It was during the First World War that trains began to be used as mobile medical facilities along the Western Front and other subsidiary theatres of the War. Ambulance trains were organised by the Royal Army Medical Corps with onboard surgical wards and essential medical supplies. Trains were used to evacuate over 100,000 British casualties from the battlefield at Flanders in one month of 1914 alone.[2]

These trains were able to connect with hospital ships at French channel ports in order to repatriate wounded British soldiers back to England. There are numbers of extant journal entries from those who experienced the hospital trains of this era, many being referred to as "Great White Hospital Trains", as the carriages were often painted white or red and white