While on my evening bicycle ride (Jonah couldn’t come because her saddle was broken like I told her it would be a few weeks ago), I was pleased to see a stopped train on the track next to the trail. Much of the trail either parallels the train, or runs on an older rail bed, so it’s common to see trains. There’s just one section of double track in the immediate area, so there’s often a train stopped there, waiting for the track to be free. Something like 90% of the trains I see on this line are full of nothing but coal, so the fact that there wasn’t a single coal car on this one immediately caught my attention. It appeared to be hodge-podge collection of stuff headed to the pacific northwest. Factory-bound steel, some propane, a lot of empty cars, several containers, and unidentifiable stuff stacked on flatbeds. When I got to the front of the train, which appeared likely to head northbound once it started moving, I was awfully surprised to a three brand-new 737 fuselages! That’s not something I’ve ever noticed on a train, before. They were green-wrapped, of course, and appeared to have sequential serial numbers. The fuselages are assembled in Wichita before they head to Renton, Washington for the final assembly. It’s fun to see American industry at work.

They appear to be on special cars (they don’t actually fit all on one, they hang over the next one!), and I bet the funky-shaped containers have other plane bits inside.