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

[Ryan]

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.

 

[trainman74]

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

 

[XHRTSP]

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

 

[printman2000]

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

 

[Ryan]

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

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

 

[saxman]

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

 

[AmtrakBlue]

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

 

[Ryan]

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

 

[Devil's Advocate]

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

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

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.

 

[Bob Dylan]

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

 

[railiner]

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

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

 

[Green Maned Lion]

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.

 

[Groundpounder]

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.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

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.

 

[saxman]

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

 

[Green Maned Lion]

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.

 

[Bob Dylan]

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????

 

[railiner]

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.......

 

[JayPea]

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.

 

[Anderson]

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.

 

[chakk]

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.

 

[chakk]

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.

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.

 

[CHamilton]

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.

 

[Anderson]

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.

 

[Ryan]

"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."