The orphan trains had been a pretty common thing. Generally, the trains went to the Midwest or Southwest; a lot of them had been sponsored by Catholic organizations that ran foundling hospitals.
A foundling was an orphan child, literally a child who had been found, because he had been left on the doorstep. The sisters would raise them and educate them, and would then send them out West to Catholic families who had requested them (depending on their age, either as employees or as young adoptive children). There were objections in the US because the sisters were letting Indian families adopt European-descended children.
The program actually was taken up by cities, because there were lots of orphans, not necessarily Catholic - and they weren’t necessarily orphans, but simply abandoned children. Sometimes it was the death of a parent, sometimes dysfunction (such as alcoholism), sometimes who knows what.
The orphan trains had a varied outcome but most of the orphans certainly seem to have done well.
The famous Mormon naturopathic physician, Dr. John Christopher, whose formulae are known to all health food enthusiasts, came to Utah on an orphan train.