They have graciously shared the pictures with us. The work of art is a copy of the original sculpture named, "Winged Victory of Samothrace", which is housed at The Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Each man and his 39 traveling companions had barely enough space to sit down and they had to fit their bodies in rows to have enough room to lie down for sleep. / You live so close to the end / Texas are you my friend? There were no seats, no windows, no toilets, and no sleeping or dining accommodations. The Merci Train was a train of 49 French railroad box cars filled with tens of thousands of gifts of gratitude from at least that many individual French citizens. In addition to the photographs of the cars, the viewer will also find significant facts about each state's boxcar, photos of the gifts (The Merci Train played an important, but little known (The French, however, were not the only people of Europe to receive food from the 1947 Friendship Train, nor were the people of France the only ones to express their gratitude to the people of America in a meaningful way; soon after the first shipload of donated food arrived in Italy (Also, sometime later, the people of The Netherlands expressed their gratitude to America by sending a gift of a large carillon, which is now located near the National U.S. Marine memorial in Arlington. I have read that the Netherlands, Belgium, and other countries also benefited from the Friendship Train.Mr. The sculpture is on display within the Idaho State Capitol building in Boise. The drawing was adopted as the official symbol of the French Merci Train Committee, and a plaque of the drawing was placed on each of the Merci box cars. A collection of artifacts displayed too fragile for physical display and whereabouts of other Merci Train boxcars. To view photos of any of the surviving boxcars, visit the "Merci Boxcars by State" link at the top of the page, then click on the links to the individual states. Idaho - (5/13/15) Illinois - (7/12/07) Indiana - (1/19/19) Iowa - (3/1/17) Kansas - (3/14/17) Kentucky - (6/29/14) Louisiana - (5/13/15) ... Miss Hill receives a response from J. Monaghan to her query about a wedding gown from the Merci Train to be presented to the bride of a WW2 veteran who fought in France.

You are welcome to plan a guided tour program and they can include a visit there.I recently received, as a gift from the author, and read a wonderful novel for Junior High school age children about the history of the Friendship Train. For information on who to contact in your state, see that state's page in this web site.A description of all of the gifts that were in the box cars would fill many books, and the stories of the origins of those gifts would fill many more. These photos were taken on the occasion of a March 2011 visit to the Florida Merci boxcar by John & Sue Irving and Bob & Sharon McElroy, friends of The Merci Train history from Oregon. Linda Baten Johnson is a person who loves to tell stories and a master of the art of weaving together the facts of history and the fictional characters she has created to help her make the history memorable to her audience. Other content on this site, such as images and/or photographs, may be protected under separate copyright. According to the Idaho State Historical Society, Idaho's boxcar spent time on display at the Capitol building, after which it was put in storage at Gowen Field. 50 images 3D computed with Remake (exported as .fbx) 3D post-processing with blender - Idaho Merci Train boxcar - Hi Res - 3D model by Merci Train (@mercitrain) [fd1b33c] Explore Highlights