This photograph shows a trailer from the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company being prepared for a "circus loading". The term is used to describe an older method of moving trailers on to flatcars, (TOFC), whereby a truck backs the trailer up to a ramp placed at one end of a cut of cars. The loading process requires bridge plates to be at each end of all the cars to enable the trailer and tractor to pass from car to car.
Kansas Memory
Kansas Historical Society
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company's circus loading - 2