Railroads In World War II: ODT, Record Traffic & Private Operation

Last revised: September 9, 2026

American railroads fought the Second World War as private companies. That is the difference from 1917. Export freight was already rising before Pearl Harbor. After December 7, 1941, the Office of Defense Transportation coordinated the map; management kept the keys. In 1944 the roads turned about 739 billion revenue ton-miles and about 93 billion passenger-miles—more traffic than in 1918, with fewer locomotives, fewer cars, and about 25,000 fewer miles of road. Gasoline and tires were rationed. The train took the freight and the people the highway could not.

The First World War, the car shortage, and federal control are on Railroads During World War I. How the United States Railroad Administration was staffed is on the USRA page. Troop movements by the month are on troop trains. The Depression, the streamliners, and the FT demonstrator are on Railroads In The 1930s. What follows here is the wartime railroad: Lend-Lease freight, the ODT, the 1944 peak, steam that still did the work, a diesel that the War Production Board would not fully release, and a three-week seizure in the winter of 1943–44 that was not a second USRA. V-J Day closes the page. The passenger orders of 1945 and the diesel flood after the war are the rest of the 1940s, not this war.

Forward painting by Dean Cornwell Pennsylvania Railroad 1944 annual calendar

“Forward.” A painting by Dean Cornwell for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s 1944 annual calendar.

On this page: At a glance · 1939–41 · Private operation · The ODT · The 1944 peak · More work, less plant · Steam, and a rationed diesel · Passengers and troops · December 1943 · V-J Day

At a glance

Item	Detail
European war	Germany invades Poland, September 1, 1939. American export freight already rising
Lend-Lease	Act of March 11, 1941. Destroyers-for-bases, September 1940
U.S. in the war	Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
Office of Defense Transportation	Executive Order 8989, December 18, 1941. Joseph B. Eastman, Director. Not a taking of title
First-track miles	233,670 (1940); about 226,696 (1945). Peak had been 254,037 in 1916
Revenue ton-miles, 1944	About 739 billion (Boyd/Stover 738.642; DeNevi series 740). 1940: 373 billion
Revenue passenger-miles, 1944	About 93 billion (Boyd/Stover 92.683; DeNevi 96). 1940: 24 billion
Carloadings, 1944	About 43.5 million
1944 plant	42,879 locomotives; 2,038,796 freight cars; 1,370,290 employees; $9.237 billion gross earnings
Average freight car, wartime	50.5 tons capacity. Average train 1,031 tons, 49.7 cars, 15.9 mph
Vs. 1918	ODT: about 22,000 fewer locomotives, 600,000 fewer freight cars, 18,000 fewer passenger cars—and more traffic
Military share	About 91 percent of military freight and 98 percent of military personnel by rail
Intercity freight share	No less than 64 percent through the war; 72 percent in 1943 (Jones)
Operating ratio	Record low about 67.5 percent. Roads repaid about $2 billion in debt
New locomotives, Class I, 1942–45	3,066: 1,891 diesel, 1,175 steam (Army Transportation Corps)
National seizure	December 27, 1943–January 18, 1944. Threatened strike. Army Chief of Transportation. Not a USRA
Interurban miles	2,687 (Hilton and Due, wartime remnant)
Closer	V-J Day, September 2, 1945. ODT wound down in 1946

Ton-miles and passenger-miles are billions. Mileage is the Stover / ICC first-track series. Information compiled September 9, 2026.

Before Pearl Harbor

Poland fell in September 1939. France surrendered on June 22, 1940. The United States was still formally at peace, but American docks and American rails were already in the war economy. Cash-and-carry, the destroyers-for-bases deal of September 1940, and the Lend-Lease Act of March 11, 1941 put food, steel, and munitions on trains bound for the Atlantic ports. Don DeNevi’s series puts revenue ton-miles at 333 billion in 1939, 373 billion in 1940, and 475 billion in 1941. That is a two-year jump of more than 40 percent before a single American division embarked.

