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Post by harborbelt70 on Jun 15, 2024 10:13:36 GMT
We are trying a new format in which this will be a continuing thread anyone can contribute to without it being kick-started every week. In fact, I didn’t think I’d have anything to start this off but purely by coincidence there is one odd thing.
I am not big on circus trains and cars although I know many others are. I really like circus- or carnival ride-themed operating accessories including tilt-a-whirls and roller coasters but simply haven’t got space for them. However, I made a small space for this once it caught my eye and there’s a little story behind this side shot: When OGF started, there were founders like Brian Vaill who were very keen on 1/43 scale die cast models. I only had a couple that populated the parking lot of an O scale K-Line Starlight diner that is a display item with working lights, sound and smoke: Brian and others put me in the picture about the very much wider range of scale diecast vehicles.
Then, that arch-influencer and YouTube videographer Emile thebigcrabcake posted a photo of the above car model and I was very intrigued by it. I thought that this Caddy must have been a kind of ice cream van that broadcast the arrival of the “Knie” circus in U.S. towns and cities. I’m no linguist and it never occurred to me that what I thought was the peculiar or phonetic spelling of “Sensationnel” (Sensational) was actually in a foreign language, i.e. French. I got one off eBay in its original box but there was no info with it about the real car; the model was made somewhere in Euro-land.
Fast forward to this last week when a pal of mine who knows about my recent interest in 1/43.5 scale CIWL passenger cars told me he’d found an Aladdin’s Cave of these Euro-built cars and other models in Geneva, Switzerland. He identified a train set made by Marklin that relates to the “Knie” circus: It turns out that Knie is a kind of Swiss national institution based in the mainly French-speaking region of Switzerland around Geneva and still going strong after more than a century: I’ve never found any information about the prototype of the Knie Kaddy but I now surmise that if it existed, it must have been exported from the U.S. to Switzerland sometime in the 1950s and re-fitted with bullhorns and a custom paint scheme as an advertising gimmick.
Incidentally, this is not the only time one of Emile’s excellent photos has induced me to track down a strange model, but I’ll reserve the tale of a COVID-era wild goose chase he inspired for another time.
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Post by healey36 on Jun 15, 2024 14:00:54 GMT
That’s a very nice model, harborbelt, especially in its attention to trim details. Some manufacturers have an excellent staff of folks capable of painting the chrome trim that is part of the casting…this looks to be one of them. I had an interest in building a circus train for a long time, but I only recently gave up on it and sent my accumulation of completed and untouched wagon kits west to another collector. I had a crate-full of K-line, Wardee-Jay, and Circus Craft kits that would have been terrific fun to build, but there’s just too much in the project pile to contemplate. Hopefully the fella I sent them too makes use of them. It’s unfortunate that the American circus has pretty much died out. The Feld family, current owners of the Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey brand are distant cousins of my wife. Back when my kids were young, they would send us tickets for the show whenever it passed through Baltimore. The train would be brought into the old B&O station at Camden, where the animals would be detrained and walked along Pratt Street for 3-4 blocks to reach the Civic Center where the shows were held. I think my kids liked seeing that more than the spectacle of the three ring show. We also used to go see the small circuses that would come to Westminster for a couple days each summer. Clyde Beatty, Cole Bros., Hoxie Bros., and a few others would alternate years. These guys would put up a “Big Top” and a few smaller tents for the menagerie and the side-shows. Where RB/B&B had 25-30 elephants, these small circuses might have a half-dozen or less, and there was just a single ring. I thought my kids might be put off by that, but they loved it just the same, maybe more. Something about shuffling through the sawdust, sitting up close to the performers, and the smell of fresh roasted peanuts was akin to sensory overload. The field where they set everything up was across the street from my parents’ home, and when I was a teenager, these circuses would offer a few bucks for any help they could get. I frequently spent a day putting the bleachers up, or spreading a truck-load of sawdust over the tent floor. Watching them use an elephant and a series of blocks-and-tackle to raise the tent was pretty heady stuff. That, unfortunately, is all gone now and unlikely to ever reemerge. I’m not sure what killed it, be it the cost, falling attendance, or the PETA folks, but some combination of circumstances made operations untenable and a big American tradition went to vapor. Hoxie Brothers circus, early 1970s, from my parents' front lawn.Starting some new projects...new pics next week.
