Given how well known the name / brand is, it will be interesting to see if it continues in a different way…maybe like a circus version of Branson or Las Vegas, where you travel to see the show, they don’t come to you? Before getting into the circus, P.T. Barnum had a famous exhibition in New York City that people travelled from around the country to visit.
By the way, IIRC the Ringling Brothers were from Baraboo WI, which is why the big circus museum is located in that area At one time, many circus and performing folk made their off-season winter homes in Baraboo.
p.s., Let me throw this in just because I’ve heard it mentioned on TV regarding this story…P.T. Barnum never said “there’s a sucker born every minute”. It was originally said by one of Barnum’s competitors talking about him (i.e., something like “Barnum treats the audience like there’s a sucker born every minute”.)
I saw the RBB&B train several times the first was while I worked on the Chessie(C&O) we got a red signal at Limeville(Ky) and it came off the Northern Division heading East toward Russell units was three GP40s. The second time was on CR and its been through Bucyrus 2-3 times a year on the NS.
If I may share this story… Last fall there was several of us trackside awaiting the circus train when a 30 something stop his car and ask if a steam train was coming.He was told the RBB&B circus train was coming through town so,he calls his wife and had her to bring their kids to the T&OC station to watch the circus train. Those two kids got excitied when that train rolled by.
My sister actually worked for RBB&B back in the 80’s and traveled in one of their trains (I don’t know which team - Red or Blue). On a dare, she went to an open audition for dancers in Los Angeles and wound up being hired on the spot! She performed as one of the “show girls” in the opening parade around the big top and then those same girls had to perform a rope twirling act (hanging from a rope while an assistant on the ground twirled the rope) later in the show.
She said her compartment on the train was smaller than her closet at home and it still had to hold everything she needed, including her costumes. She thought this would be an excellent way to tour the US but getting transportation to and from the train proved rather difficult. RBB&B would get everybody to and from the performance venue but you had to provide your own tranportation to go anywhere else. Since the train was usually parked somewhere in the middle of a train yard, getting a cab to come find you was next to impossible.
I never did get to see her perform because she got sick of the “circus life” and quit before RBB&B got back out to California!
Unfortunately changing social mores and the immense impact of new entertainment via rapid technological change has caused the “tent coming down” on the circus, as such. Now fast forward 10 years to a future where VR technology is not just a headset, but a holistic sensorial experience, perhaps delivered into oneself via neural implants. Will some of us long for the old days of watching 2D video and using finger or voice to enter text into our smart phones?
Time marches on- the steam locomotive had its day, but we continue to memorialize it in our hobby practice and perhaps that will be the fate of the circus- preserved in miniature into the future.
I just saw on the news an interview with the owner of RBBB who stated bluntly that ticket sales plummeted after the elephants were “retired” which my wife and I predicted and which is why we took the kids to see it at Hershey, Pa, last time it was here. So any articles blaming it on anything else like video games or the internet are simply false. They were doing just fine competing when they still had elephants. We saw them several times through the years when they had animals and flying people. It would not be the same without them, period.
I have seen the train rolling through central PA. Even my wife thought it was cool!
I only ever saw the Ringling Brothers Circus Train once. in 2015 we were living in Caliente, NV and it came through town powered by UP locomotives. They were headed to Vegas at the time.