Here’s one for the engineering detectives.
We took advantage of a wee bit o’ sunshine last Sunday to head to Richmond Beach. That’s the neato one with ten trillion stairs and trains. The oddest train I’ve ever seen passed us: a single engine pulling four cyan cylinders. Now, before you zoom in and see what we’re dealing with, lemme give you another clue: this train’s headed south.
Now, south of Richmond Beach is downtown Seattle, and then a bit south of that is Boeing. So if you were thinking these looked like airplane fuselages, you were totally right. The airplane lovers in the audience may be able to tell us what kind of planes they’re building.
Apologies for the rather sub-par quality here, but it was a moving target on a cold, windy beach with the sun shining at a very awkward angle. So it goes.
I’ll have some lovely little (well, reallyreally big) mountains for ye soon. They were out in force, and amazingly pretty, and show just how astounding the slow, inexorable force of colliding plates is. You’ll love it.
Hmm… passenger build, dual exit hatches over the wing. I don’t think Boeing has any passenger 767s on order, so that makes it a stretch 737. The only model with an extra pair of doors between the wing and the tail is the 737-900ER, so there we are.
(Yes, I just had my morning coffee…)
(There should have been a [tip ‘o the cap to Google] in there, but I used the wrong brackets. I had no idea there were so many web sites that track the production and delivery of airliners.)
They are headed to Renton, home of the 737! And coming from Spirit Aerospace in Wichita, Kansas. Spirit is Boeing’s former commercial operation in Wichita, which they sold off in order to screw over the employees. Yes, I’m a bit biased on that subject. When the transfer happened, all the employees got layoff notices and had to apply for their old jobs. Virtually nobody over 50 was hired. As an old fart, I find that very offensive.
Here is what happens when the train has an “oopsie”:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/06/us-boeing-derailment-idUSKBN0FA0QD20140706
Well, nuts, you beat me too it while I was a) composing my response, b) looking up the “oopsie”, and c) waiting for Adobe Flash to give me back my computer. I hate Flash.
A bit of a correction, however: The 737-800 (and the old -400) also has two overwing exits. It’s the most popular model.
A 767 would be too big for the train. 737’s barely make it through some of the tunnels.
Right — it’s not the overwing exits, but the extra hatch between the wing and the tail that marks the one in the closeup as a 900ER (as far as I can tell: my expertise derives from ten minutes on Google while drinking my coffee this morning.)
And yeah, I immediately thought of that derailment. Props for the link. :)
Purdy pick-shurz, Dana!
Can’t wait to see the mountains.
Don’t s’pose you’d also work up a bit o’ background on “superior mirage”? That common NW phenomenon that makes Rainier and the Olympics look Extra McLarge HUGE some mornings?
Well of course they look like 737s, but we all know that is entirely too easy an answer. What else looks like a 737 ? Scientologists know that the thetans were transported to earth by Xenu in spaceships that looked like that. It becomes clear. The apocalypse is nigh and the souls are going to be transported to heaven on those wingless hulls. It is intuitively obvious … really.
Ooh! I not only didn’t see that, I didn’t even know about it! I’m kind of a 747 guy, of course. It’s sort of like Doctor Who. You remember your First Doctor. And your first airplane. My designs are all over it.
That might explain Boeing’s evil management.