Shuttered Forest Diner in search of a home

(Baltimore Sun) They peeled the facade off the old Forest Diner on U.S. 40 in Ellicott City, revealing an American classic. Stainless steel, glass, and compact as a caboose, the restaurant's original core from about 1950 sits in a vacant dirt-and-gravel lot behind a chain-link fence.
"I wish it was gone because it looks so sad sitting there," says Barbara Carroll, who worked at the diner as a waitress, then hostess, for 43 years — from 1969 to the end of May, when the last meal was served.
Now, from her spot at the hostess stand at Jilly's Bar & Grill across Baltimore National Pike, she cannot see the place, but she can recount the details from memory: about 20 red stools at the counter, the original six booths. On one wall, two plaques show that the original diner was one of the "Silk City" diners built by the Paterson Vehicle Company in New Jersey. Continued