Almost ready: Work on restoration of Utah’s ‘Merci Car’ reaches its home stretch
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- A 2025 photo of Utah’s “Merci Train” boxcar. Restoration work on the car is ongoing.
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- A 2025 photo of Utah’s “Merci Train” boxcar. Restoration work on the car is ongoing.
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- Utah’s “Merci Train” boxcar is pictured Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, on the north end of the Union Station grounds.
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- Utah’s “Merci Car,” photographed Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024.
Last spring, Utah’s “Merci Car” was transported from Ogden’s Union Station to Cheyenne, Wyoming, for restoration work to be completed by Mike Pannell’s Vintage Rail Restorations. Now, the boxcar — one of 49 train boxcars gifted to the United States by France following World War II — is inching closer to its Junction City return.
Originally constructed during the late 19th century, the Merci Car is a “forty-and-eight” boxcar, a name denoting the number of men (40) or horses (eight) that could be contained inside for transport. The boxcars were used by the French Army to transport troops, horses and freight during both World Wars. They were also used by the German forces occupying France during WWII to transport prisoners of war and captured civilians to concentration camps.
Utah’s car was part of the 1949 Train de la Reconnaissance Française, or “Merci Train,” which contained boxcars packed with gifts that were transported from France to all 48 states — Hawaii and Alaska were not yet part of the union — as well as the District of Columbia (which shared a car with the Territory of Hawaii), in recognition of American donations/assistance after the war.
For Pannell, playing a role in preserving that history has been a moving experience.
“It means an awful lot because the history behind these cars is, by a majority of people, completely forgotten about or unknown,” Pannell said. “The actual military history and the significance of the cars and why they were donated and everything else is largely forgotten. So, from that point of view, it’s quite a sobering project.”
Before being shipped off to Wyoming, Utah’s Merci Car had been in Ogden dating back to 2002. Before that, it resided for decades at Salt Lake City’s Memory Grove Park, where it was damaged by weather and vandals.
Despite that and the years of weathering since, the car arrived for restoration in better condition than some similar boxcars that have come Pannell’s way. However, restoring it has nonetheless been a massive undertaking.
“There is more work than we envisaged because, initially, we were going to try and save as much of the original wood as we could,” Pannell said. “But it turned out that with the graffiti that it suffered in Salt Lake and the general rot of the wood itself, we decided to replace everything.”
Still, Pannell reports that work on Utah’s Merci Car is ahead of schedule.
“We’re probably 75%, maybe 80% complete on the body of the car and we are, I’m guessing, about 70% complete on the underframe of the car at this point,” he said.
Throughout the restoration process, Pannell has relied on people like Jeff Livingston, who spearheaded the restoration of Hawaii’s Merci car, and Merci Train expert David Knutson, for their knowledge and help.
Upon completion, the car will have retained its original steel, most of its original roof and some of its original wood. When the work is done, Pannell hopes to see the car displayed alongside Wyoming’s “Merci Car” before it’s returned to Union Station, perhaps as early as May.
“Our intention is to have this one loaded up on a truck and take it down to the Legion in town and have both of them together just for one afternoon, because it’ll be the only time this will ever happen,” Pannell said.
Pannell added that the restoration contract runs through August of this year.