Three of these trains were ready by the spring of 1864, and they ran regularly--each taking a section of the journey--between Atlanta and Louisville, a distance of 472 miles. They consisted, apparently, in part of specially-built and in part of adapted rolling stock, the large open American passenger cars, with their greater freedom from internal fittings than ordinary European railway carriages, lending themselves specially to the purpose. In the converted passenger cars the carrying of the stretchers through the end doors was avoided by removing two windows and the panelling underneath them from the side of the car, and making an opening 6 ft. in width which could be closed by a sliding door. Each train provided five ward-cars (converted passenger cars) for lying-down patients; a surgeon's car (a passenger car from which the seats had been removed, with partitions and fittings for the accommodation of the doctor and his helpers); a dispensary car (in which an ample supply of medicines, instruments and appliances was carried); an ordinary passenger car for sitting-up patients or convalescents; a kitchen car (divided into kitchen, dining-room and store-room); and a conductor's car. The kitchen car was supplied with a small cooking range, boilers, and other requisites for the feeding of from 175 to 200 patients. The cars were warmed and lighted in winter, and special attention was paid to ventilation, so that Dr. F. L. Town, of the United States Army, was able to report of them:--"In visiting these hospital trains, the air is found sweet and pure, the wards are neat and inviting; and it may unhesitatingly be said that men on hospital trains are often as comfortable and better fed and attended than in many permanent hospitals." The trains had distinguishing signals which were recognised by the Confederates, and none of them were ever fired on or molested in any way. One, at least, of the trains was despatched daily from the vicinity of the field hospitals. The services rendered by them during the last eighteen months of the war were of the greatest value. It has been said, indeed, that the combined effect of all the provision made for the care of the sick and wounded and their speedy recovery--including therein, as one of the most important items, their prompt removal and distribution by rail--was to ensure for the Federals the retention of a force equal in itself to an army of 100,000 men. No single fact could show more conclusively the _strategical_ as well as the humanitarian value of railway ambulance transport.