Boxcar - Passenger and Wartime Use

Passenger and Wartime Use

The boxcar has been used to carry passengers, especially during wartime. In both World Wars, French boxcars known as forty-and-eights were used as troop transports as well as for freight; in World War II by first the French forces, then the German forces, and finally the other Allied forces. In addition to soldiers, the Germans transported prisoners in crowded boxcars during the Nazi regime. The same transportation was used by the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s, when over 1.5 million people were transferred to Siberia and other areas from different countries and areas incorporated into the Soviet Union.

The United States used troop sleepers to ferry U.S. soldiers through North America during World War II. These cars were both based upon boxcars and intended to be converted into boxcars after the war was over.

Hobos and migrant workers have often used boxcars in their journeys (see freighthopping), since they are enclosed and therefore they cannot be seen by railroad-employed security men ("Bulls") or police, as well as being to some degree insulated from cold weather.

The French called their troop-carrying boxcars "forty-and-eight" (quarante et huit, often written 40/8) because they were rated by the army as capable of carrying forty soldiers or eight horses. The name was adopted by veterans of such transport in forming the Forty and Eight veterans organization.