Merci Train - Resources
This section of the website is a repository for documents pertaining to the Merci Train. The documents are dvided into categories. There will be a brief description of each document. Click on the link to view the document.
3/11/22
We recently learned that Glen Houlton, Director of Restoration for the Hawaiian Railway Society, has passed away after a long battle with cancer. Glen had held the part time volunteer Director position for 40 years. Glen graduated from Kailua High School, located on the island of O’ahu. He then spent three years and 10 months in the US Navy, being discharged in 1963. From January 1971 until January 2006, he was an Electronics Mechanic for the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility where he repaired and overhauled components of the MK 68 Gun Fire Control system along with several other systems and computers. Glen worked many years on the Hawaii Merci Car restoration project which he supported with his resources and his time.
10/31/12
We have received the images from Eric Olson, mentioned in the first 10-21-12 blog below, and one of those images of a 1949 newspaper article is displayed here and there are selected other images now displayed on the Washington, D C page of this website. Mr. Olson is hoping to soon find a museum that will accept his donation of the original documents and display images of all of them on the museum's website thus making them available for interested persons to read right from their computer screens
Click on the image below to view full size
10/21/12
A young man who lives in North Carolina and whose grandfather was chairman of the Merci
Train Committee, which had the responsibility for distributing the Washington, DC allotted gifts of
gratitude from the people of France. Mr. Salvind Olson, the grandfather, had kept copies of many of the
documents that his committee generated in connection with the project and letters from recipients of the
gifts. A folder containing those copies has been passed on to Salvind's son, who has passed them on to
his son, Eric.
After meeting Eric, as my wife and I traveled from our summer home in Ohio to our winter home in
Florida, he has sent me a CD containing digital images of more than 100 of the documents. I hope to soon
be able to post at least a selection of the images on this website, the documents reveal some
interesting facts about the Merci Train and activities that occurred in the days leading up to and
following the train's arrival in America.
Visit our website and this page often to be kept up on the latest discoveries about the historical
event.
5/25/12
In a recent letter from our friend and fellow researcher, Pamela Todd of Red Lodge, Montana, Pam shares a discovery that she made at the State Archives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania early in 2012. One archived document that she read reported that the town or city of Middletown, Pa had requested of the governor of Pa to let them permanently have the Merci Train boxcar to display there in Middletown, because the little boxcars had been manufactured in the town of Middletown by the Middletown Car Company. The railroad car company was a prosperous business in the 1870s and 1880s and, according to one document that Pam read, "built thousands of the later called 40 & 8 boxcars"; one order alone from the French National Railroad was written for 5,000 of the cars! It was reported in 1949 newspaper accounts, when the Merci Train arrived in New York Harbor, that the Merci Train boxcars had been built between 1875 and 1882. The Middletown Car Company also built cars for Russia and Chile, Argentina, and many other countries as well over the many years it existed. A note at the top of the highlighted web page below says that the company was a supplier of "wooden boxcar... And other stuff".
I (Earl Bennett) have long suspected that the boxcars had been manufactured in the United States but had never located any substantial evidence to support my belief, but now we have it, thanks to the faithful folks who archived the supporting evidence so many years ago, and to our Pam Todd, who has helped us locate a lot of other historical evidence and artifacts about the Merci Train history. To read more about the Middletown Car Company and its business history, including a devastating fire which destroyed most of its manufacturing plant on Christmas morning in 1886, go to the Middletown Car Works/Co. website.
Of course there would not be anyone left alive who worked on building the now more than 125 year old boxcars, but descendants of those workers might still live in the town, and have old photographs and even memories of hearing the stories of their ancestors who did work at the plant. From what I gleaned from reading the posting at the above website, it seems that the company stayed in Middleton into the 20th century. Anyone who finds more information is asked to share it with us by emailing Roxanne Godsey.
Restorations
This section deals with documents relating to the restorations of the boxcars.lindabatenjohnson.com Clicking books will lead you to a description of her book which can be purchased through Amazon.