Carnival Train Playthings

In the early 1940s, traveling carnivals crisscrossed the country by rail — entire midways packed into wooden boxcars, rattling from town to town under peeling paint and fading banners. When the show was over, the train would roll on… unless it didn’t. The dolls and artifacts in this series were recovered from a long-forgotten carnival train abandoned in rural Illinois. Inside the dusty prize box, they sat waiting as if the midway lights might flicker on again at any moment. Each one carries the faded charm of a carnival long gone-and just enough mystery to wonder why they were never claimed. Esbee & Crow’s Travelling Carnival & Midway-A 1940s Carnival Tale: Founded in the mid 1930s by John "Esbee" Eslinger and Mae Crow, the carnival began modestly as a “two-car show,” traveling on regular passenger trains. They soon acquired a coach and a baggage car and performed in rural towns across Illinois, constructing their midway in vacant lots or on leased fairgrounds. Operating throughout central Illinois in the 1940s, they leveraged the extensive network of the Illinois Train System, which by mid-century offered passenger service across hundreds of miles-including key towns like Decatur, Bloomington, and Peoria. The carnival's train likely hit numerous stops along these lines. Occasionally, they also traveled using the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad, serving southern Illinois towns and connecting to Chicago. Their makeshift train carried all equipment-rides, tents, and eventually live animals, using flatcars and stock cars, followed by staff coaches converted for lodging. These coaches, gutted of original Pullman fittings, were pragmatically adapted: performers and staff slept in bunks, while Esbee and Mae had a modest private stateroom. When parked, the carnival comprised a linear “midway” of colorful tents, games of chance, food stands, novelty acts, and daredevil feats. Audiences ranged from rural families to visiting fairgoers, drawn by the novelty and spectacle. By the late 1940s, post-war economics and the rise of automobile travel began to erode the interurban passenger system’s viability. In addition, many small carnivals struggled as town centers modernized, and highway access allowed entertainment to shift elsewhere. Eventually, Esbee & Crow’s show hit financial hardship-unable to sustain costs for hiring rail cars and maintenance. They quietly declared bankruptcy. Their gear was sold off piecemeal: flatcars auctioned, tents and props seized, and the staff coaches left abandoned on storage rail tracks-relics of a bygone carnival era.