Only 48 more to go One of the Gratitude Train’s 49 boxcars is shown being lifted off a ship in 1949 just arrived from France. The photo is part of the Capitol Museum’s Gratitude Train exhibit.

The newest exhibit at the Capitol Museum harks back to a time when the United States and France were the best of friends.
They even exchanged presents then — on a big scale.
In the wake of War World II, Americans sent hundreds of boxcars filled with food, fuel and clothing to people in France and Italy. The French returned the favor, loading up boxcars with some 250 tons of gifts for the American people.
The 49 boxcars were placed on trains and delivered to the then-48 states — with Washington, D.C. and Hawaii sharing a car between them. This goodwill gesture was christened the Gratitude Train — in French, the Merci Train.
Arizona’s boxcar made it to Phoenix on Feb. 17, 1949.
What it contained is no mystery. The Capitol Museum now has on display dozens of items unpacked from that simple French freight car.
The Gratitude Train exhibit’s grand opening is May 23, with a reception from noon to 1 p.m.
Exhibit items were chosen and arranged to reflect different themes, says Capitol Museum curator Brenda McLain.
One display showcases French industry. Another features art objects and heirlooms. For another, McLain says: “We chose those things we call gifts from the heart — children’s toys.”
Among them is a handmade doll.
Perhaps the most telling of gifts are the hand-made stars. They are simple cutouts, made of whatever materials people in a war-ravaged country had available.
“We have paper stars, leather stars and fabric,” McLain says.
One star on exhibit is made of white fabric. Many more stars are not on display. Though part of the Museum’s collection, they’re in storage.
Looking out across the exhibit, McLain says: “This is just a small percentage of the artifacts we have.”
As it happened, the entire load of that single boxcar ended up in the hands of the museum, as did the boxcar itself. In many other states, gifts from the Gratitude Train were freely distributed. Arizona took a different approach.
“When the train came in, it was put in the custody of the Arizona State Library,” says McLain.
The Capitol Museum — which came along later — is part of the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.
Library officials cataloged every item on the train. They are now part of a database that, when printed out, is more than an inch thick.
McLain used the database to help determine what to include in the exhibit. In some cases, it came down to what would fit — and what wouldn’t. She shows a visitor a large brass flower vase.
It’s trench art. That is, art crafted from objects left over in trenches from the First World War. The vase, McLain says, is fashioned from a 75 mm shell casing. The artist added a date and a name to the shell: 1917 Craonne.
“It commemorates the battle it was taken from,” McLain says. “This was from a person’s family and they chose to send it over as a thank you.”
The shell is big enough for a cannon. But the collection has an even bigger casing, McLain says. It was made into a bell. There wasn’t room for it in the exhibit.
A reminder from a later war can be found in another display. Here lies a small pink dance card, common to dance clubs in the 1940s. But, as used in the French Resistance, this card had another purpose.
“It was actually used by the French as a means of communication,” McLain says.
For one, the card identified the bearer as a member of the Resistance — but only to other members of the Resistance.
The postage stamps, displayed next to the card, were used to mail secret letters.
The gifts donated by French industry include a graceful terra cotta figurine of a woman and child. The company that made it never quite recovered from the war, going out of business in the early 1960s, McLain says.
Then there’s a crystal-clear glass ashtray, made by Saint-Gobain, now a company with a global reach.
“The glass company that made the ashtray also made the skywalk over the Grand Canyon,” McLain says.
The skywalk — the terrestrial equivalent of the glass-bottom boat — recently opened as a tourist attraction on the Hualapai Indian Reservation.
The collection’s largest item is the boxcar itself, a French 40 and eight, so-called because it could hold 40 men or eight horses. (Despite the name, McLain says, there’s not enough room for men and horses both.)
For years, the state had all but abandoned the boxcar, leaving it to waste away in the desert. It has since been restored. The boxcar can now be seen at the McCormick Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale, on permanent loan from the Capitol Museum.
The Gratitude exhibit itself is permanent. It will stay across the hall from another reflection on World War II — the U.S.S. Arizona exhibit. The two displays make bookends to the Second World War, McLain says.
One speaks to America’s entry into the war. The other to the appreciation shown by the people the U.S. fought for.