# Yeah, these airplanes are going to be a little late!



## Ryan (Jul 5, 2014)

OOPS!!!

Jishnu posted this on FB:

http://www.king5.com/news/aerospace/Train-derails-with-aircraft-parts-265866171.html



> SUPERIOR, MT -- A train derailed near Superior Thursday, sending Boeing aircraft fuselages into a river.
> 
> Nineteen cars on the westbound train derailed. Three of the cars contained aircraft parts and ended up in the Clark Fork River.


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## trainman74 (Jul 5, 2014)

A caption I saw elsewhere: "Boeings heading upstream to spawn."


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## XHRTSP (Jul 5, 2014)

I wonder if that's the end for the two fuselages touching water.


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## printman2000 (Jul 5, 2014)

Okay, somewhere on our trip from Lamy to Washington, D.C., we saw several plane fuselages on a train that looked just like those. Crazy if they are the same ones.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## Ryan (Jul 5, 2014)

XHRTSP said:


> I wonder if that's the end for the two fuselages touching water.


Almost definitely. You can see the buckles in the one fuselage.


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## saxman (Jul 5, 2014)

Don't worry. Nothing a little speed tape can't fix. It'll buff right out!


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## AmtrakBlue (Jul 5, 2014)

saxman said:


> Don't worry. Nothing a little speed tape can't fix. It'll buff right out!


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## Ryan (Jul 5, 2014)

trainman74 said:


> A caption I saw elsewhere: "Boeings heading upstream to spawn."


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## Devil's Advocate (Jul 5, 2014)

RyanS said:


> XHRTSP said:
> 
> 
> > I wonder if that's the end for the two fuselages touching water.
> ...


Over the years I've read about some truly amazing repairs. The 737 has the most abundant airframe ever manufactured so the limit of what can be successfully repaired and what must be scrapped should be extremely well understood. If they decide to scrap these parts it may have as much to do with legal considerations as with any technical limitations. That being said there are photos showing separation of at least one fuselage, which would seem to imply that at least one is probably destined for conversion to a flight deck simulator or recycling.


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 5, 2014)

ROTFLMAO!!! Speed tape!!! Wisdom from the Flight Deck!!!


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## railiner (Jul 6, 2014)

I'd sure hate to be the insurance carrier paying that claim......

What, if anything, transported by rail could be as costly?


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## Green Maned Lion (Jul 6, 2014)

A lot. Unless that's a 787, and it's not, it's not that valuable. An equivalent length of, say, iPhones in double stack containers would likely be a bigger loss.


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## Groundpounder (Jul 6, 2014)

Green Maned Lion said:


> A lot. Unless that's a 787, and it's not, it's not that valuable. An equivalent length of, say, iPhones in double stack containers would likely be a bigger loss.


You need to pretend these are complete 737's, not just bare fuselages. This is going to set Boeing's delivery schedule back quite a bit, and it was already very strained. The lost revenue for Boeing is going to be more than just the value of those hulls.


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## Green Maned Lion (Jul 6, 2014)

Even a full three 737s aren't worth the value of 500 feet worth of double stack intermodal cars carrying something densely valuable- like iPhones.


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## saxman (Jul 6, 2014)

According to Boeing the cost of a new 737-800 is $90.5 million.


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## Green Maned Lion (Jul 6, 2014)

Ok. Let's say you have 500 feet of double stack. 9 cars? 18 truck loads? iPhones are sold by Apple for $800 on average.

A 40 foot container has 55 million cubic inches. An iPhone in box is 50 cubic inches. So you can fit a million of the things in a container. $800 million for one. Or $14.4 billion for the same length in train for iPhones. As I said, a 737 is not insanely value dense as shipping cargo.


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## Bob Dylan (Jul 6, 2014)

Most valuable cargo is probably Secret Military and Intelligence weapons and equipment that are shipped via rail, sometimes worth billions!!!!

Good question about insurance and liability, who pays????


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## railiner (Jul 6, 2014)

Irrelevant to this cost exercise, but if that were containers full of I-Phones, chances are good that they would survive the wreck the way they are packed.....

so long as they stay dry, that is.......


