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| Last updated on August 8, 2025
Soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 35th Division board cars at Camp Robinson, Ark., on December 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The era of the troop train had thus begun.
U.S. Army Signal Corps. photo
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Wood sheathed cars into the 1940’s.
The caption to the photograph betrays a saddening lack of historical perspective.
Troop trains were a fixture of domestic U.S. military movements during WWI. When I was a kid on Long Island one could still see vestiges of railroad sidings from that time at various abandoned military camps around the island.
One of many historical developments that made the American Civil War a watershed event in so many ways was the first-ever domestic marshaling of railroad resources for military purposes. Troop trains were a significant part of railroading during that war.
It is both useful and important to get our facts straight.