Side Shot Saturday - New Thread

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.

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.

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?

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.

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. 

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 . . .