North Platte Canteen

The North Platte Canteen (also known as the Service Men’s Canteen in the Union Pacific Railroad station at North Platte) was a railroad stop manned by local citizens of North Platte, Nebraska, United States that operated from Christmas Day 1941 to April 1, 1946. Its purpose was to provide refreshments and hospitality to soldiers who were traveling through the area on the way to war during their ten- to fifteen-minute stopovers. It was located along the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad.

The history of the canteen can first be traced back to December 17, 1941. Just ten days after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, men of the 134th Infantry Regiment of the Nebraska Army National Guard were on their way from Camp Joseph T. Robinson near Little Rock, Arkansas to an unknown destination. Rumor had it that the train would arrive at 11, but by noon it hadn't shown up. After another false alarm, the train finally rolled in around 4:30. By this time, at least five hundred relatives and friends of local servicemen showed up at the depot.

Eventually the train arrived and the crowd cheered, but they weren't members of the 134th. The crowd gave the soldiers the gifts and food that was originally meant for their own sons and wished them off.

The reason that the train stopped in North Platte was because the town was a designated tender point for steam trains. Stopping the train allowed for the train crews to relubricate the wheels, top off the water levels in the tanks, and other things for maintenance of the locomotive. This practice continued until the Union Pacific Railroad switched to diesel locomotives.

Of the group of people that were originally at the depot on the seventeenth, twenty-six-year-old Rae Wilson, a drugstore sales girl witnessed the hospitality. Her brother supposedly was to be on the troop train as a company commander. As she walked away from the train that evening, she had an idea to meet all the trains that went through North Platte and give the soldiers the same type of sendoff. The next day she suggested that the meeting of soldiers become a permanent occurrence. She even wrote a letter to The Daily Bulletin:

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