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Post by harborbelt70 on Jun 15, 2024 15:14:18 GMT
That’s a very nice model, harborbelt, especially in its attention to trim details. Some manufacturers have an excellent staff of folks capable of painting the chrome trim that is part of the casting…this looks to be one of them. It’s unfortunate that the American circus has pretty much died out . . . I’m not sure what killed it, be it the cost, falling attendance, or the PETA folks, but some combination of circumstances made operations untenable and a big American tradition went to vapor. Starting some new projects...new pics next week. The maker is identified as Vitesse, which I understand is a French company that started in Portugal. They did a lot of high quality die cast cars and Cadillacs of the 1950s era seem to have been popular with European manufacturers. My car is marked as being "Retro Vitesse" which I understand means it is a re-issue with some more realistic features. They used to come with many of the chrome-plated parts (bullhorns and licence plates for example) on a sprue but mine was completely assembled. Here's another couple of views:
![VitesseRetro.jpg](//storage.forums.net/7085221/thumbnailer/Y0YaWicSjRomPQzoBUDs.png)
When I read up on Knie a lot of the story was about how it has survived peoples' changed habits and ideas about entertainment. Its Big Top attractions have changed to something more like Cirque Soleil which I have seen at theme parks and I know ran in Las Vegas, but Knie relies on a traditional family base, school outings and the like. I guess that being a Swiss national institution helps.
I look forward to seeing your pending project. My UP 2066 effort goes on and on.
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Post by healey36 on Jun 15, 2024 15:58:46 GMT
Feld Entertainment, owner of the Ringling Bros. brand, has also developed an acrobatic show, "The Greatest Show on Earth", which travels under the RB name. Seems a sorry replacement for an actual circus, but if that, "Monster Jam", "Disney on Ice", and a few other productions can keep them going, well, I guess that's better than nothing.
So many things in the pipe I don't even know where to start. One thing for certain, we'll be working multiple projects at once, and not all of them are trains.
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Post by harborbelt70 on Jun 15, 2024 16:07:02 GMT
So many things in the pipe I don't even know where to start. One thing for certain, we'll be working multiple projects at once, and not all of them are trains. I think I once saw a ship on the water you painted in a very small scale. While I'm also interested in ships at my age I can't handle more than one project or indeed more than one task of any kind at the same time. And they all take so long to finish . . .
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Post by af3020 on Jun 15, 2024 16:35:57 GMT
Circuses.....I'm afraid I don't have much to offer either in terms of the trains or pictures I've taken of other trains but there is one item that matches - the KBN Raubtier Wagen. Raubtier translates out as either predator or beast of prey. It was supposed to be a circus car. It was one of a series of cars offered by KBN in the 1930's. What is interesting is all of the other boxcars/reefers in the series had reporting marks on either the lower left or right side which corresponded, in some sense, to a place which might have been the car's point of origin. The only car missing this is the Raubtier Wagen and, when you think about it, a circus would probably consider the entire country home.
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Post by healey36 on Jun 15, 2024 20:24:17 GMT
So many things in the pipe I don't even know where to start. One thing for certain, we'll be working multiple projects at once, and not all of them are trains. I think I once saw a ship on the water you painted in a very small scale. While I'm also interested in ships at my age I can't handle more than one project or indeed more than one task of any kind at the same time. And they all take so long to finish . . . Yup, the ships are very cool, but quite small, and the eyes ain't what they used to be. Here's a few others that I did over the last few years: ![](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52220752806_7ce06f3d71_b.jpg) ![](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51254729745_642cb0790f_c.jpg) ![](https://live.staticflickr.com/4769/25949418848_d7e0d93959_c.jpg) ![](https://live.staticflickr.com/4332/36417853993_0df34f433e_c.jpg) It's a bit of an obsession, if I'm honest, and now with the advent of really nice 3D prints, there's literally thousands of classes out there. I just received a batch of 1/4800-scale (half the size of those above). I'm not sure I have enough left in the tank to make a job of those, but we'll see. Ships, train repairs, cardboard Christmas houses, furniture refinishing/repairs, the '67 Healey Sprite, the wargames, and a book manuscript...yeah, I'm a bit overloaded. Maybe a weekly post on Sideshot Saturday will keep me motivated.
