Troop Trains In World War II: Sleepers, Kitchen Cars & Movements

Last revised: September 9, 2026

Between December 1941 and June 1945, American railroads carried almost 44 million armed-services passengers. About 98 percent of military personnel moved by rail. The extras ran from induction centers to training camps, from camps to the ports, and, after V-E and V-J, from the same ports home. They were not a separate government railroad. The Office of Defense Transportation, the Army Transportation Corps, the Association of American Railroads, and the Pullman Company ran them on the existing map, in coaches, in regular Pullmans, and, from late 1943, in purpose-built troop sleepers and kitchen cars.

The Military Railway Service is a different outfit. It operated military railroads overseas. Domestic troop extras are this page. Wartime freight, the ODT as coordinator, and the 1944 traffic peak are Railroads In World War II. How the roads moved the draft in 1917–18 is on Railroads During World War I. The Civil War encyclopedia is Railroads And The Civil War. What follows here is the Second World War movement: who ordered the cars, what a consist looked like, hospital trains, the monthly tables, and what happened to the fleet after 1945.

Union Pacific 4-8-4 809 eastbound troop train at Green River Wyoming September 8 1956 John E Shaw

Union Pacific 4-8-4 No. 809 with an eastbound troop train at Green River, Wyoming, September 8, 1956—eleven years after V-J Day. The extra was still a railroad job in the Korean War and Cold War years. John E. Shaw photo. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Who ran them · Sleepers and kitchen cars · Hospital trains · Aboard · Camp Kilmer, August 1945 · Monthly movements, 1942–45 · After V-J Day

At a glance

Item	Detail
Armed-services passengers by rail	Almost 44 million, December 1941–June 1945. Not 44 million unique soldiers; men rode more than once
Military share	About 98 percent of military personnel, about 91 percent of military freight, by rail. About 97 percent of military passengers in 1944
Pullman sleepers, spring 1943	About half of Pullman’s roughly 7,000 sleeping cars in troop service
Troop sleepers	ODT contract with Pullman-Standard for 2,400 cars. First 1,200 (USAX 7000–8199) October 1943–March 1944. Remainder 1945–46
Kitchen cars	ACF, first wartime order 440 (often listed as 400 delivered Oct. 1943–March 1944, K-100–K-499). Second batch 1945. About 250 men fed per car; Army cooks, coal ranges
Berths	Three-high. 29 servicemen plus the Pullman porter. Sheets changed daily
Hospital cars, Zone of Interior	Army procurement about 380 cars (unit, ward, ward-dressing, kitchen). Peak month May 1945, about 47,000–57,000 patients moved
ODT passenger-train cars received, 1942–44	1,977 of 5,150 requested, including about 1,600 troop sleepers and kitchen cars (the first wartime cut)
Who did not run them	The Military Railway Service. MRS was overseas. Domestic extras: ODT, Army Transportation Corps, AAR, Pullman, the operating railroads
Camp Kilmer, Aug. 3–4, 1945	About 20,000 returnees, 31 trains, 331 Pullmans, 100 coaches, 41 kitchen cars. Same week, more than 250,000 in organized movements

Monthly movement tables below are the series this page has long printed (regular vs. special trains, cars, passengers, passenger-miles). Information compiled September 9, 2026.

Not the Military Railway Service

American railroads had moved armies since 1861. The First World War was the first mass draft movement on a national timetable; that record is on the World War I page. The Second World War was larger, longer, and still private. Joseph B. Eastman’s Office of Defense Transportation, created December 18, 1941, coordinated space and materials. It did not take title. The Army’s Transportation Corps and a Central Routing Authority in Washington ordered the extras. Pullman staffed the sleepers. The operating companies furnished the locomotives, the crews, and the railroad.

The tables on this page split regular trains from special trains. Regular means organized groups riding the scheduled varnish, with space blocked. Special means an extra: a consist built for that movement, often a mix of coaches, troop sleepers, a kitchen car or two, and a standard Pullman for officers. Recruits rode induction-to-camp. Trained units rode camp-to-port. Furlough travel and individual orders filled the remaining reserved space. Prisoners of war and enemy aliens were a smaller, separate routing.

Troop sleepers and kitchen cars

There were never enough cars. By spring 1943 about half of Pullman’s 7,000 sleeping cars were in troop service. Coaches took the rest. Baggage cars were fitted as kitchens until new galley cars arrived. Late in 1943 the ODT contracted with Pullman-Standard for 2,400 troop sleepers and with American Car & Foundry for kitchen cars. The first 1,200 sleepers (USAX 7000–8199) and the first kitchen order left the shops between October 1943 and March 1944. A second sleeper and kitchen cut followed in 1945 for the homecoming. Those first 1,200 sleepers plus the first kitchens are the roughly 1,600 troop cars the ODT actually received against its 1942–44 claim, the number on the World War II page.

