NCDOT ex-Barnum and Bailey Cars Burn

EJ Berry · **Posted:** Fri Mar 11, 2022 5:17 pm

Commuter service?

Where does NCDOT operate commuter service?

The Piedmonts are more of an all-day regional service than a commuter service taking the same people to work every day at a reduced (commuted) fare.

Phil Mulligan

ZOBEX · **Joined:** Tue Nov 03, 2020 2:39 pm **Posts:** 69

My Uncle Bill aka William Godfrey Hovell was a wild animal trainer and act with the Barnum and Baily circus. He did the wild cats in a cage act. That was in the 1930's into the first of 1940. Then he went into law enforcement. So when I was a kid, when ever the circus came through California, he would drag me there to meet the people he knew back when. I remember being able to wander around in back with circus train cars, the smells and such. Even as a kid I thought they looked beat to heck and I was like 7-8 years old then. In the 1960's he trained horses on our ranch.

Circus trains are only a form of advertisement now. Not a form of transportation. I doubt these are very historically important now. So well burnt they must have been torched like the trolley car in Redlands Ca was recently.

Dan

Bad Order · **Joined:** Sun Jun 23, 2013 1:16 pm **Posts:** 231

... it'd take a lot of heat to get the underframe to sag that much.

ctjacks · **Posted:** Sat Mar 12, 2022 1:41 pm

> Did they burn so badly due to their interiors being redone over the years with common
> household materials like drywall and cheap lumber? Seems like the fire was SUPER
> hot from inside.

I would be interested in more detail on this as well - my understanding was that after the fatal wreck caused by the rim-stamped wheel the circus was actually very safety-conscious with these cars - for example the baggage car had the wooden floor taken out - so these cars shouldn't have been such a major fire hazard in their current condition. I wonder if there was some accelerant poured in the cars to cause this much heat and damage.

To address a comment above - when Feld still used these cars, they not only were a viable source of transportation, they were also people's homes for half a year or more.

Chris.

Tyler Trahan · **Joined:** Fri Jan 01, 2016 5:47 pm **Posts:** 43

According to Trains News Wire, NCDOT is attempting to sell the five undamaged cars from the group of nine (four of which burned).

The article also mentions two other surplus cars listed for sale, which don't seem to be former Ringling cars.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... -railcars/

Mark Hedges · **Posted:** Wed Apr 06, 2022 12:00 pm

Price is much less than before. Maybe someone will bite this time.