The United States Military Railroad carried men, sustenance, supplies, and ammunition from City Point to Union armies spread across thirty miles of war-torn Virginia. Near Meade Station, one of the railroad's major waysides, supplies were transferred to wagons and hauled along the Prince George Court House Road to the front one and a half miles away. Begun in June 1864 and dismantled in 1865, the railroad carried as many as fifteen trains with a total of 1,400 tons of supplies each day. As the siege lines stretched westward, engineers extended it to more than twenty-two miles of track, and it also allowed Federal forces to move men quickly to points along the line.