Thursday, October 25, 2007

Hagenbeck-Wallace #2


Scan000010367 - Copy, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Some of the Curtis seat wagons riding the flats in the early 1920's.

Posted by Buckles at 10/25/2007 06:01:00 AM

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Note the early style Mt. Vernon flats. The question is whether the capital cost, train space, labor and maintenance of the Curtis seat wagons offered a real advantage over the conventional stringer, jack and plank methodology. The fact that no other independent show bought them raises some question about their alleged advantages. The economics have changed today, with labor considerably more expensive.

25 October, 2007 09:51
Buckles said...

My dad also commented on the difficulty and time spent getting them spotted on an extremely muddy lot. Not to mention tearing up the performing area while dragging them around.
He added that in a pinch stringers, jacks and planks could be gillied in by hand even from the street if need be.

25 October, 2007 10:08
Bob Cline said...

These may have been labor saving but they took an awful lot of room. Jacks, stringers, and planks, even starbacks never took three flatcars to transport.

25 October, 2007 14:35
Harry Kingston said...

Seat wagons are nice but the whole idea on a circus is too keep the nut down as low as possible. The lower the nut the more owners will make.
Circus Vargas had all it's seats on two semi's.
I brought my model spool truck up to them on Gophers show. He wanted to show the mechanic what it looked like. So they built one with a hand crank as human power on his show was cheaper than a gasoline motor.
No matter what keep the nut down to survive.
Harry

25 October, 2007 17:24
Anonymous said...

Harry,
Bill Griffith had hand powered spool in the early 60's. The spool had a long handle for motive power and 4 or 5 guys could get it rolled in very little time.

25 October, 2007 19:23
Casey McCoy Cainan said...

I can't comment on the pros and cons of seat wagons in the "old days" but I will say on a small mud show struggling to keep enough CDLs on the lot, seat wagons always get the most inexperienced drivers. 9 times out of 10, when arriving at a fuel station, to see the pumps have been removed or smashed by something, it was the seat wagon. Boy you can sure fit a lot of stringers and boards on the ass end of a flatbed.

25 October, 2007 19:49
Anonymous said...

The harbinger of future seat wagon success was the fleet that Curtis designed for RBBB.

28 October, 2007 08:30

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