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Post by healey36 on Jun 15, 2024 20:30:10 GMT
Circuses.....I'm afraid I don't have much to offer either in terms of the trains or pictures I've taken of other trains but there is one item that matches - the KBN Raubtier Wagen. Raubtier translates out as either predator or beast of prey. It was supposed to be a circus car. It was one of a series of cars offered by KBN in the 1930's. What is interesting is all of the other boxcars/reefers in the series had reporting marks on either the lower left or right side which corresponded, in some sense, to a place which might have been the car's point of origin. The only car missing this is the Raubtier Wagen and, when you think about it, a circus would probably consider the entire country home. That's a terrific car, af, from a line (KBN) I am largely unfamiliar. Was there an affiliation between KBN and Bing?
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Post by seayakbill on Jun 15, 2024 22:26:02 GMT
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Post by rtraincollector on Jun 15, 2024 23:57:39 GMT
here is a side shot ( out of focus( I just can't seem to get it in focus ) of my 400E with the Stephen Girard Passenger cars behind it.
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Post by af3020 on Jun 16, 2024 0:33:19 GMT
Healey36 - no KBN - Karl Bub Nurnberg, and BW -Bing Werke (earlier logo was GBN - Gebruder Bing Nurnberg) were two of a number of German toy manufacturers who called Nurnberg home. KBN bought BW in 1932 and for one year they turned out trains with the mixed logo of KB and BW with the B on the side (see the crane car below). The original owners of Bing objected and the dual logo was dropped the following year. ![](https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/render/00-yhf6E4wlYj7FDv7XyhSrJJ2CFVjTIIYK2Kq38W7DADM0kQTKMyiqOzmuVttRTEd85cYdfB3jRoL_VZILaXEufg?cn=THISLIFE&res=large&ts=1712410517)
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Post by harborbelt70 on Jun 16, 2024 5:52:49 GMT
K-Lines super scale Berk that most likely broke the company. Bill That's a very nice steamer and you are lucky to have one. It must pre-date my getting back into the hobby - I've never actually seen one of these except in photos and I don't recall knowing about it at the time K-Line was still going.
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Post by seayakbill on Jun 16, 2024 13:07:36 GMT
K-Lines super scale Berk that most likely broke the company. Bill That's a very nice steamer and you are lucky to have one. It must pre-date my getting back into the hobby - I've never actually seen one of these except in photos and I don't recall knowing about it at the time K-Line was still going. Here is the story on my K-Line scale Berk. I bought the Santa Fe Berk along with the Union Pacific super detailed Mikado after the K-Line Bankruptcy judgement. After the judgement this is what happened, my 77 year old brain may be a little hazy about the time line, it was quite a few years ago. Lionel was allowed to use some of the K-Line tooling for 2 years but they had to finish the assembly and ship the K-Line club SD75 for club members that had paid in advanced. I did receive the K-Line Club Santa Fe SD75 from Lionel. Sandikan was awarded the K-Line tooling for monies owed to them by K-Line and Lionel was to return to Sandikan the K-Line tooling after the 2 years that they were allowed to use some of the tooling. This is where it gets a little hazy, Sun Distribution ( I think that was the name ) was allowed to keep the remaining Berks and Mikados that they had in their possession for monies owed to them by K-Line. I heard that Sun Distribution had the steamers and contacted them about purchasing one of each. They responded and told me I could purchase the Berk and Mikado for $250 each, which I did, heck of a deal. Not long after this fiasco had been put to rest Sandikan declared bankruptcy. Sandikan sold the K-Line tooling to Kader Industries of Hong Kong ( Williams by Bachmann's parent company ) Kader Industries has sold a few pieces of tooling to Atlas. Bill
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Post by harborbelt70 on Jun 16, 2024 18:46:54 GMT
here is a side shot ( out of focus( I just can't seem to get it in focus ) of my 400E with the Stephen Girard Passenger cars behind it. Is this the MTH one that you mentioned you were thinking of swapping out the ProtoSound1 with a different motor/system? If so it seems absolutely fine to me although there is always the PS1 risk of a battery/scrambled chip issue . . .
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Post by rtraincollector on Jun 16, 2024 19:24:33 GMT
here is a side shot ( out of focus( I just can't seem to get it in focus ) of my 400E with the Stephen Girard Passenger cars behind it. Is this the MTH one that you mentioned you were thinking of swapping out the ProtoSound1 with a different motor/system? If so it seems absolutely fine to me although there is always the PS1 risk of a battery/scrambled chip issue . . . yes, and that is why, For time being I'm just going to keep as is, I can always swap it out later.
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