The idea for the Merci Train began with French railroad worker and World War II veteran Andre Picard as a thank-you to the United States for the $40 million in food and other supplies sent to France and Italy in 1947. More than six million citizens of France and Italy contributed gifts including dolls, statues, clothes, ornamental objects, furniture, and even a Legion of Honor medal purported to have belonged to Napoleon. The gifts were loaded into French forty-and-eight boxcars, 4-wheel covered goods wagons whose name referred to a carrying capacity of 40 men or eight horses. Built beginning in the 1870s as regular freight boxcars, these cars were used by the French army in both World Wars, later by the German occupation in World War II, and finally by the Allied liberators. In 1949, France sent 49 of these boxcars to the United States, one for each state then in existence and one for Washington, D.C. and Hawaii to share, with each car carrying five tons of gifts donated by private citizens as an expression of gratitude for the liberation of France. The Merci Train answered the American Friendship Train, more than 700 boxcars of supplies sent by Americans to France in 1947.