From Richard Reynolds

!cid_X_MA1_1246831001@aol, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. Chicago Tribune photo by Luigi Menedicino August 13, 1954 Children greet new animals for the Brookfield zoo which arrived by box car. Two Grevy zebras and a giraffe - - the words “New York” can be read on the sign on the side of the giraffe crate. That must mean that the animals were either imported through the port or were from the Bronx zoo. A review of the accompanying Chicago Tribune story would likely tell us. This photo raises a subject not previously written about as far as I know, namely - - Just how did a zoo or circus move animals from one place to another within the USA before we had sophisticated truck transport over fine highways, not to mention large cargo airplanes. Before widespread international air cargo transport, we know animals arrived from overseas via ships with the name of the vessel and port often given in the accounts. But how did they move inland from there or between zoos and circuses. Show owned circus trains carried many animals but, except in unusual cases, the circus rail cars only hauled animals while on their annual itineraries, not when animals were being repositioned between winter quarters or coming from or going to dealers and zoos. I find it of interest that, in the above picture, the animals rode in an Illinois Central RR automobile car, essentially a box car built to transport autos. As you see, it was all steel and with double doors for extra loading/unloading width. Autos were loaded on the floor and on an upper level via racks to maximize the load. This method prevented damage (vandalism etc.) that could have occurred if the autos rode exposed on, say, flat cars. However, loading and unloading was time consuming. By 1954, when this photo was taken, the box car method of transporting autos was rapidly fading away. Following WWII the railroads lost the auto traffic to truck lines specializing in auto hauling. You know the type - - double deck, open rack trailers. In turn that gave way to railroad auto rack cars, particularly on the long hauls out of Detroit and, more recently, from ports of entry. Trucks still haul autos from rail heads to dealers. Some of those auto rack RR cars are monsters, c 90' in length, 19' to the roof, with three decks for cars, all enclosed to prevent damage. [In case you wonder, I once represented motor carriers specializing in hauling autos.] I'll bet that the animal shipment pictured was handled by the Railway Express Agency (REA) which used the auto car. The railroads had agreements for the use of cars by one another and they jointly provided them to REA. That the car belonged to the Illinois Central RR did not necessarily mean that the IC was involved in this movement. REA was the result of an amalgamation of several express companies when the US Government seized control of the nation’s railroads in December 1917, during World War I, and put them under the governance of the US Railway Administration (USRA) - -the biggest governmental take over of private business in American history up until the events of the last 9 months. One of the companies that folded into the new amalgamation was the transportation part American Express. That‘s right, the “you can’t leave home without them” company. The “express” part of the name came from the handling of express shipments via the railroads and that include transporting exotic animals [I have several Ringling animal invoices showing that the animals came via American Express.]. That part of AmEx’s operations ended when the USRA took over all express business and created a single express company which, in time, became REA. Of course, at the time AMEX was rapidly developing its financial services business. After the country’s railroads were “de-nationalized” following WWI, and following a series of organizational maneuvers, REA emerged as jointly owned by the re-privatized railroads and operated in their behalf. It provided for them an express service for the handling for commodities they were just not cut out to handle - - - time sensitive, unusual, and high value - - - some of those categories included fresh cut flowers, jewelry and currency (with armed guards for protection), rare art work, and dead bodies in caskets moving from place of demise to place of burial (e.g. in September 1941 the body of my own Grandfather Reynolds went from Atlanta to Augusta, GA for burial, riding in the REA baggage car at the head of the passenger train on which rode his widow and my parents who were going to his funeral - - Augusta was the place of his birth in 1870.) REA also handled perishable foods (including the likes of live lobsters), personal property such as furniture or trunks of clothing, race horses, live fish in tanks, and live exotic animals. REA was sort of a forerunner of UPS. REA went out of business in 1975 as a result of (1) the decline, nay disappearance, of fast and efficient rail passenger service which once connected every town and village with all others; and (2) competition from more flexible specialty trucking services and air freight. However, before, during, and right after WWII, transportation of most zoo and circus animals within the country was handled by REA. Most often they rode in baggage cars that ran on the head ends of fast passenger trains. [The IC auto car in the picture seems unusual to me.] REA published tariffs setting forth the rates for animal transportation, with provisions allowing keepers to ride with the animals in the