Circus Train Recap

So yesterday the Circus Train that has been here and there around the island for the last week. Last week the train was moved from Newark to Garden City, the circus payed a bunch of shows last week, and now that the shows at the Coliseum have concluded the circus has packed up and moved to it's next destination, the Barclay's Center.  There were a couple problems about this movie as discussed on Sunday. Basically nobody really knew what was going to happen to the circus train.

So the move happened yesterday and here's what went down:

• After the morning rush, the two MP-15's headed east and pulled the first half of the train (the train was split into two halves, passenger cars and freight cars).  The first half they pulled west was the passenger cars and they left Garden City around 10:30am.  They pulled the passenger cars all the way to HAROLD interlocking where they handed them off to Amtrak to take through the tunnels/Penn Station for storage someplace in New Jersey.
• The second half of the train was the freight cars and that left an hour later, around 11:30am.  But here's the thing the freight cars were empty!  So what happened to the animals?  Well, the circus planners probably decided that it was in their best interest to truck the animals directly to the Barclay's Center so they wouldn't have to worry about a 4+ mile walk overnight (and especially there were some rumors about some sort of animal rights activists protesting the circus and possibly interfering with the safe/effective movement of the animals (we wouldn't want an angry elephant sitting on some annoying protested)).  The rest of the empty freight cars are to be stored in the Long Island City yard for safekeeping until the animals are ready to be loaded up, handed off to Amtrak, and dragged through the tunnels to join the other half of the train in New Jersey.

Following the shows at the Barclay's Center the circus train will pack up and head to Youngstown, Ohio for some performances sometime towards the end of the month.

So that just about wraps up this year's circus train festivities.  Short of a very small and quick move sometime next week when the animals are loaded up and sent off to NJ the circus is gone...until next year!