About ten years ago I encountered a stack of New Haven Railroad Platinum Blue luncheon plates at a store on Newbury Street in Boston, Massachusetts called "Lulu's Lost and Found" (now out of business I'm sorry to report) that sold china and silver from restaurants and hotels. Scattered among the NHRR Platinum Blue pieces were luncheon plates of the same style and color as the Platinum Blue pieces that had no decoration or markings except for a green "Caribe" back stamp.
I bought all the Platinum Blue plates and passed the Caribe pieces by. Unfortunately, several years later while interviewing Teddy Rockett, the last superintendent of the New Haven Railroad's dining car department, he mentioned that in the New Haven's final decade he purchased an undecorated china ware from a Puerto Rican company called Caribe that was the same color as Platinum Blue to augment existing stocks of Platinum Blue and replace pieces (such as cups and saucers) that had been broken. Apparently, the Platinum Blue colored Caribe ware that I had seen at "Lulu's Lost and Found" in Boston had been legitimate examples of New Haven Railroad dining car china after all.
Recently, the New Haven Railroad Historical & Technical Association has been transcribing old movie films on to videotape. A recent find was a series of work prints for a New Haven Railroad television commercial shot during 1963. Among the scenes shot for this commercial were people eating in a New Haven Railroad dining car. The quality of the original print is such that you can see that the china the models are eating off has no decoration. This is the first photographic documentation that I have ever seen showing the undecorated Caribe china in service on the New Haven Railroad.
Note, at one time Caribe was owned by the Sterling China Company of East Liverpool, Ohio. According to Dick Luckin, respected authority on dining car china and author of "Dining on Rails", Sterling sold off Caribe many years ago.
Using a device called a "Snappy", I grabbed a couple of images off a tape copy of this work print that show the Caribe china. Check them out below. I apologize for the somewhat poor quality but this is the best that I can do.
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On the original first generation professional quality digital tape transcribed from the original motion picture film it is immediately apparent that the china on this New Haven dining car table has no decoration at all. The sizes, color, and general appearance of the Caribe china matches that of Platinum Blue except that the striping and Greco-Roman artwork of the nude woman bending to pick berries from a bush, characteristic of the Platinum Blue pattern, are absent.
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The most apparent difference between Caribe and Platinum Blue from the perspective of these poor quality video captures is the shape of the coffee cup. Note the tall size and conical profile. This is most unlike Platinum Blue coffee cups, which are short, squat, and somewhat rounded in appearance. Platinum Blue and Caribe were the New Haven's standard dining car china during the final decade of its corporate existence. This china saw service in diners, grill cars, and in all other types of food service cars on the New Haven Railroad during the 1960s.
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Compare the short, squat, and somewhat rounded appearance of the New Haven Railroad Platinum Blue coffee cup with the Caribe cups seen in the images presented above. According to Teddy Rockett, Caribe was purchased during the New Haven's final bankruptcy as a low cost alternative to Platinum Blue. He said that the Caribe china was freely intermingled with Platinum Blue and that larger numbers of cups and saucers were purchased than other shapes of ware since these were subject to greater rates of breakage than other articles. He said that the waiters and attendants often put Platinum Blue cups on Caribe saucers and vice versa.