Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus

Circus Train

This small Web site presents a collection of photographs of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus train during its visit to Chicago in November of 1998. Click on any of these thumbnail images for a larger image.

Recent additions These photographs have recently been added to this Web site. They are also presented in their appropriate pages. 25 May 1999 (23) 26 May 1999 (20) 27 May 1999 (37) 28 May 1999 (25)

Circus Train This train is so long that I was not able to get a photograph of the entire train in one shot. Train (10)

Circus passenger cars These cars carry and provide homes for traveling members of the circus. 40000 series (6) 41300 series (15) 41400 series (4) 42000 series (6) 42100 series (23) 42200 series (6) 43000 series (5)

Circus support vehicles These vehicles travel with the circus train on one of the flat cars. Vehicles (2)

Circus train cars These cars carry animals, supplies, and equipment as well as providing support fuctions for the circus train. Baggage car (4) Container car (5) Large animal car (8) Pie car (7) Power car (4)

The cars of the train have been organized in a somewhat arbitrary manner. Suggestion are solicited, from those more familar with these thains than am I, for a more effective organizations scheme.

These photographs were taken at the Hanson Park Metra station and in the adjacent Galewood rail yard. Permission was obtained from the Trainmaster of the Circus Train. Lighting conditions were less than ideal for many of these shots.

These shots were taken with the digital camera hand-held. I think it is fair to suggest that they often illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the camera, and no doubt of the photographer as well. The nature of the digital camera beast is that the up-front cost is high, but the cost of film is negligible. This has made it practical to take a large number of shots, typically a few hundred in a session, with a variety of bracketing and angles.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus railroad heralds displayed at the top of several of pages are photos of the train.

My impressions of using Angelfire is mixed. If you are interested, I've some comments on my experiences, in case you might be interested.

This site is under construction. I hope you enjoy your visit.

I took these photographs during November of 1998 using a Sony Mavica FD-7 digital camera. Adobe Photoshop was used for electronic dark room processing. I've written a custom perl 5 script which constructs these pages from a terse text description file, using a template file.

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This is an unofficial site without any affiliation with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Equipment characteristics are courtesy of the BNSF Web site query service. This is a free site hosted by Angelfire.