Day 10: The Idaho Merci Train Boxcar

Saturday

 

The Merci Train, which I often go on about, gave a boxcar to Idaho State, that boxcar is kept in the state capital, Boise. It is preserved in the Transport museum, which is within the Old Penitentiary Museum near the State Capitol. So I decided to see where it was and what else was interesting there. I drove into Boise, past the Capitol and arrived at the museum. With the museum is a geology museum and a number of preserved or renovated buildings, which makes it a very pleasant little area. First stop was the Geology museum, which holds some very nice rock and mineral samples, it also enabled me to buy a field guide to the areas we are travelling to, as well as a pan for gold panning, which is on the plan for this trip.
Next the Old Penitentiary Museum and the boxcar. The museum was open, but unfortunately the transport section was closed. The sign said that it was closed due to “security, preservation and renovation issues”, but the man at the ticket office said it was because of funding cuts. Not to be put off I went to have a look. The transport museum was housed in the old shirt factory, which had windows. I could look through the windows and see inside and sure enough there was the Merci Train Boxcar, neatly displayed, but inaccessible. I did however manage to get a few pictures of it through the rather dirty windows, as well as some pics of the building and prison area. If I had taken the time to actually go into the Capitol I could have seen some of the artifacts from the Merci Train, one of which is a copy of a Greek statue of the Goddess Nike, the same statue that Nike used as inspiration to create their ‘swish’ logo (so they say, but I think they just wanted to copyright the tick symbol). All in all it did make for a pleasant trip out in the nice September sunshine.