Doing research on my local circus tycoon - and in a Billboard article it mentions his personal private Pullman car - the "Riverside".
This is from a 1917 article, so we're 'probably' talking steel frame, some truss rod reinforcements, either steel or wood sheathing....
But it had to be quite the car. The guy owned the Cole Bros. circus, a local bank, a large furniture company, two houses...and travelled with the circus in that private car with his family.
Anybody ever heard of that car? Perfunctory search came up empty.
I'm guessing it had to be rather similar to the "Loretto" that just moved to Colebrookdale.

I can't find anything on the car, but what is the name of the tycoon in question?

William Washington Cole (1847-1915)? https://www.circusesandsideshows.com/ci ... ircus.html

Actually, Cole began the program of leasing his name after he became famous, and one of the first leasees was this outfit - J. Augustus Jones, formerly the Jones Bros. Circus. Jones leased the Cole name 1915-1918 until his untimely death in 1918 (kicked by his own circus horse loading the stock cars). His photo beside his train is in "The Circus Moved by Rail" (Carstens). The Billboard article specifically mentions his private Pullman car by name, and that his wife and baby daughter lived in it when they were on the road. The 1917 season took them all over the west coast into California, Arizona and Texas.

During this period the show was named "Cole Bros. World Toured Circus", as opposed to "Cole Bros. Circus". After Jones died the show was split up, but the name was re-leased to different owners.

This story became rather personal and interesting to me when I realized that house just down the street from me, covered in ornate circus-style gingerbread scrolls, was his house. I got to meet one of his relatives last year and compare notes, and we filled each other in on a lot of details - he had the family story, I had the train story.

More mention of the private car: https://jonesimmigrants.blogspot.com/p/j.html

If you click on the Excel spreadsheet put together by Thomas C. Madden (OT: is he a member here?) found here: http://pullmanproject.com/Database.htm you will see that Riverside was a Pullman from plan 2410. I haven't found any photos of Riverside, but a car from this plan, Villa Real, was donated to IRM not long ago: https://www.irm.org/player/pullmanvilla ... ype=custom

Wayner shows Pullman Riverside was a Plan 2410 (12 Section, 1 Drawing Room) all-steel car built in 1911 for service on NYC. It was sold to CNR in 1941 ostensibly to be a Colonist car. Based on the date I suspect it moved troops to a Port of Embarkation for Europe, returning them home in 1945.

Villa - ... cars were rebuilt to Plan 3411 (10 S, 3 DB) from various older cars in the 1930's.

Phil Mulligan

Wow, that's not what I expected to learn at all, but like everything else I research, accept surprises particularly when they have some basis in fact!

Thank you. That's a huge lift up here.