Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Royal American Shows early 1950's #3




Light Plant and Tower, the show had seven of these towers and ten plants "90 KW". Posted by Picasa

Posted by Buckles at 12/26/2006 06:20:00 AM

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe Jim Elliott or Bill Hall can tell us how the hell did they get that enormous tower on top of that wagon?

26 December, 2006 06:45
Anonymous said...

CWM has two of the RAS generator wagons and had used one in Milwaukee in the early years as the lot power supply but as the show there grew larger it could not provide the power needed and they went to line power

26 December, 2006 07:26
Anonymous said...

Maybe thats what that "WHEEL" was used for.

26 December, 2006 08:17
Anonymous said...

Hey Ned I gues you would correctly refer to them as RAS Generator Wagons but to an old show bum like me they are Light Plants and I have been on many shows when the light plant conked out in the middle of the night show.

26 December, 2006 10:03
Anonymous said...

I just this morning was looking at the generators out here in Phoenix on the Ray Cammack middway and counted 9 generators and they have those almost exact towers on top of 8 of them. I was just asking the same question as to how they are mounted. Danny and I are out here at Santa's theme park that contains the RCS middway and 14 different variety shows.

26 December, 2006 17:01
Anonymous said...

The towers were aluminum & just came apart in sections. Sometimes they would use 3 or 4 men & just hand up each section. We used a "gin pole" on Strates to put his up. The lights were roped up along with the baskets which came apart in 2 pieces. If you check out my photo site at:

http://community.webshots.com/user/rrshow1
you will see some pix of the "Plants" (as we called them) in '74. Inside are racked some of the tower sections.

26 December, 2006 19:08
Anonymous said...

Forgot to add that the RCS towers were made by Joe Sperano and are folding aluminum tubing. They are shorter than the original RAS towers.
The dropping Warren car was designed at Strates WQ the winter of '73-'74. The original idea was proposed, I believe, by JD and Jimmy Floyd, who had rides on the show at that time. The hydraulics to do this came from one of the Case tractors carried by the show and the system was installed by Clyde Mulligan of Gibtown. It was the last of the old flats as a couple others were cut up in WQ the winter before. The system is not used today because longer runs have been built. (Don't know why they didn't do this years ago) I left the show later that spring, as did Bill Hall. We ended up on RAS for the '74 season.

26 December, 2006 19:18
Anonymous said...

does anyone know what type of lights were in use back then? metal halides, pars, etc?

27 December, 2006 17:13
Anonymous said...

The bottom four pieces of the tower, compising the base,were steel and were carried on the roof of the light plant wagon. The sections above the base were aluminum and were hung inside the wagon for travel.Jibs and block and tackle rigging were used to raise the sections from the open side platforms of the wagon up to the men on the tower. I have RAS light plant wagon E-14 in my collection with a light tower. Jim Dillman--want to come up and play?

28 December, 2006 09:33
Anonymous said...

The original lights were incandescent, but were changed over to 1500 watt quartz lights when that type of light became popular. The "pan" lights at the top remained incandescent. I'd love to come up & play, but I'm in Puerto Rico for the time being!

28 December, 2006 11:38

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