Question for the folks with troop sleepers, if I my information is correct these cars had bathrooms with hoppers that opened in the normal fashion to the tracks.

Ours has a poured concrete basin where the stool would be. They didn't have showers did they?

No showers, but they did have a sink.

Sure looks like a shower to me

Most likely a post-troop sleeper modification. Was your car ever in work train or MOW bunk car service?

Troop sleepers did not have showers.

Howard P.

There were 29 soldiers and one porter on every car. It would have to be one huge tank for all of them to take a shower. LoL.
They did not originally have showers, however they may have added one in MOW service.

I agree with Howard. Any shower would be in a bunk car conversion.

Pullman didn't put showers in their first-class sleeping cars. [except Master Rooms in the Broadway, Century and Crescent, and the Drawing Room in the CZ obs.]

Phil Mulligan

hytwr1 do you have anymore photos of the car you can post? Where is it?

Bet it was a smelly ride with no showers and lots of smoking. But most people were probably accustomed to that in the 40s.

Well, no trains (except as already noted) had showers. Normally, one did not workup a sweat traveling. But, if you felt like you had to clean yourself up, you washed what you could without stripping all your cloths off.

Smoking, I don't know what the rules were in the troop sleepers.

And anyway these passengers were (young) enlisted men going off to or returning from war.

This is one of those weird bits I’ve had to look up over the years. The “Saturday night bath” was no joke, especially where water was in short supply, so most people cleaned up their sweaty parts daily with a washcloth, soap and bowl of warm water. That’s what Dolly Parton means by “we’d wash down as far as possible, then up as far as possible, then when the boys left we washed possible.” The extreme version of sponge bathing was WWII South Pacific service, where all but the biggest ships granted enlisted men one helmet of desalinated water per day in which to bathe, wash underwear and shave. Salt water was freely available, but tended to make skin feel sticky almost immediately. Captains got creative about steering into rain squalls to rinse off anyone who wished.

Incidentally, should you find yourself in a long shower line, water conservation area or time-limited campground, the best thing you can do is grab a decent handful of shaving cream and rub the suds in, starting with your hands, hair, face and arms and working around what clothing you have to leave on till the last minute. It’s surprising how much soot and grease will come off with very little effort and you’ll be able to rinse thoroughly or hit the previously inaccessible areas properly, rather than trying to grow extra arms to lather, scrub and rinse all at once.

As for the shower base, there’s a chance the car could have served as officers’ country or the infirmary, but as others have said it’s likely a later alteration.

Even today, soldiers aren't expected to clean themselves daily when travelling. I know this personally, from airplane and wheeled vehicle movements I took part in when I was still an Army officer.
Yes, people today don't realize what 'clean' meant to people in the 30s and 40s. Taking a weekly bath wasn't unusual at all even in cities back then.
I was talking to a dermatologist about it a while back and he said he thought the rise in skin issues like eczema was related to people taking daily baths/showers. He felt back when people didn't clean off the oils each day, they had less issues. "It was stinkier then but people didn't have the skin problems back then, though..."

My mother, born in 1918 and who grew up on a northwest Iowa farm, told about the weekly bathing. The water came from a well, it was heated on the kitchen stove. They washed themselves down standing in a galvanized tub; father took the first bath, then his wife, and then the two daughters (eldest first). Water was added, but not replaced between uses.

They knew about indoor plumbing because they had relatives they visited in Sioux City.

I think in troop train days, any stop of a decent length the GIs were chased off the car for PT. So I imagine it could be aromatic in the cars in hot weather.

In coal country, union miners either showered at the end of each shift or got paid a few cents an hour extra for not having a wash house if there wasn’t enough clean water at their mine.

Soldiers have often been stuck with no way to bathe, but the human instinct to clean up is so strong that any body of water not actively being shelled or sniped begins to look like a bathtub. Friends who served in the Gulf before many facilities were built kept asking for baby wipes because they’ll do a decent cleanup if you scour off with sand.

Nonetheless, the post-WWII surge in appliance sales, expanding county water systems vs. wells that could, in drier days, run low in summer, and advertising for a dozen supposed faults like “B.O” and wrinkled clothing decreased tolerance for honest sweat.