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## JayPea (Jul 6, 2014)

Totally off the subject but I recall several years ago BN, in the days prior to their merger with the Santa Fe, had a derailment west of Spokane on its Great Northern line. Amongst the items it was carrying were........trains. One car was loaded with HO train sets. A bit less costly than fuselages or I-phones, but to me ironic.


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## Anderson (Jul 6, 2014)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Ok. Let's say you have 500 feet of double stack. 9 cars? 18 truck loads? iPhones are sold by Apple for $800 on average.
> 
> A 40 foot container has 55 million cubic inches. An iPhone in box is 50 cubic inches. So you can fit a million of the things in a container. $800 million for one. Or $14.4 billion for the same length in train for iPhones. As I said, a 737 is not insanely value dense as shipping cargo.


It's not unlike the truckloads of cash Saddam Hussein tried to smuggle out of Iraq. The cash in one truck was worth either several hundred million dollars or managed to get just over a billion. Then again, _that_ is not unlike _Lethal Weapon 2_, come to think of it.


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## chakk (Jul 6, 2014)

XHRTSP said:


> I wonder if that's the end for the two fuselages touching water.


Detailed discussion on trainorders.com is that this is the end of the line for all 5 fuselages that were involved in the freight train derailment.


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## chakk (Jul 6, 2014)

Groundpounder said:


> Green Maned Lion said:
> 
> 
> > A lot. Unless that's a 787, and it's not, it's not that valuable. An equivalent length of, say, iPhones in double stack containers would likely be a bigger loss.
> ...


No, it's not going to set Boeing's delivery schedule back quite a bit. Boeing has an order backlog of several THOUSAND 737s, and so these 5 will be barely noticed in the delivery system.

And for those who might be wondering, the fuselages were manufactured at a former Boeing subsidiary in Wichita, KS, as they have been for many years, and are routinely shipped to Washington state for addition of wings, tail, and other parts via rail.


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## CHamilton (Jul 7, 2014)

Boeing checking for damage of plane parts that fell off train




> MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) - Boeing is deciding what to do with six newly manufactured commercial airplane bodies that fell off a train in a derailment in western Montana, including three that slid down a steep riverbank, a company spokeswoman said Monday....
> "Once we have completed our assessment of damages and determined our next course of action, we will decide what to do with the fuselages," she said.
> She said in a statement that other Boeing 777 and 747 airplane parts on some of the 19 cars that went off the tracks appear undamaged and will be shipped to the company's Everett, Washington, assembly plant.
> The derailment sent three 737 fuselages down an embankment of the Clark Fork River and knocked three others from the train. Weiss said it was not immediately clear whether they were 737-700s, which are relatively short at 110 feet from nose to tail, or the longer 737-800s or 737-900s, which are more than 133 feet long.


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## Anderson (Jul 7, 2014)

I had a friend suggest that someone take an FAA crash investigator to that site without telling them what happened just to see the reaction.


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## Ryan (Jul 7, 2014)

"I have determined that the cause of this plane crash is the fact that none of the aircraft involved seem to have any wings. Or engines. Or control surfaces."


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## Trogdor (Jul 7, 2014)

It would be an NTSB investigator, not FAA, and chances are NTSB might be out there anyway.


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## Ryan (Jul 7, 2014)

Don't go messing up the joke with all your facts and logic and stuff.


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## Tracktwentynine (Jul 7, 2014)

RyanS said:


> "I have determined that the cause of this plane crash is the fact that none of the aircraft involved seem to have any wings. Or engines. Or control surfaces."


Or paint.

I mean anyone with more than about an 8th grade education could tell you that these things didn't fall out of the sky because they weren't done yet.


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## railiner (Jul 8, 2014)

Isn't that green tinted 'paint' actually a protective plastic film over the bare aluminum?


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## jis (Jul 8, 2014)

railiner said:


> Isn't that green tinted 'paint' actually a protective plastic film over the bare aluminum?


Yep.
As for NTSB, if they are involved at all, and I can;t imagine why they'd be at this point, it would be the NTSB rail investigators, not air incident investigators.


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## fairviewroad (Jul 8, 2014)

All I know is, next time I'm in the market for a used 737, I'm going to check veeerrrryyy carefully for any high-water marks

on the fuselage. :excl:


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## jis (Jul 8, 2014)

You should do so even more carefully when you get your new 737, since these if used, would first go into new 737s before they become used 737s


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## fairviewroad (Jul 8, 2014)

jis said:


> You should do so even more carefully when you get your new 737, since these if used, would first go into new 737s before they become used 737s


Do I look like Grandpa moneybags to you??? I haven't been able to afford a new 737 ever since the stock market went south back

in '29.

