What is it that the R(ail) R(oad) diner in Twin Peaks, the R(ed) R(oom) in the Lodges and R(ancho) R(osa) in Nevada have in common, besides repeating the same opening consonant?
I believe the answer lies in the brief visit Laura receives in Fire Walk With Me from the Tremonds while preparing her meals on wheels: Pierre and his grandmother appear out of nowhere by the rail road sign that warns drivers against possible collisions. The diner was built upon a spot where dimensions meet, where beings from other planes of existence (which I name the Fourth Dimension in my book Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic and which Bill Hastings calls The Zone in season 3) are able to visit the inhabitants of Twin Peaks in their three dimensional reality, just as trains (associated with the past and otherness – recall that Laura is killed in a train car) are able to cross the path of today’s cars.
The Red Room has a similar role, though instead of trains meeting cars, it’s people and Lodge entities who connect at a right angle (see Dale’s position below, in relationship to the Lodge entities). Dale and Laura’s visits to the Red Room enable them to discuss with The Man From Another Place, with the Giant, etc. It is a space between dimensions, between realities, that enables these prolonged encounters.
Rancho Rosa’s role, is not so different from the one of the RR diner or the Red Room. There too, a being from out of time and space (the good Dale, trapped in the Lodges) is reincarnated in a spot mixing past and present, the Wild West and contemporary America, the desert and the city. Rancho Rosa is just another version of the RR and the Red Room, set in a different spacetime.
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TWIN PEAKS - Unwrapping the Plastic 