This one certainly caught me by surprise:
http://micro-trainsline.com/99301400These are the 'right' circus flatcars to be using with those wagons, not shorties, not 50', not TTX flats. The actual right cars. Warren Car Company (which is still standing and operating today as Warren Railcar Services) built this cars from about 1915 through about 1928. There is still ONE remaining Warren flat on the front of the James Strates Shows carnival train as the 'ramp car' on the front.
The Warren 70' flat was developed as the first steel oversize flatcar as railroads charged by the car - not by weight - for circus tariff moves, so the more wagons you could get on, the better. These cars were the prototype for every intermodal flatcar that ever followed, and if you compare early PRR intermodal flats to these cars, you'll see the similarity. See "The Circus moves by Rail" if you want to model this stuff.
There are a batch of these cars left at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, WI. At least one has trust plates from "Warren Savings Bank" still on it, and I can look out my office window and see that building across the street. So I'm very excited about these cars.
Joe, thank you. Now, what do I have to do to get a run of Cole Brothers Circus done? FWIW, Cole Brothers was the local circus; the owner J. Augustus Jones lived right here in Warren, and while I can't prove it, was likely the developer and inventor of the steel circus Warren car. He was also the president of the Warren Savings Bank. In an extreme touch of irony, he was severely injured by kicks from a circus horse inside a stock car and later died of his injuries; he's buried here in town and his house is only a block from mine.
I'm doing a one-man campaign to have Warren, PA marked as the home of the intermodal flatcar revolution as the home (both for the inventor and the manufacturer) of this car dating all the way back to 1915.
