Unlike with today’s Covid-19 epidemic, railroads 100 years ago were unwitting culprits in spreading the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1920 since they were the principal mode of transportation. The unhappy convergence of the US entry into WWI with the flu’s outbreak during war mobilization allowed this to happen. Military training camps were among the first to be infected, with draftees brought in by rail & troops sent out by train to embarkation ports to be shipped to France and arriving with the flu. The disease disrupted war mobilization, such as coal mining resulting in off and on shortages of coal for railway steam power, home heating, generation of electricity, and industry. Still, railroads, once put under US Government control, delivered heroic levels of service moving men & equipment for the war which forced them to adopt new methods of operations & to modernize rolling stock. TIME LINE 1917 April 1917: US declares war on April 6; officially entering WW! May 1917: Selective Service (draft) law enacted; of 4.8 million US servicemen in WWI, 2.8 million were draftees June 1917: First US troops arrive in France; they see first combat in October December 1917: US railroads nationalized under US Railroad Administration (USRA) 1918 Spring 1918: Flu starts sweeping US; first recorded case (March) in Kansas, spreads to Ft. Riley; then to other training camps with troops carrying the flu overseas March-June 1918: Flu’s first wave wanes by end of summer June 1918: Crash production begins of USRA designed locomotives & rail cars for the war effort August-early winter 1918: Second more deadly wave of flu strikes US & worldwide September-November 1918: Height of US combat in WWI November 1918: WWI ends November 11; US troops start return home by ship & rail, with the flu; 1919-1920 Spring 1919: Flu’s third wave underway, lasting into 1920—start of a decade of growing automobile travel competition for passenger trains March 1920: American railroads finally return to private control with end of USRA program. Flu Hits WWI Training Camps, Then Spreads by Rail: As US draftees & volunteers were mobilized and transported by rail, Army doctors in the Spring of 1918 began to see an influenza-like disease among soldiers. In January, a civilian doctor in Haskell County, Kansas reported strange respiratory activity there; by March, it spread to nearby Fort Riley, where within weeks 522 soldiers were in the Seattle: 39th Regiment headed to France wearing flu masks, 1918 TRACS & WHISTLES Page 5 camp infirmary. The flu spread from training camp to camp across the country and it came with troops being sent to France. In the US, 32 large camps each housed 25-50,000 troops. At the height of US overseas involvement the flu sickened 20 to 40% of all deployed Army & Navy personnel between September-November 1918. Flu Passes Through Army Ports of Embarkation to Sail Abroad: Ports of Embarkation were under Army command responsible for moving troops & equipment overseas. Railroads under USRA command brought men & material to POE’s. The two largest East Coast POE’s were New York followed by Virginia’s Hampton Roads. New Jersey’s Hoboken POE supplemented New York. Other East Coast POEs were Boston, Charleston, & New Orleans. San Francisco was the largest West Coast POE followed by Los Angles & Seattle. By the war’s end, Hampton Roads POE had undergone massive expansion, served by Virginia’s two major railroads, the Norfolk & Western and the Chesapeake & Ohio, both of which already had before the war huge coal piers and rail yards respectively at Norfolk and Newport News. Camp Stewart near Hampton Roads was the largest single embarkation camp of the war, with some 115,000 troops passing through. US Railroad Administration’s Role in WWI: In late December 1917, American railroads were nationalized & put under control of the US Railroad Administration (USRA) to impose coordination & efficiency to avoid “wasteful competition & duplication of effort” in mobilizing for war. All railroad stock was inventoried. Duplicate passenger train service was reduced by eliminating 250 trains from service that cleared the rails for vastly increased freight traffic for the war effort. Using new USRA standard designs, over 100,000 rail cars and 1,930 steam locomotives were produced to replace obsolete or rundown rolling stock that railroads were forced to replace. The USRA designed 12 new standard types of locomotives that were produced. The design team was drawn from the three leading rail manufacturers: Baldwin, Alco, and Lima. They designed 2-10- 2s, 2-8-2s, 4-8-2s & 4-6-2s, each in heavy & light configurations— plus 2-6-6-2 and 2-8-8-2 Mallets. Switchers came in 0-6-0 and 0-8- 0 wheel arrangements. The light “Mikado” 2-8-2 proved the most popular of USRA designs; 624 were built and allocated to 17 railroads. After the war ended, 641 more USRA Mikado’s were made. The very first USRA Mikado is preserved at the B&O museum in Baltimore. USRA designs represented high standards of construction that lasted until the end of steam. 40 Hommes et 8 Cheveux: Narrow Gauge Railroading for the Army: WWI forced the US Army to cope with unfamiliar narrow gauge railroads of France and the European war theater. Soon after arriving in France, American troops were put on small French cattle & box cars for the front lines; “40 hommes et 8 cheveux” was usually stenciled inside these cars, referring to their capacity to hold 40 soldiers or 8 horses. The small size of French rolling stock was an endless source of jokes. The US Army tried to prepare ahead for narrow gauge life at Virginia’s Camp A.A. Humphrey (today’s Ft. Belvoir) as well as at Camps Benning, Sill, Harrison, & Dix. Each one had a few miles of two foot wide narrow gauge “practice” railway on which to train combat engineers to lay track, build trestles, defuse booby traps and run steam locomotives to move troops & supplies. After the war, this rolling stock & track was scrapped or ended up aboard in mining & plantation operations. Canadian Rail Spread WWI Flu Too: Some examples include that of a Canadian National Railway troop train pulling into Calgary in October 1918, with the result that most of the Province of Alberta was soon infected with the flu. A more bizarre story involved Canadian rail transport from Vancouver to the Atlantic port of Halifax of 3,000 flu-infected Chinese laborers the British recruited for their “Chinese Labor Corps.” They were intended to free able bodied men on the British home front for military service. Then in 1918, with Russia out of WWI and in civil war after the Bolshevik’s overthrow the Tsar, Canada sent its 4,000-man, flu-infected “Siberian Expeditionary Force” by rail and ship to Murmansk & Arkhangelsk in Russia’s far east to bolster the ill-fated antiBolshevik forces there.
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