Hello All, In this thread feel free to post pictures of any HO scale Circus equipment you may have or are building. I am putting together a freelanced 30 car Ringling train using some commercially produced items as well as kits and scratchbuilding. I move at a snails pace sometimes, but when I have something new, you'll see it here! Hope you enjoy.... First, Walthers produced copies of the cars Ringling used when they purchased 25 ex-Army hospital cars in 1946. These cars were red for the 1947 season, but were painted aluminum thereafter. These are long out of production metal/wood kits that make nice models. RBBB #1 Advertising car Stock car #30(carried horses and other "lead" stock) Generator car # 47 Performers' car # 43 More to come....
Working on Stock cars for the train. There will be 8, 3 elephant and 4 lead stock. Being switched at the shops..... Elephant car(on left) Horse car The show created what were called "tunnel" cars as well. The cars were used only a couple seasons in this configuration as the need to jack the cars for clearance, (top and bottom had to line up perfectly) for the special wagons that rode in them. Holiday on Ice used cars like this when they were on rail. Til next time..... Johnny
That is a great job on some beautiful cars. Are these some type of kit or all kitbashed? I know someone who did an N scale train like this and practically every car was a major kitbash as the circus cars are all unique in some way. I have heard that the "long" circus flat cars are 70 feet. They do not use the 89 foot flat cars. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Than ks. Johnny Ripp: Very nice train here! :thumbs_up:
early circus cars were 40 to 50 ft long then came a few 60ft and finally they were 70 and 72ft long the modern day cars are 85ft trailer train flats there is a book out called "Show Trains" by Fred Dallenger that has some great pictures of both early and the transition of the development of the circus flats
Love to see the pictures. I'm EVER so slowly churning out the present-era RBBX, and I'd love to do her in her full 55-62 car length, somewhere in there anyway. Which is 3 stock cars built from baggage cars, approximately 16 89ft flats, and the rest will be approximated by Walthers cars that look close. (for example, RBBX has a sereis of sleepers with doors in the center of the car. A diner is standing in, since the side kitchen door is offset, but close. We'll see about the interior...) Trailers are being built out of Athearn 20ft smoothside containers. FRACK those things are hard to find
