In the first decade of the 20th century, the need for training people in first aid and accident prevention became urgent as the number of accidents, particularly in the mining and railroad industries, grew to epidemic proportions. Though not alone, the Red Cross began addressing this problem under the direction of Clara Barton as early as 1903 but it was not until 1910 that the organization, then under new leadership, launched a training program in first aid that quickly became national in scope and the leader in the field.

The need to disseminate first aid instruction rapidly throughout the country prompted the Red Cross to experiment with using railroad cars as mobile classrooms. Mabel T. Boardman, secretary of the Red Cross and one of its most powerful leaders at the time, initiated this program in 1910 by writing to Robert Todd Lincoln, a personal friend and president of the Pullman Company, suggesting that his company donate a car to the Red Cross for classroom use. Lincoln, son of the 16th president of the United States and Secretary of War in 1881 when Clara Barton campaigned for American ratification of the Geneva Convention for protection of the war-injured, agreed to Boardman's request and in November 1910, the Pullman Company delivered a railroad car to the Red Cross. This Red Cross Instruction Car No. 1, as it was called (pictured on page one), was a wooden sleeper car built in 1881. After retrofitting it, the Red Cross put it into service providing instruction at first almost exclusively to coal miners. During 1911, its first full year in operation, this car traveled some 25,000 miles delivering first aid instruction to over 15,000 men. Shortly thereafter, the Red Cross expanded its program to include railroad workers and purchased a second car from the Pullman Company. With the success of the program clearly established, the Pullman Company donated another car in 1913 and for a time all three cars traveled about the country, hitching rides on various railway lines and providing first aid instruction to an ever-expanding number of industries and individuals. Then, in 1916, fire destroyed the purchased car and the following year the first car was deemed no longer safe and was sold. With the entry of the United States into World War I, the Red Cross cut back on its public instruction in first aid to concentrate on its more directly war-related activities. As a result, the Red Cross terminated its railroad instruction program and sold its remaining first aid car in 1918.

Interestingly, World War I actually prompted the Red Cross to develop a whole new way to use railroad cars, this time as medical laboratories to help combat the outbreaks of contagious diseases that were occurring with great frequency under wartime conditions throughout the United States. In 1917, the Red Cross purchased and staffed four Pullman cars with expert bacteriologists who traveled primarily to army cantonments, naval stations, and other troop centers where they aided in the control and prevention of such diseases as influenza, meningitis, and pneumonia. According to reports at the time, local conditions improved so dramatically wherever these cars were deployed that the military eventually asked that three of the cars be turned over to the U.S. Public Health Service for exclusive military use during the war. The Red Cross complied with this request and transferred the fourth car to the Public Health Service immediately after the war.

In the early 1920s, the Red Cross considered reclaiming one of the laboratory cars to use in a revived first aid instruction car program but abandoned the idea because of the expense of making the conversion. In 1923, however, management changed its mind and purchased and reconditioned one car (the Louis Pasteur) for this purpose. Renamed Red Cross Car Number One, it went into service in late 1923. This time around, the first aid campaign was pitched to as large and heterogeneous an audience as possible. Local clubs, fire and police workers, and students of all ages attended classes on board the Number One. According to the 1924 Red Cross annual report, it traveled 9,646 miles on many different railway lines, visited 137 cities, and provided 147,176 individuals with first aid instruction. Then, in 1929, rising costs for upkeep caused the Red Cross to bring to an end its first aid car program a second time and Number One was sold. (As an interesting footnote, the Pullman Company gave the organization a scale model of this car in 1925 and for many years it was exhibited in the Red Cross Museum at National Headquarters. Today it is on display once again at the Red Cross Visitors Center at National Headquarters in Washington, D.C.)

Records indicate that specialized use of railroad cars during World War II may have been limited to two "trainmobiles" that delivered services and comfort supplies to Allied armed forces overseas, much like the converted buses and trucks, called "clubmobiles," that provided doughnuts and coffee to the military. One trainmobile, operating in the Persian Gulf area, consisted of an engine, a freight car containing cooking and refrigeration equipment and storage areas for games, athletic equipment, stationery, cards and other supplies, and a caboose that served as living quarters for three Red Cross women who traveled onboard. This train made stops among a number of military installations strung out across Iran. A similar train operated in remote areas of Burma and India bringing entertainment and refreshments to servicemen in hard-to-reach jungle outposts.

During the Korean War, with the Red Cross designated as the official civilian blood coordination agency for the armed forces, the organization joined with several railway lines in using railroad cars as traveling "bloodmobiles." One such partnership was with the Western Pacific Railroad which loaned the Red Cross a car in 1951 for use particularly in rural areas of the Far Western states. The Charles O. Sweetwood, named after the first employee of the Western Pacific killed in the Korean War, had been built by the Pullman Company in 1917 and had served for many years as an executive car for lease by business clients. It contained five bedrooms, a lounge, dining room, kitchen, and an open air observation deck at the back. The Red Cross used four bedrooms for collecting blood and the fifth as an office and testing lab. The lounge became the reception area and the dining room was used to serve refreshments to donors after they had given blood. Refrigerators in the kitchen were used to store the blood until it was transferred to other trains for transport to military installations. Four Red Cross nurses and a porter traveled with the car while at each stop Red Cross volunteers and local physicians assisted with the blood collection. During its almost three years of service, the Sweetwood traveled over 225,000 miles and collected 25,000 pints of blood for military use. In November 1953, several months after a truce halted the Korean War, the Red Cross had no further need for the car and returned it to the railroad company.

Other railroads that operated blood-collecting cars during the Korean War included the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, Great Northern, and the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad Company. (Probably aware of the earlier gift of the Pullman Company, the Western Pacific donated a model of the Sweetwood to the Red Cross in 1952 and it is also on display today at the Red Cross Visitors Center in Washington, D.C.)

Quite possibly the last incidence of unusual use of railroad cars by the Red Cross occurred during disaster relief efforts following Hurricane Camille that hit the Gulf Coast in 1969. As retired Red Cross Director of Disaster Operations, Enso Bighinatti, recalls, he was preparing to fly to Louisiana to oversee relief operations when he was contacted by a vice-president of the Illinois Central Railroad with an unexpected offer of help. During an oral history interview for the Red Cross in 1999, Bighinatti said that the caller told him "the president of the railroad wants to loan you his personal railroad car. You could use it for your office when you get down there."

Bighinatti was quick to accept the offer particularly because the railroad also had access to telephone service on the spur line where the car would be located at a time when most communication lines were down. And "Bighi" did not stop there. Could the railroad also provide a couple of freight cars for storing Red Cross relief supplies since most warehouses in the area had been destroyed? Yes, that could be arranged. And what about a dining car to feed the staff since nearly all the local restaurants were boarded up? Yes, that could be made available along with a kitchen staff to operate it. And what about an emergency power supply? Yes, a rail-mounted generator in Louisville, Kentucky, used once a year for auxiliary power during the Kentucky Derby, could be sent down. And, for several weeks, the Red Cross relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Camille was commanded from a railroad spur in Louisiana, where, as Bighi recalls, "I was having meetings with all the government people and everyone else that you have to have close contact with and we had the telephone link that was absolutely a life saver. But," Bighi states laughing, "I got ribbed all through that operation because people kept calling me the Chief Conductor!"

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