Life on a Circus Train; A Trip to the Grand Canyon
25 May 2012
An elephant exits a circus train car before joining the animal walk to the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville, South Carolina, for performances in February.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Shirley Griffith.
JUNE SIMMS: And I'm June Simms. This week on our program, we take you on a circus train. Then, we take a trip to one of America’s most breathtaking natural wonders – the Grand Canyon.
(MUSIC)
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is America's longest-running circus company. It began performances in the early eighteen nineties and calls itself "The Greatest Show on Earth." More than a century later, the company continues many of the traditions of the early circus. One of those traditions is traveling by train. Ringling Brothers has two circus trains that are home to two different groups of performers.
Ringmaster Jonathan Iverson is a former opera singer. He joined the circus about ten years ago. He says the history of the company appealed to him.
JONATHAN IVERSON: "Part of that mystique is the world's largest privately owned train. I love the train. Three hundred performers and cast and crew and animals are actually traveling on rails across America. That is the world's greatest car pool."
JUNE SIMMS: A car pool is when a group of people share a ride together, like car pooling to work. The difference with the circus performers is they live in their car pool. And instead of just one car, there are more than sixty of them. The train is over a kilometer and a half long. It travels the country for eleven months a year.
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