The plant that took that freight was smaller than the 1916 peak and smaller than the 1918 war machine. First track stood at 233,670 miles in 1940. When the country entered, DeNevi counted more than 41,000 locomotives and about 2 million freight cars on a network already under 230,000 miles. Heavier cars, Centralized Traffic Control, and the memory of federal control were the 1920s and 1930s inheritance. The FT demonstrator of 1939 had proved a freight diesel. It had not yet replaced steam.

Not a second USRA

In 1917 the roads clogged the Atlantic terminals, the car shortage ran into six figures, and Wilson took the keys. That story is on the World War I page. In 1941 the companies wanted no sequel. They had spent twenty years determined not to be taken again. The Interstate Commerce Commission still held the rates. What the White House created, eleven days after Pearl Harbor, was a coordinator, not an operator.

Railway Age ran “What We Fight For” in 1942 and put the point in the industry’s own voice: the last two years of performance, it said, could not have been matched by a dictatorial bureaucracy. Lowell Thomas, writing on May 12, 1942, called the early-1942 surge a miracle and meant the private shops and the private timetables. The boast was not empty. The 1944 totals are below. The exception—three weeks of Army possession in the winter of 1943–44—is later on this page. It was a strike threat, not a car shortage.

Eastman’s office

President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8989 on December 18, 1941, creating the Office of Defense Transportation. The draft had been ready before the attack, which is why it says Defense and not War. Joseph B. Eastman, already an ICC commissioner and the Federal Coordinator of Transportation in 1933–36, became Director. The appointment was announced January 2, 1942. He kept management in private hands and left operating practice alone wherever he could. He did issue loading orders. Less-than-carload minima rose through 1942. A November 1, 1942, order pushed carload freight toward full capacity. Average merchandise loading, about 5.5 tons in 1941, ran 9 to 10 tons under those rules.

The ODT was the claimant agency for steel, cars, and locomotives before the War Production Board. It did not get what it asked for. For 1942–44 the office requested 311,500 freight cars and received 130,826; requested 4,159 locomotives and received 2,500; requested 5,150 passenger-train cars and received 1,977, including 1,600 troop sleepers and kitchen cars. Eastman died on March 15, 1944. J. Monroe Johnson succeeded him. The office wound down in 1946.

Serving The Nation painting by Dean Cornwell Pennsylvania Railroad 1943 annual calendar

“Serving The Nation.” A painting by Dean Cornwell for the Pennsylvania Railroad’s 1943 annual calendar.

The 1944 peak

DeNevi’s year series, the figures this page has long printed, are billions. Carloadings are thousands of cars.

Year	Revenue carloadings (thousands)	Revenue ton-miles (billions)	Revenue passenger-miles (billions)
1939	33,911	333.44	22.65
1940	36,358	373.25	23.76
1941	42,290	475	29.35
1942	42,826	637.99	53.66
1943	42,440	727	87.82
1944	43,500	740	96

Source: Don DeNevi, America’s Fighting Railroads. Boyd and Stover put 1944 at 738.642 billion ton-miles and 92.683 billion passenger-miles. Either way, 1944 is the peak.

Carloadings flattened after 1941. Ton-miles did not. Trains ran heavier and farther. The 1944 freight total was roughly double 1940. Passenger-miles more than quadrupled. The ODT’s own wartime comparison put 1944 rail passenger-miles 122 percent above 1918. It took the industry until 1966 to surpass the 1944 freight figure in a peacetime year. David Jones, in Trains for June 1994, put railroads at no less than 64 percent of intercity freight through the war and 72 percent in 1943. About 91 percent of military freight and 98 percent of military personnel moved by rail.

