Or did it even carry both passengers (i.e. POWs, Japanese guards) and serve as a cargo transport? In the film, it appears to have at least 80 total seats for passengers and the last train car serve as a carrier.
shareThe train was going to pick up the injured prisoners who built the bridge so it would at least had enough empty seats for them.
shareI heard talk of an agreement that a train would transport the sick prisoners; but I didn't hear anybody say it would be this train. And "going back" on a single-track line with poor communications and limited visibility is a really bad idea (unless you like the risk of a train collision:-).
shareI didn't get any clear message one way or the other about the train from the film itself. I suspect the train's appearance we see was as much to make the crash "look good" as it was to "make sense" ...so I didn't think real hard about it.
In peacetime at least, the "first" train would have been largely ceremonial and quite different from the trains that would follow. It would have been full of bigwigs, and would have carried their luggage. Maybe that's what this one was too.
EDIT after another watch a day later: The radio message received and decoded by Joyce shortly after most of the team set out hiking through the jungle said explicitly it would be a "special" train and would be full of some combination of "troops and VIPs".
According to the radio message the team received, the train would be carrying troops and Japanese VIPs, which is what made the train such a plum target. Obviously, a 2nd train would come along later, stopping near the camp, before crossing the bridge, to pick up the sick and disabled. That first train was on a ceremonial run, carrying enemy "brass."
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