The Bungling Brothers Circus train arrives on a siding in suburban Terryville where it will unload and form a circus parade to its location in the City of Christopolis to set up the tents for the Big-Top and entertain both, young and old patrons.
The train is a collection of random, O gauge rolling stock that was repainted and custom decaled with my own design of the circus logo and my son Chris' catch- phrase, "Wildest Circus Ever!" Chris created the phrase when he was about 8 years old.
There are more cars to the train that weren't yet customized and painted at the time of this photo including two flat cars carrying painted circus parade wagons, a tent pole transport flat car, a canvas car and a Bungling Brothers caboose. Once the layout is completely recuperated from the major overhaul that it is currently undergoing, I will produce a video of the of the full circus train running behind a Great Northeastern Railway 4-8-2 steam locomotive.
In reality, the circus train did not have its own caboose and locomotive painted in circus livery. It came over the railroads that served the different cities in charge of the railroad that was pulling it over their trackage with the local railroads' locomotive/s and caboose if necessary. I know this from my uncle who served a short tenure as a fireman on the Pennsylvania Railroad before WWII. He told me that one of his runs later in his tenure was to ride in a PRR GG-1 electric locomotive from Union station Washington, DC to Baltimore, Maryland pulling Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus' train to Baltimore. For this one time only trip, he had to study the switching systems in both Ivy City Yard approaching Union Station and the switches leading into Union Station. This was necessary because, before riding the circus train out of Union Station, my uncle had to ride in a switch engine out of union station with a PRR engine crew supervisor and accurately tell the supervisor where each track switch the engine was approaching would lead. All for being a fireman on an electric locomotive. As the old song goes, "Nice Work If You Can Get It".
