The Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History is a museum in Kennesaw, Georgia , that contains a collection of artifacts and relics from the American Civil War , as well as from railroads of the state of Georgia and surrounding regions. The centerpiece is the General , a steam locomotive used in the Great Locomotive Chase in April 1862.
8-570: The archives house a significant collection of company records, engineering drawings, blueprints, glass plate negatives, photographs and correspondence from various American businesses representing the railroad industry in the South after the Civil War. The archives also contain a growing collection of Civil War letters, diaries, and official records. The museum (then known as the Big Shanty Museum ), in
16-621: A barn that once housed a cotton gin, initially opened on April 12, 1972, appropriately on the very date which the chase occurred one hundred and ten years prior, with the General as the centerpiece. Later, the theme expanded to include Civil War pieces as well. In the mid- to late 1990, the property of the former Glover Machine Works was to be demolished. The buildings on this site, having sat vacant for nearly 50 years, still contained records, locomotive parts, machinery for locomotive construction, and at least one complete locomotive, which had only seen
24-453: A few months of active service before being repossessed. Descendants of the Glover family, who had retained ownership of the firm and its collection, in turn donated the collection to the museum in 2001. With the acquisition of the rather large collection of artifacts, the museum closed in late 2001 and began a massive expansion to house them. During the construction, a large box of plywood boards
32-624: The Merci Train , were 49 World War I era " forty and eight " boxcars gifted to the United States by France in response to the 1947 U.S. Friendship Train . It arrived in Weehawken, New Jersey on February 2, 1949. The idea to send a "thank you" gift to the United States for the $ 40 million in food and other supplies sent to France and Italy in 1947 came from a French railroad worker, and World War II veteran, named Andre Picard. Donations from
40-818: The French army in both World Wars, and then later used by the German occupation in World War II and finally by the Allied liberators. In 1949, France sent 49 of those boxcars to the United States (one for each state and the Territory of Hawaii ) laden with various treasures, as a show of gratitude for the liberation of France. This train was called the Merci Train, and was sent in response to trains full (over 700 boxcars) of supplies known as
48-583: The Friendship Train sent by the American people to France in 1947. Each of the Merci Train boxcars carried five tons of gifts, all of which were donated by private citizens. The Train and all 49 cars arrived aboard the Magellan on February 2, 1949, with over 25,000 onlookers in attendance. On the side of the gift-laden French freighter was painted, "MERCI AMERICA". Immediately the trains were distributed amongst
56-480: The Merci Train came from over six million citizens of France and Italy in the form of dolls, statues, clothes, ornamental objects, furniture, and even a Legion of Honour medal purported to have belonged to Napoleon . The boxcars were " forty-and-eights " used during both world wars. The term refers to the cars' carrying capacity, said to be 40 men or eight horses. Built starting in the 1870s as regular freight boxcars, they were originally used in military service by
64-667: Was built overtop of the General to protect it. The augmented museum reopened in March 2003 as the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History. A further expansion was finished in 2007 to house the recently acquired French Merci Boxcar . 34°01′26″N 84°36′52″W / 34.0240°N 84.6144°W / 34.0240; -84.6144 Merci Train The French Gratitude Train ( French : Train de la Reconnaissance française ), commonly referred to as
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