Rocket to the moon or missile?

[phrankenstign]

There is a Menards flatcar with load (no. 279-3090) pictured on page 22 in the January 2016 CTT.  The load is described as a missile.  I'm no rocket expert, but it looks to me like the Saturn rockets that went to the moon (only much smaller in scale to fit on the flatcar).  Is my memory faulty?

[Bob Keller]

In that the nature of toy trains is to suspend disbelief, if it was an O scale Saturn booster rocket, it would crush the car. It is, however, much closer to the size of a Minuteman missile, so you may feel free to believe it to be whichever you choose. Menards, however, identfies it as a rocket.

[stebbycentral]

It is defintely a model of a Saturn 5 rocket, and is hopelessly out of scale.  Most space rockets would not fit on a flat car, and those rocket components that are shipped by rail are always in some sort of protective enclosure. If your mind requires some method of rationalization I suppose you could pretend it was an advertizing sign being shipped to a space-themed resturant or amusement park.   

[Penny Trains]

Yep.  Saturn V.  A 1:48 scale Saturn V in this configuration (Apollo Lunar) would be over 8 feet tall.  I started building one out of cardstock and posterboard a few years back and I finished it up to the interstage ring.  At this point, it's 4 feet long and (without getting out a ruler) about 18 inches accross at the thrust structure.  If you're interrested in building one, you can download the parts for it and many other launch vehicles for free at the Lower Hudson Valley Challenger Center website: http://jleslie48.com/gallery_models.html.

Becky (railroader and space cadet)

[rtraincollector]

When I was about 9 - 11 years old we lived in MS and my father worked for GE and at the time it was called the test site now known as Stennis anyway they would bring in the booster rockets on train cars to test and that alone took a whole train car from what I remember. Now again I was real youn so I'm talking about 50 years ago.