Since we’re back talking about fire trains, anyone have a Bachmann rail truck in red that they want to get rid of cheap?
Nothing is cheap anymore Bob, except me, I’m still cheap. 
So, I’m sorry for hijacking the thread about fire trains with my fire on a train stuff. But I’ve been interested in this bonfire flat car since reading about it a few months ago, and while messing around on Wikipedia just now I found another part of the story. Horatio Allen was the chief engineer on the South Carolina Canal and RR Co, during the time that he developed the first ever train headlight, which was… a bonfire flat car followed by another flat car with a giant reflector, both pushed in front of the locomotive. This would be an impressive thing to model, IMHO. The source cited on the wiki page is a book ( A History of the American Locomotive: Its Development, 1830-1880) by John H. White, which describes the reflector as simple sheet iron. Now to try to locate information about the dimensions of this reflector.
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That’s a great clue! It cannot have been too large, or it would obstruct the scene it was to illuminate. Or maybe they just wanted to be on the look out for “snake heads” popping up from the capped rails.
I agree!
It’s a fun book, with lots of fascinating illustrations of what was considered “wonders and curiosities of the railway” back in 1884. Some pretty curious wonders back then… 
And another possibility would be not to illuminate ahead, but just as likely to be as large and bright as possible to be seen from an opposing locomotive before they met. Remember back then they ran by time only, no telegraph or other communication.