More work, less plant

The 1944 glance on this page is the wartime machine at full load: 42,879 locomotives, 2,038,796 freight cars, 1,370,290 employees, $9.237 billion in gross earnings, $27 billion invested in property. Average freight-car capacity was 50.5 tons, against 41.6 in the First World War tables. The average freight train hauled 1,031 tons in 49.7 cars at 15.9 mph. The operating ratio bottomed near 67.5 percent. Profits were strong enough that the companies repaid about $2 billion of debt.

They did it with less iron than in 1918. The ODT counted about 22,000 fewer locomotives, 600,000 fewer freight cars, and 18,000 fewer passenger-train cars than in the earlier war, plus a thousand fewer Pullmans. First track kept falling, from 233,670 miles in 1940 to about 226,696 in 1945. CTC, dating from 1927, let a dispatcher run a single-track district at something like three-quarters of a double-track railroad. Government steel helped extend it. Heavier rail, bigger cars, and the loading orders did the rest. Interurban mileage, 10,422 in 1930, stood at 2,687 in the Hilton and Due wartime count. What still ran was mostly freight.

Baltimore and Ohio yard in Cincinnati Ohio September 3 1945 Mikados and tanks on flatcars

Baltimore & Ohio’s Cincinnati yard, September 3, 1945, the day after V-J Day. Q-3 Mikados double-head reefers in the distance; tanks sit on flatcars in the foreground. Author’s collection.

Steam that still did the work

The FT had toured in 1939–40. Freight diesel was no longer a theory. Diesel engines were also wanted for ships, for the Military Railway Service overseas, and for the Allies. The War Production Board rationed them. Class I roads put 3,066 new locomotives in service in 1942–45: 1,891 diesel or diesel-electric and 1,175 steam. Santa Fe and a few others kept taking FTs. Most of the tonnage still moved behind a boiler. The diesel encyclopedia is diesel locomotives. The 1940s conversion after the war is not this page.

WPB discouraged new steam designs. Pennsylvania’s J1 2-10-4s of 1942–44 followed a Chesapeake & Ohio engine. Union Pacific’s 4-8-8-4 Big Boys, first out in 1941, and Baltimore & Ohio’s EM-1 2-8-8-4s, Baldwin 1944–45, were the last great articulateds. Western Pacific took 4-8-4s modeled on Southern Pacific’s GS-6. Norfolk & Western kept building its own. Super Power itself is a 1920s idea, on the 1930s and steam pages. The wartime fact is that the last new steam and a rationed diesel ran in the same years, and steam still took the coal and the West End grades.

Milwaukee Road S-2 4-8-4 number 208 northbound freight at Techny Illinois December 1946

Milwaukee Road S-2 4-8-4 No. 208 with northbound freight at Techny, Illinois, December 1946. The Northern is a wartime design still earning a year after V-J Day. American-Rails.com collection.

Passengers and troops

In 1941, Jones wrote, about 89 percent of intercity travel was by car or bus and about 9 percent by train. By 1944 those shares were about 63 and 34. Gasoline, tires, and new automobiles were rationed. Coaches filled. The average passenger trip on the wartime glance is 75 miles, against 39 in the 1918 tables. About 650 million passengers a year is the round figure this page has long used. Pullmans and coaches were drafted. The ODT’s 1,600 troop sleepers and kitchen cars were a drop in that bucket.

Military personnel are a different count. The glance figure of about 11 million soldiers in a thirteen-month stretch is the wartime public number. The month-by-month tables—regular trains and specials, cars, passengers, passenger-miles from March 1942 through August 1945—live on troop trains. Hospital trains, transcontinental movements, and life aboard belong there. This page only needs the fact that the Army moved by rail, and that the civilian coach was full at the same time.

Baltimore and Ohio 4-6-2 5244 boarding passengers at Ann Street Station Parkersburg West Virginia

Baltimore & Ohio 4-6-2 No. 5244 (P-6a) boards passengers at Ann Street Station, Parkersburg, West Virginia, on the Ohio River Branch, circa the 1940s or early 1950s. The depot is gone; the line is CSX. John W. Barriger III photo.

