As many as 25,000 railway employees gave their lives in the two world wars, including from York’s railway companies: around 2,236 employees of the North Eastern Railway in the First World War, and more than 1,000 employees of the London North Eastern Railway in the Second World War.

The railways not only kept the country running during wartime, they also played a vital part in transporting the wounded home, where they could be dealt with in relative peace.

The story of the ambulance train is explored this coming Saturday in a series of free talks at the National Railway Museum, York.

Ambulance trains evacuated the wounded or sick from casualty clearing stations to stationary or base hospitals or to a port of embarkation from where they were conveyed by ambulance ship to the UK.

The first-ever hospital train, the Princess Christian, was built and transported to South Africa to be used during the Boer War during 1899-1902. The train supplied the wounded with clothing and toiletries and removed the more seriously injured to Cape Town. The Princess Christian carried 7,548 badly injured soldiers.

In the First World War, the UK Flour Millers’ Association presented the Red Cross with two ambulance trains, specially built and equipped, constructed by Great Western and Great Eastern Railways. The trains were working in France during 1915, with another train, converted from ordinary French rolling stock. The three trains carried 461,844 patients.

It was then decided that a number of standard trains should be built by various British railway companies to War Office specifications; 30 were eventually sent to the military overseas, mostly in France and Flanders.

Alison Kay, assistant archivist at the National Railway Museum, said: “The standard ambulance train consisted of 16 cars, including a pharmacy car, two kitchens, a personnel car and a brake and stores van. It accommodated about 400 lying and sitting cases in addition to the RAMC personnel.

“Each ward car contained 36 beds in tiers of three. The middle bed folded back to enable sitting cases to use the lower one, thus ensuring flexibility. Apart from feeding casualties and staff, the kitchens could supply fifty gallons of hot water at any time. The train generated its own electricity for lighting and driving overhead fans and all cars were steam heated.

“Boulogne was the principal port of embarkation for the wounded, and on one occasion it took only 19 minutes to unload 123 casualties from a train. The main disembarkation ports in the UK were Dover and Southampton.

“From February 1915 to February 1919, Dover dealt with 1,260,506 casualties, unloaded 4,076 boats and loaded 7,781 ambulance trains.

“The patients were then sent by one of the 20 home standard ambulance trains, or by an emergency ambulance train, to a receiving station where they were transferred to road vehicles, usually by volunteer first aiders, which took them to their destination hospital.”

Ambulance trains were also used during the Second World War in England and Scotland to transfer the wounded to the many temporary and permanent UK Military Hospitals for further recuperation and treatment.

Most of these military hospitals were located in rural locations so that servicemen would not suffer unduly from air raids by the German Luftwaffe. The main-line train companies actively helped the Army, Navy and RAF with supply and conversion of the ambulance trains and during the war.

There were about 30 ambulance trains in operation. Each carriage was painted with a red cross on white background on the roof and side so that enemy planes would identify them as hospital trains and not troop or supply trains. Under the Geneva Convention this prevented them becoming a legitimate target.

In Britain, civilian nurses worked aboard hospital trains during the evacuation of patients from cities that were bombed by the Luftwaffe.

Ambulance trains were also used during the Korean War in 1953.

The talks, Coming Home From The Front Line, take place from 2pm to 3.40pm on Saturday.