Zoo Train in Kingston, 1953

On September 1-2, 1953 a three-car British African Zoo Train arrived in Kingston, sponsored by the Optimist Club. On display near the CN Wellington Street freight sheds, the train was the brainchild of explorer and wildlife collector Howard Y. Bary. The train appears to be on the third track in the yard, with the two tracks serving the freight sheds in foreground. The 'ZOO' cars have a fishbelly design, seen in baggage cars of Santa Fe and other railroads. While circus trains were known to roll in to the Wellington Street yards or Outer Station to unload their animals, this one was different.

Starting its transcontinental circuit in 1950, the zoo train made many stops in the US and Canada. For instance: Decatur, IL in June, 1951; in 1952 in Wichita, KS in April and Casper, WY in May and Saskatoon in July; and in 1953 just prior to its Kingston visit, in Owen Sound on August 21, sponsored by the Kinsmen Club there. Also sponsored by the Kinsmen of Englehart, ON, the train was on display there on September 18. 

Interestingly, in April, 1952 a Pennsylvania Railroad baggage car transporting a lioness to the zoo train display in Trenton, NJ was set out on a siding in Wilmington, DE when the lioness chewed through four wooden cage bars and terrorized the conductor!

In the display cars were several species of monkeys, a young male lion from Kenya, a two year-old tigress named Pamela, an emu, four toucans, a concave hornbill named Rufus, a Peruvian llama, a tapir, a European genet and a giant paca - like a beaver without a tail - a hundred year-old turtle and four small crocodiles. A total of 38 animals called the zoo train home. Methusaleh, the largest reticulated python ever captured, at 31 feet in length and weighing 340 pounds, was also on display.

The train was hailed as an educational exhibit, not a circus or menagerie. Not a single kernel of popcorn nor one bottle of pop was sold. Only admission was charged upon entering the train. Cars were fan-cooled, though some animals were noted to appear drowsy. African sculptures and masks adorned the walls. The Whig noted the location as the Haymarket on Place d'Armes, open from noon to 10 p.m. each day. An advance publicity article was published in August 27.  Although George Lilley photographed the train for the Whig, the only photos that appeared in print showed the animals therein. The train had just been featured in Life magazine. Here are some close-ups of the original Lilley negatives:

Burlap sacks of Purina feed at the end of the exit car (above) and a gantry crane on the nearby yard trackage. The iddle of the 'gantry' had disappeared due to reflection in the image, but actually spans a yard track for loading or unloading heavy cargo. Behind it is the Millard & Lumb building:

Curious onlookers mill near the train's coach, at the end of the two baggage cars, with a CN boxcar on an adjacent team track. Floodlights on brackets extend from each car for night-time visitor safety.

Born in 1896, Mr Bary was named in a Boston Globe story, as an animal-procurement operative! In Pennsylvania's Hanover Evening Sun he was an explorer, animal importer and circus executive. He had at his dispoal a climate-controlled plane. Mr Bary often made the news, having been the manager of the 60-car Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus in 1937. Then, threatening to give a shave and a haircut to one of his animal trainers after a work dispute in 1938. (The man hadn't had a shave nor haircut in his life!)  A year later, Mr Bary sued Universal Pictures for copyright infringement over a circus-themed film. In 1941 he was referred to as the chief of the foreign service for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In 1949 he opeated an indoor circus at the Tulsa Livestock Show. In 1950 he was in Georgia as the president of the North American Circus and Zoo Corporation. In 1957 he was an advance man for the Ringling Brox and Barnum & Bailey Circus. An eight-year litigation over the zoning of his Buckingham, PA zoo was finally settled in 1960. At that time, Mr Bary was an associate of the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus. He really got around.

(Photos in this post from the George Lilley Fonds, Queen's University Archives)