1947 Friendship Train

In the November 2016 issue of CTT on page 15 is a review of the cars being made by ETS in O gauge.  The cars are also shown on the ETS (www.ets-trains.com) website.

Rolland

I think the ETS cars represent the 49 cars of the Merci Train, which carried thank you gifts from France for the support we provided in 1947 with the 700 cars of the Friendship Train.

 I believe MTH did some Friendship Train cars, but only a few.  Check MTH's website.

Hey there. I have been researching this train for about 10 years. I have accumulated dozens of original newspaper archive photos, magazine articles, and images from a large scrapbook at the Truman Library-along with a number of newsreels and videos regarding the train. I am currently working with Micro-Trains to help produce a 12 car train using information I have collected. They are in N scale, but images likely would still be helpful to you. I also have created a Facebook page for the train, and I upload information about the train as I get it. I am happy to share info that I have (I am hoping to produce a large historical representation of the train for my own layout in N-scale. So far I have identified over 100 different cars for it.). My facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/The-1...in-1006333632784840/ 

Although MTH has produced some cars...they are only fairly accurate in colors on them (almost all the images available are black and white, but I found a couple color photos at the Truman Library and have since found a couple color videos from the big Hollywood send off of the original train. It does not have many of the cars from the train-mostly the ones used for that parade and the original theme box cars. 

Good luck, and feel free to reach out to me and like my page for more info.

Daniel

If we are talking about the French train, there is one car in Hawaii.  I think it was for both Washington DC and Hawaii. Hawaii wasn't a state at that time. It is still here but in kind of bad shape. I did a short story about it in OGR,  Don

Don...those cars are from the Merci Train (Thank You Train) which was in response to the Friendship Train donation from the USA. Since the US efforts were sent on railway cars that were offloaded of their goods and sent on cargo ships...the original cars were painted back again or had banners removed and returned to regular service.  The Merci Train sent actual railway cars and many of those still exist in various states of condition. Many of the gifts from the train can be found in museums too. I own personally 2 gift items from the Merci Train as well as one of the original heralds that decorated the cars.