Model Railroading > NASA Railroad?

Do any TOs know of a book or magazine article that's about NASA's Kennedy Space Center railroad that once operated. I have the HO Athearn diesel and caboose--any other NASA cars in HO? Thanks in advance!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/20 00:56 by RRBaron.

Railfan and Railroad March 2004
"NASA: Its Not Just Rockets"
is all I found. Sorry I don't have the magazine to check for you.
Bill in Ft Worth

I would suspect that the railroad would handle the Thiokol Rocket booster cars that we hauled over the UP and passed on to an eastern road (perhaps CSX).
These were destined for assembly for the Shuttles.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Green Frog did a great video on the NASA RR

A few years back, Trains did an article on how NASA used locomotives to repostion antennae at the Very Large Array complex, very interesting. I will do some digging for the month/year.

KM-ML4000 Wrote:
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> Green Frog did a great video on the NASA RR

I recommend this video too. There's a preview video clip on you tube about 4:20 long.
$9

http://www.greenfrog.com/product25.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/20 07:29 by KA7008.

Bob3985 Wrote:
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> I would suspect that the railroad would handle the
> Thiokol Rocket booster cars that we hauled over
> the UP and passed on to an eastern road (perhaps
> CSX).
> These were destined for assembly for the Shuttles.

Saw one of those once passing through St. Louis. An impressive load. Have a slide somewhere. I'm thinking the routing was perhaps UP to Kansas City, MP to St. Louis, L&N St. Louis - Evansville - Nashville - Chattanooga - Atlanta, SCL Atlanta - Jacksonville, FEC Jacksonville to destination. Or subsequent, merged companies, depending on the date (such UP with MP included, Family Lines, SCL, etc.). Anything from the Midwest to Florida has to go on the diagonal, and the former L&N traded on that heavily. A good routing -- my dad used it as a shipper, a lot. Probably why L&N power showed up at North Platte from time to time.

Or, considering that fact and this post, maybe the Northwest Forwarder run-through service, Jacksonville, Florida (SCL) to Birmingham, Memphis, and Kansas City (Frisco) -- see image and scroll down to eighth post by member "RailThunder": https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,4936983,4937366#msg-4937366

Here's an online image of the car and the load. This would be an interesting thing to model. The rocket booster is on a special, heavy-duty drop-frame MoPac flatcar. Now that is interesting: http://www.trainweb.org/mopac/mp865025.jpg

MC
Muskegon, Michigan



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/20 09:08 by ironmtn.

Here's the one rocket booster train I have seen on FEC. FEC 240 (NB extra symbol) 12/28/09 St. Augustine, FL.  I took pictures of each car, I'll have to dig those out.
Cooper



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/20 10:00 by SOU3921.

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Years ago at the NMRA convention in Washington DC (I think), a guy was displaying his HO scale diorama of the shuttle transport vehicle and the huge assembly(?) building. It was several feet tall!

Posted from iPhone

If you can try to find Issue # 39 of  " TRP " ( The Railroad Press ) .  They had a article about the NASA RR.  Nasa hired Private cars to use as quarters for the Escorts riding with the Shutle Boosters , after the Boosters arived at the Launch complex the private cars would return to where their owners kept them.

So one time, the private car Santa Cruz was on the rear of Amtrak Train # 14 at La, Ca and the owners wife Donna calle me over to her car, I was the Amtrak Electrician at Union Station and her Marker Lights and her entire Direct Current system went down.  To avoid a BIG delay of Train 14 , I gave her a Portable Marker Light, so 2 weeks later see sent the light back along with a Box of Candy, oh the Good old days