Old Ringling Bros. rail cars catch fire in North Carolina

Officials in North Carolina say nine railroad cars once owned by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and had been slated to be refurbished for passenger train service caught fire. The Nash County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release that the decommissioned cars were just outside the town of Spring Hope. WITN reported four of the nine cars were destroyed. The N.C. Department of Transportation says it bought the train cars in 2017 to refurbish them to use in the state’s passenger train fleet. But after it won federal grants to purchase new cars, the state chose to auction off the old circus cars.