There are a number of words missing. Write one word of each gap:

Long before supersonic jets made it easy to cross the country, train travel was the elegant way to get from place to place in the United States. ________ the golden age of American trains, their sleek, opulent interiors featured plush seats, porters for your every need, and gleaming dining cars. The dining car was the heart of train life, a place for passengers to relax and enjoy a meal in the _______ of newfound friends. And the food was, by all accounts, delicious. Far from the reheated, packaged meals of today, train chefs prepared food _______ scratch, from the turtle soup to the spiced nuts.

The earliest days of train travel, however, were anything but posh. Even on longer hauls, in the 1840s passengers were expected to bring their own food aboard or eat at boarding house restaurants along the line. Often these restaurants were ______ at "water stops," so called because, in the days of steam locomotion, trains had to take on water at regular intervals. Isolated water stops were frequent targets for attacks by bandits, so it’s no ________ that rail companies quickly adapted to create sanctuaries on the train where passenger could dine in peace.

By the 1870s, the Transcontinental Railroad stretched all the _______ to California, and with it came a new era of railway dining. The most detailed account of train foods comes from an __________ in Harper’s Magazine, published in 1872 and __________ by Charles Nordhoff, a prominent journalist of the era.

Even though the railways led to California, dining cars were nonexistent west of Ocriaha in Nebraska until 1890. The high-tech cars were too costly to chance on dangerous, isolated Western rails. The lack of food options for ___________ led to one of the most enduring images of American’s railway golden age: the Harvey Girls.

Fred Harvey opened the first branch of his Harvey House in 1878, and from then until the automobile age in the 20th century, passengers could count on delicious, high-quality food served in beautiful surroundings.

Meals as varied _____________ chicken enchiladas, roast goose with apples and apricot Charlotte were served by the Harvey Girls, clad in long black dresses with voluminous white aprons. The staff got free room and board, a generous salary and a one-year employment contract. Often the only young women in rough-and-tumble railroad towns, the Harvey Girls ___________ a civilizing force in the Wild West.