OGDEN — Once hundreds of Army hospital railroad cars rolled through Ogden taking wounded soldiers from the Pacific Coast to Bushnell Army Hospital in Brigham City. Now one car has made a permanent stop here.
An 85-foot-long car, built in 1945 in St. Charles, Mo., by American Car and Foundry, sat in the Smith & Edwards yard at Farr West for at least 40 years before Bert Smith donated it to the Utah State Railroad Museum at the old Ogden Union Station. A second hospital car still sits in the Smith & Edwards yard.
A group of volunteers, headed by Ogden dentist Mike Burdett, raised about $50,000 to move the car to the museum and put in thousands of hours restoring it. Now it is probably the best-restored hospital car left in the country. Museum executive director Bob Geier said he knows of only one other car in the nation, a much-less-restored car in South Carolina.
The car is open for public viewing during the Ogden station's regular hours, Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sundays, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
The car was one of 200 ordered during the war, with 100 made in 1944 and 100 made in 1945. Two of the cars played an important role during a wreck on the Lucin Cutoff in 1944 when a passenger train ran into the rear of another passenger train, killing 55 and injuring many others. Fortunately, the two hospital cars were in the lead train and their doctors and nurses were able to care for the severely injured and transport them to Nevada hospitals.
Inside the car are artifacts from World War II Ogden donated by the Weber County Chapter of the American Red Cross, including uniforms, sewing kits the chapter made for servicemen, pictures and scrapbooks.
The car's main ward held 30 bunks for men wounded so severely they couldn't sit up. Six bunks are in the car for psychiatric patients who were restrained by heavy canvas mesh webbing.
Burdett said he "couldn't believe how much stuff was inside the car and neither could Mr. Smith." Since the car was jammed with storage goods, most of its interior electrical and plumbing was left untouched, he said.
Smith told Burdett he originally brought the cars up from the Tooele Army Depot at least 40 years ago with the idea of using them for storage. The other car is unrestorable and parts were taken from it for the restored car. Both cars were used at one time as guard cars for trains transporting nuclear material around the country.
"I get a kick out of how they used the technology of the day to run the cars," Burdett said. "They used steam from the engine to brew coffee in the kitchen, sterilize the bedpans and heat the car." The kitchen has a coal-fired stove for cooking. The car has a bunker underneath that holds two tons of ice for cooling. Melted ice water was pumped up to radiators in the ceiling and fans blew the cool air into the car.
"Today, everything would be electric," he said.
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