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This story will appear in tomorrow’s CL.

John Ringling’s personal rail car — named “Jomar” after him and his wife, Mable — sat abandoned on an overgrown railroad spur near downtown Sarasota for almost five years.

“It was going to be refurbished by the Jomar Society and put on the Ringling Hotel grounds,” explains Bob Horne, who bought the train car with Harvey Vengroff in 2004. “Then they knocked down the hotel and the society ran out of money.” Horne is best remembered for his old breakfast-and-lunch joint in the Rosemary District, Bob’s Place, which had enough photographs on the walls to serve as the unofficial Ringling Circus museum.

With the purchase of the Ringling car, Horne’s lifelong love for trains, local history and the circus has finally come together. He hitched Jomar to two former Amtrak cars on a rail spur just north of Fruitville and is restoring the train to serve as a museum and mobile event space. At 65, Horne knows this is a big undertaking — “call me eccentric” — but he doesn’t care.

Most mornings, Horne is hard at work in the two dining cars by 7:30 a.m., hanging some of the thousands of pieces of film, music and circus memorabilia he has accumulated. At 11, he stops to man the kitchen for the daily onboard lunches he serves. By 3:30 p.m., he’s off to jockey carts at Publix. “The train doesn’t pay the bills,” confides Horne. “Yet.”

Horne’s long-term plans include trips to Raymond James Stadium for Bucs games, brunch tours and theme dinners where costumed actors travel the aisles singing medleys of Gershwin or Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Horne’s eyes gleam when he recounts how he salvaged Jomar’s original stained glass windows from a junkyard. He giggles when he describes the train sounds that will play throughout the museum space. He’s been given the best toy in the world, and all he wants to do is share it.

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