Railroads getting together for the USS Iowa

[arizonachris]

Saw this mini-article in this month's Iowa Broadsides newsletter:

"We may be headed to the Midwest to retrieve 150 inert 16”/50 projectiles sometime in the next 60 to 90 days. A huge thank you to BNSF, Indiana Railroad, CSX, Pacific Harbor Line, Arrow Transload, PNT National Transport, and the US Navy for donating their goods and services."

Now, I have no idea what we are gonna do with 150x 1,700lb. projectiles, but I think it's neat that all these companies are donating to help with this project. Pretty sure there's gonna be some railfanning behind this big of a move. Gotta scope out where the PHL move segment will be.

[Chacal]

Even more intriguing, who happened to have a stash of 16" inert shells?
I know you can find anything on eBay, butstill.

[arizonachris]

The Navy has them all. Figure each Iowa class battleship carried 1,600 projectiles (full compliment) each ship. When they were retired, all that ammo was taken off ship and dis-armed then taken to "deep storage". There were also more ships that had 16" guns, with all those projectiles. That's a mountain of "stuff" somewhere in the mid west.

I'm sure a few made it to Flea Bay. Hey, they look great in the game room in your converted ICBM silo!

[bpetit]

I would pay to see those 16in firing with blank shells if there is such a thing.

[Chacal]

You'd certainly win any pumpkin chucking competition.

[buzz456]

They are probably at the Crane Naval Depot in Crane Indiana.

[arizonachris]

You'd certainly win any pumpkin chucking competition.

Yup, sure would. Iowa holds the record for distance of a 16" shell, it's 26.9 miles. Not sure how well a punkin' would stand up to 6 bags of powder, tho. I ain't cleaning that barrel!

We fired one of the 5" guns for the Christmas Boat Parade, man those "little" suckers are LOUD!!!!!