Three weeks, not twenty-six months

The national exception lasted from December 27, 1943, to January 18, 1944. Operating brotherhoods had called a strike for December 30. Roosevelt ordered the Army to take possession. The Chief of Transportation held the paper. Crews stayed on the jobs. Trains ran. The settlement came quickly and the properties went back. It was not McAdoo’s USRA. Title did not change in any lasting way. The companies did not get the rate increase they wanted to match the wage bill.

A few roads had already been seized one at a time over local labor fights. The Toledo, Peoria & Western went under ODT management on March 22, 1942, and stayed there until October 1, 1945. That is a footnote to the national story, not a second federal railroad.

V-J Day

Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945. Japan surrendered on September 2. The Cincinnati yard photograph on this page is the next morning: reefers, tanks on flats, Mikados still double-heading. The ODT closed out in 1946. Gasoline came back. The automobile came back. Executives knew the wartime passenger shares would not hold. They ordered lightweight cars anyway—New York Central’s 1945 purchase, with the 1944 cars already on the books, is often cited as the largest single passenger-car order an American railroad ever placed. Pennsylvania spent in the same spirit. Those trains, the California Zephyr, and the diesel fleet that finally replaced steam are the rest of the 1940s. Whether the orders paid is the 1950s. Named-train encyclopedias stay on Streamliners.

The war railroad is simpler. With a smaller plant than in 1918, under a coordinator instead of a director general, American railroads moved the largest traffic they had ever moved, kept the title, and paid down debt. That is the record. The First World War had taken the keys. This one did not.

Sources

DeNevi, Don. America’s Fighting Railroads: A World War II Pictorial History. Missoula: Pictorial Histories Publishing, 1996. Year series for carloadings, ton-miles, and passenger-miles, 1939–44. Plant at entry (locomotives, cars, miles). Debt repayment; operating ratio
Stover, John F. The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads. New York: Routledge, 1999. First-track 233,670 (1940); about 226,696 (1945). 1944 traffic as used with Boyd
Boyd, Jim. The American Freight Train. Osceola, Wis.: MBI, 2001. 1944: 738.642 billion ton-miles; 92.683 billion passenger-miles; 42,879 locomotives; 2,038,796 freight cars
Office of Defense Transportation. Civilian War Transport: A Record of the Control of Domestic Traffic Operations, 1941–1946. Washington: GPO. Executive Order 8989, December 18, 1941. Equipment requested vs received, 1942–44. Comparison with 1918 plant. Loading orders, 1942
Eastman, Joseph B., Director, ODT. Appointment announced January 2, 1942. Died March 15, 1944. Succeeded by J. Monroe Johnson
Lend-Lease Act, March 11, 1941. Destroyers-for-bases, September 1940
Railroad seizure, December 27, 1943–January 18, 1944. Army Chief of Transportation. Threatened strike December 30. The Transportation Corps: Responsibilities, Organization, and Operations (CMH Pub 10-19)
Toledo, Peoria & Western, Executive Order 9108, March 21–22, 1942; relinquished October 1, 1945
New locomotives, Class I, 1942–45: 3,066 (1,891 diesel, 1,175 steam). CMH Pub 10-19
Jones, David. “The Joy And Thunder Days.” Trains, June 1994. Intercity passenger shares 1941 and 1944; freight share 64 percent, 72 percent in 1943. PRR J1; WP 4-8-4s after SP GS-6
Hilton, George W., and John F. Due. The Electric Interurban Railways in America. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960. 2,687 miles, wartime remnant
Military freight about 91 percent, military personnel about 98 percent, by rail. Freight ton-miles 373 billion (1940) to about 737 billion (1944); passenger-miles 23 billion to about 95 billion
Railway Age, “What We Fight For,” 1942. Lowell Thomas, May 12, 1942
Pennsylvania Railroad calendars: Dean Cornwell, “Serving The Nation” (1943) and “Forward” (1944)

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