Work on ‘museum’ TriStar moving along

The re-assembly work on the multi-million dollar Tri Star aircraft, once owned by BWIA, is moving apace. The bolting up of the 165 feet long fuselage is nearing completion, and according to Gaylord Kelshall, the Museum’s curator and co-ordinator of the project, the cockpit, tail and wings will be attached within the next six weeks. “By that time we will have it looking like an aeroplane,” he said. The multi-million dollar BWIA L1011 Tri Star aircraft that was reported “missing,” was sold for $1, and is currently being reassembled at the Military Museum in Chaguaramas.

Kelshall and his 10-man team defied the odds, and in the process, created history when they took on the “monster operation” of transporting a dismantled, wide-bodied aircraft by land over a long distance, for reconstruction and preservation at a museum. It took two weeks, two convoys and nine massive trucks to get the job done. “They told us we couldn’t do it... But I have two rules in life — the first is that you don’t ask permission, you do it; and second, we don’t work out the long term of anything ‘cause you’ll never start,” Kelshall told Sunday Newsday. “It is the first time in the world that something like this has been done. Lockheed Corporation said that we needed to make a road directly from Piarco to the sea and tow it on the road.” Instead, Kelshall took the customary route from Piarco, onto the Churchill Roosevelt Highway, then along the Western Main Road to Chaguaramas. The move was done in the early morning over two Sundays with the assistance of a police escort.

BWIA’s chief engineer and mechanics, together with Kelshall’s workmen, who call themselves the “IMF” (Impossible Mission Force), were able to “cut up the plane in six weeks.” The impossible was done. Kelshall described the move as an adventure, “While we were transporting the plane the left back of the load was touching the road signs. The right front was scraping the cliff and the left front was pushing over the markers (road barriers) at the side of the road. But the police did an absolutely magnificent job. Within the police service there is tremendous expertise and I wrote the Police Commissioner to tell him the magnificent job they did.” The 6,000 gallons of fuel was siphoned out of the aircraft and given to National Petroleum Company, for refining.

“First, we had to lay down the bottom halves of the fuselage, the two largest pieces and put them on the jacks, then put on the top. The outer work will be finished soon but the insides would take a long time. It’s a two-storey affair—the baggage and the upper part,” said Kelshall. The baggage area will be transformed into an aeroplane archives storage. The upper deck will be a walk-in aviation museum which will provide a record of BWIA’s history and pay tribute to “unforgotten” local war veterans. “BWIA has been in existence for 64 years and regardless of all the ole talk, it is one of the best airlines in the world, because the management doesn’t take chances,” Kelshall said.