Plane on a Train next to an Automobile

We took the scenic route home tonight, expecting only to catch a magnificent sight of the blazing horizon. But lo, we ran into this interesting sight along the way: an airplane's fuselage on a train car chugging alongside running automobiles.

5-Star worked at Boeing once. He said this plane is headed south for further assembly. But first, notice the gray irregular lines on the fuselage... [Yellow arrow.] Those are repair tracks, where only a certified mechanic has repaired any damages to the metal. 

"Were these fuselages brought up north to be repaired?" I asked.

No. As with any construction, damage always occurs, either by careless mechanics, or faulty tools used to assemble the plane.

A few steps away from us, two gentlemen were discussing previous events that involved such transportation of these airplane parts. Parts are drayed from the Boeing plant up north, to the Boeing plant down south. One day, engineers noticed that the newly delivered fuselages arrived more damaged than when they left the originating plant. So they set up cameras to record the parts on their journey. They were aghast to find that kids were throwing rocks at the cargo en route!

Unless airplanes are a common mode of transportation for you, where flying was part of your job, as a flight staff, or real estate mogul, or where you visit your family on a regular basis across any of the four oceans (there were only four named oceans - Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic - when I was in middle school), you probably couldn't appreciate the extraordinary engineering and safety measures taken in building one of these mechanical birds.

And I can't help but wonder if mischievous acts like throwing rocks, ultimately leads to the price of a ticket that I pay to visit Truk Islands, or the Philippines, or Ireland. But I digress...

Where was I?

Oh, yes. A plane on a train next to an automobile.

We've come a long, long, LONG way from covered wagons.


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