Messenger of Peace Chapel Car

Messenger of Peace was a chapel car built in 1898 of yellow pine, seventy feet long and thirteen feet high on its trucks [1]. A raised ridge in the rounded roof held clerestory windows for light and air, the front compartment housed the minister, and the rest was one open room for services, paneled inside with white oak [1]. It was the fifth chapel car the American Baptist Home Mission Society built, paid for by women of the church, who gave it the nickname the Ladies' car [1]. Outfitted, it held seventeen rows of pews, an organ, a lectern, and a phonograph from Thomas Edison [1]. It served from 1898 to 1948, mostly in Washington, and passed through at least twenty states, hauled by lines like the Great Northern and Northern Pacific at little or no charge [1]. Dwight L. Moody preached from it once, and it later carried him toward St. Louis when he was dying [1]. In 1949 it became the Ritz-Limited Cafe in Snohomish, and a local man bought it for a dollar when it faced scrap [1]. It sits at the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, listed on the National Register in 2009 [1].