A troop sleeper was a short, cheap, quickly built car on a freight-carbody idea: ten rows, sofas by day, bunks three-high by night, 29 enlisted men and a Pullman porter. Every man had a bed. Sheets and pillowcases changed daily. Officers stayed in standard Pullmans when the consist had them. High-ranking traffic used reserved space on the named trains.

Kitchen cars were rolling galleys. Army cooks, two coal ranges, meals served into the bunks and seats, not a diner. Each car was rated around 250 men. The usual place was mid-train so both ends of the extra could be fed. Ratio in later practice ran about one kitchen to six sleepers. Until ACF delivered, converted baggage cars did the same work.

The cars were government-owned, Pullman-operated. After 1945 the Army sold most of a lightly used fleet. Railroads turned sleepers into baggage, express, reefers, cabooses, and maintenance-of-way cars. A few kitchen cars lasted longer in work-train service.

Hospital trains

Wounded men came home through the ports and went inland by rail. Early in the war the Army tried to buy space in commercial Pullmans and found it could take two weeks to clear a consist. Purpose-built hospital cars followed: ward, ward-dressing, kitchen, and the later self-contained unit car (berths, kitchen, dressing room) that could cut off a commercial train without breaking care. Zone of Interior procurement ran about 380 cars. Smithsonian figures from Clarence McKittrick Smith put returning wounded at 2,475 in January 1943 and a peak of about 57,030 in May 1945; Army hospital-train reports put that May movement around 47,000. Either way it was the peak month. A typical hospital extra from Stark General Hospital at Charleston ran about 190 patients with a staff of doctors, nurses, and enlisted attendants.

Hospital cars used the troop-sleeper carbody as a starting point. They usually ran in solid strings, on the order of fifteen cars. They are not MRS hospital trains in the theaters. Those stayed overseas.

Aboard

An extra was not a streamliner. Enlisted men ate in the bunk. The porter made the beds. The train might sit for hours in a siding while a freight with a higher symbol went by, or while a dispatcher fitted a port connection. Destinations were not always posted. Towns along the line met the extras with coffee and sandwiches; that part of the memory is real and does not need a speech. Card games, letters, and sleep were the work of a two- or three-day transcontinental. The tables below measure the volume. They do not measure how long a coach seat felt from Indiantown Gap to Camp Stoneman.

Camp Kilmer, August 1945

The biggest single organized movement this page can name came after Germany quit and before Japan did. On August 3–4, 1945, about 20,000 Army returnees left Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, on 31 trains: 331 Pullmans, 100 coaches, 41 kitchen cars. The same week, more than 250,000 servicemen and women moved in organized extras that took 726 Pullmans and 512 coaches. Demobilization, not induction, was the peak load on the troop sleeper. The monthly table for August 1945 is the last row on this page: 3,659 regular movements, 4,779 specials, 35,166 cars, 1,266,210 passengers, about 1.4 billion passenger-miles in that month alone.

Monthly movements, 1942–45

The series counts organized military passengers on regular trains and on specials, the cars used, and passenger-miles in thousands. It starts in March 1942, when the Transportation Corps’ reporting had settled, and runs through August 1945. A man who rode from camp to port and later from port to home is two passengers. The 44 million figure for the war is the same kind of count, stretched across three and a half years.

1942

Month	Regular trains	Special trains	Cars	Passengers	Passenger-miles (thousands)
March	845	1,183	15,762	406,859	451,808
April	991	1,459	19,364	517,311	589,093
May	1,161	1,361	18,283	494,678	550,295
June	1,400	1,385	20,908	485,766	524,840
July	1,703	1,684	25,787	600,745	670,376
August	2,042	1,893	28,391	714,192	804,150
September	3,024	2,496	34,068	875,420	1,015,939
October	3,304	2,445	31,577	887,054	997,106
November	3,092	2,898	36,276	973,246	1,120,933
December	3,075	2,444	27,662	857,836	962,481

