Micro-Trains - 994 01 050 - Passenger Car, North America, Transition Era Consist - Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey - 6-Pack

Specific Item Information: This set consists of a stock car, dormitory car, sleeper car, container car, power generator car, and flat car with three wagons. The cars and wagons sport the red vintage The Greatest Show On Earth™ globes, which identifies these cars as part of the ‘Red’ train.

Prototype History: Passenger train consists during the transition era were a hedge-podge of different railcars. Many cars were pre-war heavyweights. Some of these heavyweights were rebuilt for postwar service while some were well worn vintage specimens. These were mixed in with newer streamlined cars in both smooth-side and corrugated varieties. Premier flagship trains of this period were usually all-lightweight consists with new colorful paint schemes trailing behind the latest and greatest diesel and/or steam motive power.

Road Name History: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. It and its predecessor shows ran from 1871 to 2017. Known as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, the circus started in 1919 when the Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, a circus created by P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, was merged with the Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows. The Ringling brothers had purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd. following Bailey's death in 1906, but ran the circuses separately until they were merged in 1919.

From Wikipedia

Brand/Importer Information: Micro-Trains Line split off from Kadee Quality Products in 1990. Kadee Quality Products originally got involved in N-Scale by producing a scaled-down version of their successful HO Magne-Matic knuckle coupler system. This coupler was superior to the ubiquitous 'Rapido' style coupler due to two primary factors: superior realistic appearance and the ability to automatically uncouple when stopped over a magnet embedded in a section of track. The success of these couplers in N-Scale quickly translated to the production of trucks, wheels and in 1972 a release of ready-to-run box cars.

Micro-Trains Line Co. split off from Kadee in 1990 to form a completely independent company. For this reason, products from this company can appear with labels from both enterprises. Due to the nature of production idiosyncrasies and various random factors, the rolling stock from Micro-Trains can have all sorts of interesting variations in both their packaging as well as the products themselves. When acquiring an MTL product it is very important to understand these important production variations that can greatly enhance (or decrease) the value of your purchase.