipes running near the floor. The suffering from that bane of the traveller--cold feet--was then obviated and many a doctor's bill saved. The loss of human life from the destruction of trains by fires originating from stoves aroused such a feeling throughout the country that the legislatures of many States have passed laws within the last three years prohibiting the use of stoves, and the railway managers have been devising plans for heating the trains with steam furnished from the boiler of the locomotive. The inventive genius of the people was at once brought into requisition, and several ingenious devices are now in use which successfully accomplish the purpose in solid trains with the locomotive attached, but the problem of heating a detached car without some form of furnace connected with it is still unsolved. But notwithstanding the high standard of excellence which had been reached in the construction and operation of passenger trains, there was one want not yet supplied, the importance of which did not become fully recognized until dining-cars were introduced, and men, women, and children had to pass across the platforms of several cars in order to reach the one in which the meals were served. An act which passengers had always been cautioned against, and forbidden to undertake--the crossing of platforms while the train is in motion--now became necessary, and was invited by the railway companies.