My theory is these puppies are going to get many years of service shuttling kayakers back to their vehicles along the Clark Fork

River. Then, when the public has forgotten about "planeinthewatergate", Boeing will put these things on Craiglist for unsuspecting

budget carriers to snap up.


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## Anderson (Jul 8, 2014)

...and I just got an ad on Yahoo Finance for Amtrak Virginia. Why is this posted here? The ads appeared (for the first time that I can recall in a _long_ time) when I looked up a story on the derailed planes on the financial page.


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## FriskyFL (Jul 9, 2014)

So that's where airplanes go to spawn!


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## CHamilton (Jul 9, 2014)

FriskyFL said:


> So that's where airplanes go to spawn!


Okay, I can't resist posting this any longer. It's been making the rounds for the last few days.


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## Groundpounder (Jul 11, 2014)

chakk said:


> Groundpounder said:
> 
> 
> > Green Maned Lion said:
> ...


Really?

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-studying-impact-of-737-fuselage-derailment-401266/


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## cirdan (Jul 11, 2014)

Green Maned Lion said:


> A lot. Unless that's a 787, and it's not, it's not that valuable. An equivalent length of, say, iPhones in double stack containers would likely be a bigger loss.


But if a double stack of iphones fell into a river like that, I doubt they'd all be write-offs. They should be well padded in the packages. The only real problem would be the ones that got wet.

Besides which, do iPhones go by rail by the containerload at all? Wouldn't the risk of them getting stolen be far too large?


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## Green Maned Lion (Jul 11, 2014)

They don't, obviously, but I'm sure there are plenty of 140 foot loads worth more than ~$40 million.


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## jis (Jul 11, 2014)

chakk said:


> No, it's not going to set Boeing's delivery schedule back quite a bit. Boeing has an order backlog of several THOUSAND 737s, and so these 5 will be barely noticed in the delivery system.


Huh? How does the size of the order book affect delivery schedule delays caused by a break in the supply chain caused by a train derailment? Somehow that whole line of reasoning presented above does not make much sense to me. Yes one could argue whether it will be quite a bit or a little bit or what, but it is inconceivable that this disruption in supply chain will have no impact on delivery schedules. I am sure the customers who were destined to get planes built around these frames will be affected.


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## Devil's Advocate (Jul 11, 2014)

jis said:


> chakk said:
> 
> 
> > No, it's not going to set Boeing's delivery schedule back quite a bit. Boeing has an order backlog of several THOUSAND 737s, and so these 5 will be barely noticed in the delivery system.
> ...


Not just the customers but also the vendors. Boeing is a huge user of just in time supply chains which are now suddenly out of sync.


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## railiner (Jul 11, 2014)

jis said:


> You should do so even more carefully when you get your new 737, since these if used, would first go into new 737s before they become used 737s


New or used, you should always run a carfa.....errr, make that a planefax report, before buying.... :lol:


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## CHamilton (Jul 25, 2014)

> A crew from Pacific Steel and Recycling in Missoula worked Thursday morning amid cranes, trains, planes and rain to dismantle what was left of the six blue-green Boeing 737 bodies.
> 
> Montana Rail Link crews did what they could to salvage the valuable flatcar carriers mangled when 19 cars skipped the tracks on a 93-degree day three weeks earlier and several miles above.
> 
> The damaged fuselages were loaded up after the wreck and moved to the nearest siding at Rivulet, where they've been sitting for the past couple of weeks.


http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Salvage-crews-dismantle-derailed-airplane-bodies-268655602.html


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## CHamilton (Nov 5, 2014)

Report: July train derailment that destroyed 737 fuselages reveals likely cause


> Early investigative reports suggest the summer derailment of a train that resulted in the destruction of six Boeing 737 fuselages may have been caused by track issues.
> 
> Several train cars derailed in Western Montana July 3 and fell into a nearby river. The train was carrying Boeing 737 fuselages from Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas to Boeing's Renton plant for assembly. Six were destroyed in the accident. There were no injuries.
> 
> ...


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