# Ringling Brothers circus to shut down



## BCL (Jan 15, 2017)

I thought they were the last traveling circus to run its own circus train.


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## willem (Jan 15, 2017)

Unrelated to rail travel but related to Ringling Brothers, there was a story on the news in the past week about the first ever female ring-master (ring-mistress?) for the circus. It looks like it will be a short tenure for her.


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## Bob Dylan (Jan 15, 2017)

Attention 60 Mass!!!!

Budd equipment in good shape soon to be up for Sale when the Circus, Trains quit rolling!


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## tim49424 (Jan 15, 2017)

I got to see the circus train while leaving Boston on the LSL in October.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jan 15, 2017)

I'll miss seeing circus trains but I honestly couldn't care less about missing a bunch of wild animals traveling in captivity. I have no problem spending lots of money on Cirque du Soleil and Broadway type shows. Maybe they should have tried something like that instead.



Bob Dylan said:


> Attention 60 Mass!!!! Budd equipment in good shape soon to be up for Sale when the Circus, Trains quit rolling!


From what I remember those cars have been been heavily modified for circus use and would have to be gutted and remodeled in order to enter revenue service again. VIA probably knows how to get that kind of work done and if Amtrak really wanted them they could possibly use them for crew rest cars as-is. That being said, if these cars have any sort of future it's probably limited to private ownership by people looking to spend money rather than make it.


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## MikefromCrete (Jan 15, 2017)

Those circus train cars have been heavily remodeled, I doubt if it would be worthwhile to spend money to get them into shape for inter-city use. They're not exactly steamliner quality. They also have been hauling the circus around for years and probably have accumulated a lot more miles than Amtrak's Heritage fleet.

It's also quite sad that a almost century and a half tradition is coming to an end. But the handwriting was on the walls for quite a while. The circus was old-fashioned, designed for an era before television and other electronic devices brought the wonders of the world into our living room.


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## BCL (Jan 15, 2017)

Devil's Advocate said:


> I'll miss seeing circus trains but I honestly couldn't care less about missing a bunch of wild animals traveling in captivity. I have no problem spending lots of money on Cirque du Soleil and Broadway type shows. Maybe they should have tried something like that instead.


They did. It was a one-ring show in an actual tent called Kaleidiscape that ran for a year and got canned. It didn't go heavy on the animal acts. The director was a Cirque du Soleil alum.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum%27s_Kaleidoscape


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## Devil's Advocate (Jan 15, 2017)

BCL said:


> Devil's Advocate said:
> 
> 
> > I'll miss seeing circus trains but I honestly couldn't care less about missing a bunch of wild animals traveling in captivity. I have no problem spending lots of money on Cirque du Soleil and Broadway type shows. Maybe they should have tried something like that instead.
> ...


I never even heard about it but it sounds like my kind of thing. I probably would have gone if I had known about it.


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## Seaboard92 (Jan 18, 2017)

Actually not a lot of Budd cars. It's mostly AC&F ex UP cars. But all in decent shape with current CO&TS, HEP. So good cars for a conversion to a PV at a low cost. And all should be Amtrak certified seeing Amtrak moves it on the corridor.


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## Notelvis (Feb 10, 2017)

A performer waves farewell from the Blue Unit Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus train northbound at Thomasville, NC Feb 6, 2017.

While I am certainly not in favor of mistreating animals, I am deeply saddened that RB and B&B was not able to evolve beyond the animal acts and survive. The United States will be just a little darker without Ringling Brothers and its' glorious trains.


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## Anderson (Feb 15, 2017)

VIA would be a good user for the cars, I agree, _especially_ if their Corridor improvement plans generate pressure to add frequencies to the Canadian (and/or they have a desire to ditch the remaining Rens...they should have enough coaches for the Ocean, but sleepers are another story).

In Amtrak's case, I'd go for the equipment but I'd run it "captive" on a single city pair with a lot of spare stuff sitting at either end (likely looking to retrofit it to something along the lines of a 10-4-1 layout)...I'd probably be presuming 50-60% utilization, though that rate on 60 sleepers is still 30-36 cars (which would be enough to re-equip the NYP-MIA or NYP-CHI services and add capacity). TBH the issues with CAF have been such that doing so might well make sense. The real question would be the net cost of both acquiring and retrofitting the equipment (I've generally presumed somewhere in the $500-750k range on the basis of what a PV retrofit usually costs).


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## NorthShore (Feb 27, 2017)

Devil said:


> BCL said:
> 
> 
> > Devil said:
> ...


It lost money. Which is why it didn't last, and wasn't duplicated. Once they got great critical reviews in NYC, it got shut down. This is ironic, as Soleil only built in success in its early incarnation after critical acclaim in L.A. But, Feld (owners of Ringling and Barnum names) had proven what was set out to accomplish (that such a show could be produced by their company and be good) then shifted the performers to the traditional units, to be highlighted where a profit could be turned.
Of course, there is, again, a Ringling produced show on the road. But not under that name (as it was long ago sold.) Instead, a Ringling descendant bought another show.


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