Boeing Train
I have seen this modeled many times but I have never seen a model that looks right to me. So I decided to give it a try. I am using an Accurail flat car and a block of polyurethane foam for the airplane. I hope to get a little more detail in the fuselage and then make castings of it because I would like a train with several 737s at the head end.
Construction photo, I have finished building the cradles and have the base coats of paint on them. I still need to build the parts box, add grabs and details to the flat car and build the tail car.
I am proud of the cradle that goes under the wing roots. It is 167 pieces of Evergreen styrene.
Hopefully there will soon be more as there is still much to be done.
Recently, I realized I built the rear cradle about 2 feet too wide. It is supposed to be 12'7" wide, 3" wider than the fuselage. That is the trouble working without dimensions, only photos. To take a break, I started on the tail car and here is a photo after two weeks of lunch hours working on it. It is all scratch built. Thanks to Mark Gillings for measuring the width of the box for me, 11' 5.5".
Here is a photo after another couple weeks. The car is sitting on a few of the photos I used for the project.
I rebuilt the cradle to the appropriate 12'7" width and posed a photo with the three parts as they are now. The new cradle has more parts than the last one because I was able to add all 60 gussets to the base. Mike at Mainline Trains in Forest Grove, OR, recently gave me an article from the October 2000 BN Expediter, the BN Historical Society publication. It answered lots of questions I had. Thanks, Mike!
The A end of the tail car. It still needs a little detail but is coming along. I think this car holds the horizontal stabilizers and maybe some of the landing gear. There are several versions of these cars, some 68' (73"4" over pulling faces) and for the -900s, 89'4" (94'8" over pulling faces). The newest cars don't have the large box on one end, they are regular flatcars.
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