Saturday, January 29, 2011

RBBB 1951 Spare Center Pole On Flat

Hi Buckles,
Harry do you mean the outside roof top? It would be sort of difficult to get a long center pole through a narrow door..LOL.
Fred, here's a photo of Ringling Bros,- Barnum & Bailey in 1951 when then had a five pole Big Top. A spare center pole was carried on the floor of one of the flats. This is possibly the first section cut. Most likely not being carried on the pole wagon was due to the fact that all the center poles and long and short quarter poles were carried on the same wagon.
Hope this helps.
Dom

Posted by Buckles at 1/29/2011 06:01:00 AM

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Theater scenery cars had doors offset to one end so that long panels could be placed and transported in the enclosed space. Most stock cars also had small man doors in the ends, for personnel access, which could have facilitated the end loading of long objects. Charlie Sparks had a stock car with the door positioned to one end, perhaps for the loading of long objects. You will also find roof racks on the tops of stock cars for the transport of smaller extra poles.

Don't forget that several RBBB center poles were sent from the Sarasota quarters to Baraboo loaded through the vestibule of the former advertising car.

29 January, 2011 09:19
Hal Guyon said...

Great photo Dom, if that car is a 72 footer than the pole is at least 60' long. I believe the poles were made from Spruce tree`s, am I correct ? And didn`t they taper a little, from about a
1' at the bottom to abot 10" at the top ?

29 January, 2011 10:21
Anonymous said...

Hal,
The actual pole that came from Ringling to the Circus World Museum measures 62'-6".
It tapers from 9" at the bottom to 12" in the middle and then 9" again at the top. The blue section was 52"-2" and the white at the top was 10'-4".
Took these measurements on my very first trip to CWM way back in 1985.
Dom

29 January, 2011 12:56
Hal Guyon said...

Thanks Dom, This is the kind of information I like. as a model builder I`ve always been intrested in the logistics and measurements of equipment on the shows.

29 January, 2011 20:57
Unknown said...

Dom, thanks for photo. I'm glad I queried but still have 2 possibles!

Fred Neill

03 February, 2011 05:18

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