Renton

Renton Rocket street running with 737 fuselages, Renton, WA, 7-28-2015

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• published: 28 Sep 2015
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Well, fellow railfans, I have a very special treat for you today. Something you, literally, can see nowhere else. Here is the story, which is longer than the video! On a summer afternoon I had parked by the mainline in south Seattle. There is an overpass that I though would be a good place to catch a northbound train. While waiting and listening to my scanner the Renton Rocket local job snuck up on me going southbound. The Renton Rocket services customers in Renton, with its primary task of delivering 737 fuselages to the Renton Boeing plant. The fuselages are made at the Spirit Aerosytems plant in Witchita, KS and brought to Renton via rail. Search my videos for "fuselage" and you'll several of my videos where I've caught fuselages on road trains coming into Seattle as well as on the Renton Rocket job. A devious thought came into my head: could I get to downtown Renton before the Rocket did? Why? Because for three blocks in downtown Renton, the tracks run right down the middle of a public street. Street running is pretty rare, especially on the big Class 1 railroads. Fuselages running in the street? Can't see that anywhere else on earth but here! So I sprinted south to Renton. I figured I had a good chance to beat the Rocket because they had several well cars with garbage containers behind the fuselages. I presumed they'd drop those at the transfer facility first before heading over the Boeing plant. I arrived on Houser Way S, where the tracks run. I drove down the street once, trying to figure the best shooting location. I setup and waited, not knowing when they'd show up. I had my scanner on, hoping to hear the crew talking on the radio. Finally I heard "foreman going in between, Rocket". That meant he was going in between cars to attach brake hoses or set/release handbrakes. The response was "Rocket, set and centered". That was the engineer telling the foreman that the air brakes were set and the reverser lever was in Neutral. And heard the term "Ryerson Steel" mentioned. That meant they were at Ryerson Steel, just a mile from my location. I setup and waited for the train to arrive. They run about 10mph giving you plenty of time to view the train. You can't get much closer to a train than this! I was so close I really needed a wider angle lens to take in the cars. Behind the locos were two coil cars. These are specialized flat cars used to carry large sheet metal coils. Ryerson receives rolls of sheet metal and turns them into various sheet products. These were empties they picked up at Ryerson. The stars of the show are the two fuselages. This close up you can really see the details of how they attach them to the flat cars. The fuselages are numbered 5558 and 5559. This means they're the 5,558th and 5,559th 737 Next Generation planes made. There were 1,988 of the original 737's made. You may be able to hear some people talking in the background. There were some tourists behind me at the intersection. Once they saw the fuselages, they started taking pictures and chattering like mad at the scene before them. Checking production lists on sites like Planespotters shows that 5558 was delivered on Sept 3rd to Lucky Air of China, tail #B-6016, it's a 737-800 variant. Here she is on first flight: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FgXcDB6LHPY/VdabPEoZGuI/AAAAAAAAAPU/IUsZm_o-vZU/s1600/lucky.jpg Here she is painted, landing at Shanghai: https://img.planespotters.net/photo/639000/original/b-6016-lucky-air-boeing-737-84pwl_PlanespottersNet_639869.jpg 5559 was delivered on Sept 9th to United Airlines, tail #N62889, it's a 737-900 variant. Here she is painted: http://img1.jetphotos.net:8080/img/5/9/3/8/42592_1441746839.jpg Who knows, one day you may be riding on a plane that you saw arriving to the plant where it was assembled! Wicked cool, eh? 2269 / 2347 GP38-2 / GP38-2