70 years ago, the December 1945 issue of Radio Craft carried this previously secret image of the radio car of FDR’s wartime train.

It noted that the car, known as “No. 1401” was a converted passenger-baggage coach, and from this car, e ran a large part of the country’s war activities. It was equipped with wire and radio equipment that made it possible to telephone anywhere in the United States, carry on a radio teletype conversation “in virtually unbreakable code” at 100 words per minute, send and receive messages to ships at sea, or send and receive telegraph messages.

The article noted that the teletype machine was routed through a scrambler “which puts it into a code difficult to break because of its lack of uniformity.” When the train passed through a tunnel, the sending was automatically halted until the train re-emerged.

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