cars - -same for race horses and their grooms. As for animal transport, REA had no competition from any other common public carrier. As I see it, the only non-REA handling of animals would have been via private trucks arranged for by a zoo or circus but that was comparatively infrequent in the days when our highway system was crude at best and the trucks not all that good. If one reads newspaper accounts of the arrivals of zoo animals, he or she will often find that the animals arrived in express cars - -i.e. REA. Some examples - - - * * * From the Ringling expense ledger for 1913, we find an entry for July 5, 1913 for “shipping rhino.” Other evidence tells us that this was the male Indian rhino "Bill" being sent by express from the Ringling circus to its commonly owned but then separately operated Barnum & Bailey circus. B&B’s black rhino had just died and since the Ringling show had two rhinos (the other a male black) they sent Indian Bill to B&B. * * * On September 26, 1914, Louis Ruhe shipped a zebra and a pair of llamas to the Ringling circus via Adams Express, one of the express companies that became part of REA after America’s entry into WWI. (copy of invoice in RJRIII's archives). * * * On April 1932 Atlanta Coca Cola magnate Asa Candler established his private zoo on his estate near Emory University. His first animals arrived via REA on April 20th. They were in an express car spotted at the small Seaboard Air Line depot on the Emory campus. The shipment (from Benson’s animal farm in New Hampshire) included two young Asian elephants, and they were walked from the depot through the Emory campus to the estate. Accompanying the animals was Fletcher Reynolds who would become Candler’s first curator. He would go on to become Director of the Cleveland Zoo and AZA President in 1948-49. * * * When Candler closed his zoo in 1935 he sold four elephants to the Downie Bros circus. [He wanted to donate them to the Atlanta zoo but the City was so poor at the time that it could not build an adequate structure to house them.] The four elephants left in June 1935 via REA for delivery to the circus while it was on tour at Lawrence, MA. * * * A telegram from Louis Ruhe to the Ringling circus dated July 21, 1941 advised that Ruhe was shipping penguins to the circus “tonight on train 19 of the New York Central RR to arrive in Cleveland, OH at 6:30 AM. [July 22].” The circus opened its Cleveland engagement that day. No 19 was the “Lake Shore Limited,” a passenger train, meaning that REA handled the animals. * * * When the Brookfield zoo sold its zoo-born male black rhino calf "Bobby" to the Ringling circus in June 1945, he was shipped to the circus in Washington, DC. Bobby rode in a baggage car on Baltimore & Ohio passenger train no. 10 from Chicago to Washington. It was the “Chicago-Pittsburgh-Washington Express.” George Speidel rode in the car with the little rhino all the way. While I have not seen a bill of lading proving that REA was used, I’m certain that it was. George told me the whole story of his trip with "Bobby." Great guy that George. * * * In November 1947 some elephants were shipped to Atlanta in a rail car, ergo, via REA. They were to appear with the Hamid Morton Shrine circus staged in our old Municipal Auditorium. The car was spotted downtown at the railroad station. With them in the car was an old keeper named William Brown. On November 6th, he got his foot tangled in one of the chains used to secure the elephants, fell down and one of them accidentally stepped on him. He later died of his injuries but not before absolving the elephant from any fault. To this day, that remains the only incidence of “death by elephant” in Atlanta’s history. As the years wore on after WWII, the transportation of wild animals switched altogether to trucks arranged for by the zoos and dealers. Former Atlanta and Albuquerque zoo director John Roth once owned a trucking company specializing in hauling wild animals. On 28 September 1972 he delivered to the Atlanta Zoo a male black rhino named Sam. John picked him up at the Port of NY. I was at the zoo when he was unloaded. I also represented Superior Trucking Company. It specialized in the hauling of "commodities requiring special handling." It was determined that exotic animals fit within that part of its license. Around 1973 Superior handled hundreds of animals to the various safari parks that, seemingly, were being opened everywhere at that time. The first giraffes successfully hauled from coast to coast by truck were shipped in 1938 from Jersey City (where they had been in quarantine) to the San Diego Zoo. Two chaps, Charley Smith and Ed Suess, handled the truck and the animals. They left Jersey City on October 12 and arrived at the zoo on the 25th of that month. These were the first giraffes for the San Diego zoo. As far as I know, the only earlier giraffes in a California zoo were three acquired in 1934 by William Randolph Hearst for his big private zoo at San Simeon. Just think, in 1919, only 18 years before the San Diego giraffes made their transcontinental truck trip, an Army officer named Dwight Eisenhower had been involved in leading a truck convoy across the “unpaved” west to prove that transcontinental motor vehicle travel was feasible. The convoy was plagued by dirt roads, mud, quicksand, and nearly impassable streams. It was that experience that inspired him, when President, to create the Interstate Highway System. A book could be written on the history of transporting exotic animals. Richard Reynolds 4 July 2009