The Cole Bros. Circus had a wide variety of show equipment over the years. Having bought some from Wm. P. Hall and the Miller Bros. 101 Ranch show, I believe I have read that they had bought some railcars from carnivals as well. I could be wrong. Can anyone help?
3 comments:
Bob- According to the Bradbury account of the Cole show that appeared in the Bandwagon magazine (BW ND 78) this was indeed at one time a stock car. In 1941 the decision was made to cut out the draft stock (48 head) and use motor power instead. This left 2 surplus stock cars. A couple of CAT tractors were purchased along with a lowboy to transport and a newer Mack truck was added. This created the need for another flat car so 1 of the 2 surplus stocks was cut down to make a flat car. At the time it was numbered #39.
Flint
The three Curtis cages shown had service on Hagenbeck-Wallace before coming to Cole in 1940. The two 3-arch ones were swapped from Louis Goebel during the season and the 2-arch had been at Peru and was bought from John Ringling North early in the year when Zack Terrell was looking for equipment to replace some of that lost in the fire.
Bob.
Yes, Cole got equipment from John Ringling North but what it cost them according to the old Bandwagon issues as Cole had to agree to a routing agrement as well as what they got.
And you can bet Ringling came out the winner and Cole got left over equipment from different shows.
Harry in Texas
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