ROLL UP, ROLL UP FOR THE ‘GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH’
MANY readers will have fond childhood memories of travelling circuses, with clowns, acrobats and exotic animals producing thrilling performances beneath a colourful ‘big-top’. However, for rail enthusiasts, an equally exciting time was to be had down at the local goods yard as the gaudily painted wagons arrived and began disgorging their amazing loads of elephants, camels, lions, tigers and zebras.
The beasts would then be taken through the streets to wherever the circus was being staged and, a day or two later, return to the station for transfer to the next town or city on the itinerary.
It was a spectacle that took place up and down the country every summer in peacetime from the early-1930s to the 1960s – and also during the late-19 century and early-1900s – yet because most circus trains travelled by night, there are very few photographs of them en route, and relatively little is known about them compared with other forms of rail transport.
The story begins in 1887 when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show – run by the famous American Civil War character Colonel William Cody – came from the United States to Britain to take part in Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee celebrations. His troupe staged a number of performances in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Hull before leaving the UK from the latter city’s docks in May 1888. Because road transport at the time wasn’t sufficiently advanced, the only feasible way to move the show’s animals, artistes and equipment around the country was on the rail network.
Three trains were used: one for equipment, one for personnel and one for the creatures… buffalos, elks, mustangs and ‘bucking broncos’.
Three years later, Cody’s extravaganza returned to England as part of a European tour, this time docking in Grimsby and being conveyed to Leeds for its first engagement in a trio of Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway trains.
Because the size of Buffalo Bill’s animals meant they could be accommodated in rolling stock supplied by the pre-Grouping companies, there was no problem with such transport, but when the American circus troupe of Barnum & Bailey decided to ship its ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ to Britain in 1897, a major rethink was required.
Barnum’s, which had been touring the USA in purpose-built railroad vehicles for several seasons and had tested the market in Britain with a 16-week residence at Kensington Olympia in 1889, wanted to return to Olympia for a second series of winter shows followed by a nationwide ‘big-top’ tour in 1898. However, its menagerie was far larger than Cody’s and included elephants, the largest of which wouldn’t fit into standard wagons because of Britain’s restricted loading gauge.
Not only that, but one-night stands were planned for the majority of small towns on the tour and that meant assembling and dismantling the whole show and moving on every 24 hours. As the poor roads of the time wouldn’t allow such huge loads to be transported in the required timescales, and as it was impossible to use the American wagons because of their larger size, Barnum’s took the bold decision to have an entire fleet of railway vehicles built specially for British use.
Elephant cars
The company placed an order for 67 carriages and wagons with the Phoenix Works of Stoke-on-Trent engineers W R Renshaw & Co to be ready for that first tour. The fleet comprised 16 general stock cars, three elephant cars, one camel car, one double-decked pony car, one ‘led-stock’ car (mainly for zebras and llamas), seven sleeping cars for artistes and staff, one private saloon for proprietor James Bailey, one baggage car and 35 flat cars for transporting horse-drawn trailers, caravans, cages and carts, along with the poles that supported the 65ft-high canvas of the big-top tent.
There was also an advance advertising car, whose function was to run three weeks or so ahead of the circus (usually as part of a normal passenger service) and be stabled prominently near a town
