Ringling along with many other entertainment entities, utilized a great deal of military surplus after World War II was over. Most noticably Ringling utilized the many hospital cars to become coaches on the train and these little wagons that carried different sizes of ammunition when ships were reloading at docks were bought up, cut down, rebuilt and modified to become an entire new fleet of cages for the Greatest Show on Earth.
Here are some of the ammo cage wagons loaded on a flat in the Sarasota Winter Quarters in 1952. I don't know that a picture has ever been found of what the ammo wagon looked like in the military. I understand it only had one wheel with the rubber being in great shortage during the war. We have found photos of the ammo tops now. The photos I have seen are stacks of different sized drawers.
2 comments:
Maybe they put them on dual wheels to easy changing flats? These cages wouldn't be that heavy. They had single rubber wheels one season on some of the early wooden wagons that they changed over from wooden wheels and they changed to duals the next year.
Hi Bob,
This photo is actually from 1951.
Notice the letter board on the stock car. It is silver with red lettering. In 1952 they painted the letter board red with white lettering.
As you can see all the cages are newly painted and ready for the road.
Joe Bradbury said that this photo was taken on Feb.21,1951 for the train loading scene in DeMille's The Greatest Show On Earth. By the way,the cages were all empty as this was a loading for filming only.
I too had heard that the original army ammo carriers were four wheel vehicles. Hope one day to find a photo of them
Dom
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