Railworks America

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.

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

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!

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

You'd certainly win any pumpkin chucking competition.

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

Chacal wrote: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!!!!!