1943

Month	Regular trains	Special trains	Cars	Passengers	Passenger-miles (thousands)
January	3,554	2,739	34,904	953,458	1,100,664
February	3,905	2,595	27,895	904,086	1,015,000
March	4,141	3,203	36,522	1,099,457	1,309,323
April	4,216	3,023	38,545	1,098,395	1,209,535
May	4,031	2,184	29,915	881,816	925,122
June	4,040	2,471	37,399	983,797	1,062,717
July	4,038	2,410	29,769	935,806	1,027,848
August	3,884	2,766	36,569	1,104,426	1,291,849
September	3,653	2,605	35,844	1,027,663	1,215,253
October	3,391	2,339	28,277	882,249	952,716
November	3,346	2,373	30,827	901,204	984,673
December	3,011	2,507	29,049	859,099	932,114

1944

Month	Regular trains	Special trains	Cars	Passengers	Passenger-miles (thousands)
January	3,170	2,489	31,314	888,416	1,034,033
February	3,023	2,613	29,718	908,550	971,334
March	3,433	2,924	35,426	1,084,589	1,242,167
April	3,318	3,214	34,008	1,070,810	1,201,963
May	2,858	2,277	27,028	848,953	831,842
June	2,615	2,349	26,557	815,726	814,087
July	2,812	2,180	26,075	778,216	870,923
August	2,880	2,558	27,540	838,551	904,517
September	2,901	2,784	30,109	920,370	1,088,956
October	2,644	2,797	27,779	869,297	1,002,912
November	2,683	2,723	24,660	756,692	842,806
December	2,689	2,987	24,311	761,178	845,027

1945

Month	Regular trains	Special trains	Cars	Passengers	Passenger-miles (thousands)
January	2,756	2,902	23,286	727,650	807,860
February	2,374	2,714	20,860	641,981	740,480
March	2,455	3,220	20,387	637,890	644,009
April	2,244	2,778	18,740	594,672	622,246
May	2,631	3,305	21,622	684,007	819,174
June	3,224	4,240	25,795	909,924	962,289
July	3,467	4,468	27,979	1,032,758	1,097,040
August	3,659	4,779	35,166	1,266,210	1,399,307

Passenger-miles are thousands. August 1945 is the last month in the series as printed here. The above data is from Don DeNevi's "America's Fighting Railroads, A World War II Pictorial History."

After V-J Day

The extras did not stop on September 2, 1945. They reversed. The August 1945 row is the homecoming, not the draft. Troop sleepers stayed in Army service into 1947, then went to the secondhand market. The Interstate Highway Act is 1956 and had nothing to do with why the wartime extras ended. They ended because the war ended. What ended later was ordinary intercity passenger service, on the 1950s page.

The Green River photograph on this page is September 8, 1956. Union Pacific Northern 809 is still heading an eastbound extra that the caption calls a troop train. Korea had an armistice. The Cold War still moved men by rail. That is the afterlife of the wartime extra, not a 1944 consist. The 1940s decade—last steam, the diesel flood, the 1945 car orders—is Railroads In The 1940s. The war railroad that made the extras possible is Railroads In World War II.

Sources

Almost 44 million armed-services passengers by rail, December 1941–June 1945. About half of Pullman’s ~7,000 sleepers in troop service, spring 1943
Office of Defense Transportation contract: Pullman-Standard 2,400 troop sleepers; ACF kitchen cars (first wartime order 440 / 400 delivered as USAX K-100–K-499, October 1943–March 1944). First 1,200 sleepers USAX 7000–8199, October 1943–March 1944. Second sleeper and kitchen cuts, 1945–46
ODT, Civilian War Transport. 1,977 passenger-train cars received 1942–44 of 5,150 requested, including about 1,600 troop sleepers and kitchen cars
Troop sleeper: 29 enlisted + Pullman porter; three-high berths; sheets daily. Kitchen car: Army cooks, two coal ranges, about 250 men, mid-train
Hospital cars, Zone of Interior, about 380. Clarence McKittrick Smith / Smithsonian: returning wounded 2,475 (January 1943), peak about 57,030 (May 1945). Army hospital-train reports about 47,000 that May. Stark General Hospital extras, Charleston
Camp Kilmer, August 3–4, 1945: about 20,000 returnees, 31 trains, 331 Pullmans, 100 coaches, 41 kitchen cars. Same week more than 250,000 in organized movements (726 Pullmans, 512 coaches)
Wardlow, Chester. The Transportation Corps: Movements, Training, and Supply (United States Army in World War II). Regular vs. special trains; hospital cars; POW routings. Monthly series as long printed on this page
About 98 percent of military personnel and 91 percent of military freight by rail. About 97 percent of military passengers in 1944
Military Railway Service: overseas military railroads, not domestic troop extras
Postwar: Army sale of troop cars into 1947; conversions to baggage, express, refrigerator, caboose, and MOW

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