Two of NCDOT’s former circus train cars have found new homes. Others still available.
The state has found buyers for two former circus train cars that survived a fire that destroyed four others in March.
The two cars were sold through the state’s surplus property website to companies that operate tourist trains in New Hampshire and West Virginia. Both cars were built in 1964 and had been used by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus as living quarters for performers and staff.
The Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad in Romney, West Virginia, will use its new car as a place for contractors and employees to stay while they’re working, said owner Robert Franzen. The railroad, based on the south branch of the Potomac River in Romney, West Virginia, may someday convert it into a passenger car, Franzen said.
At $7,033, Franzen considers the car a good deal, though that cost is just the beginning.
“We’ve got to ship it to our railroad and fix it, repair it, work on the air conditioning, change the windows out, get it cleaned up, that kind of thing,” he said. “So it’s a considerable expense about the time you get it all ready to go.”
The N.C. Department of Transportation bought the car and eight others from the circus in 2017 with plans to refurbish them to use on the Piedmont, the state-owned Amtrak train that makes three daily round trips between Raleigh and Charlotte. NCDOT later received federal grants to buy new rail cars and tried to sell the old circus train in late 2020.
But after setting a minimum bid of $45,000 per car, NCDOT got no offers. Franzen, who also heads Steam Services of America, a company based in Sylva that restores old locomotives and rail cars, said that price was simply too high.
While NCDOT prepared to try again, a fire broke out on one of the cars sometime before dawn on March 10 on an isolated section of state-owned tracks in Nash County where they had been stored for years. The fire spread and destroyed four of the nine cars, including the lone baggage car.
Investigators say two gas cans found nearby suggested the fire might have been deliberately set.
NCDOT set a new minimum bid of $6,588 for each of the surviving cars. It received offers for three, though one of the buyers didn’t follow through.
One of the cars drew more than one offer, driving up the final sales price. Profile Mountain Holdings, which runs the Conway Scenic Railroad in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, bought the car for $19,268, according to the state Department of Administration.
The cars that didn’t sell, including two that weren’t part of the circus train, will now be sold at a live auction sometime later in the year, under a process spelled out by the General Assembly in a bill signed into law in March.
Meanwhile, NCDOT officials have said the wheel assemblies on the four cars that burned are salvageable and can probably be resold. The rest of those cars likely will be sold for scrap metal.
“Hopefully most of these cars will find a good home eventually,” Franzen said. “And the ones that got burned or end up having to get scrapped, hopefully we can save a few parts off of them so that we can use those parts throughout our industry.”
