The orphan train movement, a sweeping attempt to protect homeless, poor and orphaned children in a time before social welfare or foster care. Organized by reformers in the Eastern United States, the program swept children westward in an attempt to both remove them from the squalor and poverty of the city and help provide labor for farms out west. Between 1854 and 1929, up to 200,000 children were placed on the trains and adopted by new families. But though many children did r