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Barnum & Bailey's European Tour circus train stock was built by Renshaw of Stoke-on-Trent, to designs modified from their American circus trains. Details here. This is not, despite appearances, a Midland Railway vehicle.

I am not sure where I got this, probably from Castle Aching, and I think it is an LNWR van. Remember Barnum's motto was, 'There is one born every minute.' There are other elephant and railway pictures in 'Branch Lines around Acsot' by Middleton press, as the Chipperfield Circus, I think, used to winter off a now non existent siding off the now non existent Ascot West station.

Another wonderful model of an 'odd-ball' prototype in the early days

I have found a side window for either your Mogul or it's one from a Black 5.

Absolutely stunning as always Chris

Hurrah! Put that juice rail to good use... Look forward to seeing a '33' next.

Dear Cap'n K, Thanks for the very king comments and you are absolutely right that the points I make are just as relevant if you are building your own chassis. Having wheel sets that can drop out is a boon, but very often hard to achieve in practice. Some years ago I had a lovely chat at an exhibition with the extremely pleasant Chris Gibbon of High Level kits (I think he has the best designed chassis and instructions on the market) and he agreed that it was useful, but from a designer's perspective hard to achieve without making things either over complicated or hard to assemble (or both). I don't think he is wrong... and so many people have so many different preferred methods of current pick up and compensation that pleasing all of us is, I think, impossible! That said, I do try to build my chassis with drop out wheelsets, but my good intensions often get frustrated by: Springs on the chassis preventing hornblocks dropping out (this can be designed out but often isn't on chassis kits) Fixed rear axle for 3 point compensation (CSB gets round this, but very few chassis that I've come across are designed for this and it can be a big job to do yourself) Hornblock design (some are better than others for 'drop out' design - Highlevel are my preference) Motor unable to pass through chassis (and unable to easily remove it from the gearbox in situ). Pick up bus bars getting in the way (it all depends on how much is visible when peeking under the boiler. Some locos are very open and you can see everything (or the lack thereof) between the frames, other are less so and better candidates for busbars above the line of the axles) Break gear rods getting in the way. (Can be designed out, but can make things very complex) Still it can be done, but isn't for the fainthearted or the inexperienced chassis builder unless the kits is designed that way. Split axle chassis are probably a good starting point as they solve the pickup busbar problem, but the others will still remain. All the best Duncan

The Midland was particularly popular with touring theatrical companies since it served most of the principal English towns and cities. One could go out via Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, and Bradford, then via running powers over the L&Y to Manchester, on to Liverpool, back via Derby to Birmingham then down to Bristol.

The question is, when did they get to Farthing? They certainly never got to Traeth Mawr, at least not in 1895.

By chance I came across further information on this, as I've been looking through Hooper's book on North British wagons for livery and numbering info. He reproduces a diagram from The Locomotive Magazine of an elephant car converted from an NBR 30 ton trolley - again a bogie well wagon. This shows a wooden structure filling the length and width of the well, with 8'6" high sides but just steel arches overhead at 4 ft intervals - perhaps covered with wagon sheets? This was done "in connection with the Savage South Africa Show, an exotic menagerie touring Britain in 1901". Presumably the Midland conversion was also for this - perhaps the design was common to both, since the length of the trolley well was the same. The show caused considerable unease at the time (and even more in retrospect) as the exhibits included not only six African elephants, various lions, etc. but also a considerable number of Zulus (seen here at Southampton docks) and Boers, staging re-enactments as well as scenes of native life - as seen here (both films on BFI Free so UK only, I'm afraid). This "menagerie" arrived in Britain in 1899 and was initially exhibited at Earls Court.

Great story and photos, Mikkel. Fantastic modelling as usual too.

One Saturday afternoon at Appleby in the 1990s, whilst clearing up after the day's various steam and deisel excursions, I found a carrier bag with a large full Wensleydale cheese in it, obviously left by one of the throng of tourists who had decamped from one of them for a couple of hours in town. Stationmaster and ex-cheesemaker Parmley (well, Railman, but it was definitely his station) was consulted, who recognised it and and believed that it belonged to a lady now heading back towards London via the WCML. He then produced a cheese corer from his pocket (!), sampled it and declared it to be excellent. The Passenger Information Manual was consulted which confirmed that perishable lost property could be disposed of by whatever means were locally expedient. It took us two days to eat it. The cameo is excellent, I have a couple of Airfix WW1 tommies somewhere relaxing on the back of a coal merchant's lorry.

Chipperfield Circus, perhaps? The subject of elephants brings us close to another situation that I'd like to model at some point. Not now, must resist! I did wonder whether the author had deliberately selected the wording "bone of contention" . Many thanks Chris. I like all the information that crops up when researching the stories. Things I would never have come across otherwise! Speaking of which, this morning while looking through a thread on fish trains here on RMweb, I came across a post by @Caledonian in which he describes exactly the kind of trays for eels that I used in the story:

PS: Coal was still delivered to Tunbridge Wells Central Goods in 21T opens until c1980, if that helps.

You be careful with the countryside round there - my aged mother still lives somewhere roughly where you put your layout! Not sure whether you are aware, but the SER had running rights from Tunbridge Wells over the Cuckoo Line, as a result of the settlement of the border war between the SER and LB&SCR that caused it to be built - I think they may even have run a desultory service that way for a very short period. Whether that can factor into your scheming, I don't know.

Agree. I thought of this:

I'd echo what Mikkel has said here. This is just superb information. The tips that Duncan has so kindly provided are also very relevant if you are building your own chassis, either from a kit or from scratch. The tip about the 30 thou on the GW Models wheel press is intriguing and I may well try that myself. One thing that I do try to do, when building a chassis kit with AG or Ultrascale wheels, is to make as many of the wheels sets as possible, capable of being dropped out for maintenance.

Duncan, this is incredibly useful. Your straightforward way of explaining things - without dumbing down - makes it all seem doable. I'll have a second and more careful read through later. And a browse of the Ultrascale site, I actually didn't know they did drop-in wheelsites. Although AG doesn't have a shopping portal I have never had problems ordering from them. PS: I now see that you posted this more than a month ago. I wonder why I (and others?) missed it.