The Henry Ford Rouge Tour With Distinguished Visitors

I traveled once again to the Henry Ford Museum yesterday.

MrGarabaldi and his heir apparent had come to town to visit the Museum.

They arrived late Friday night so we met up at the museum Saturday morning at 9 when it opened.

First thing we did was the Rouge Factory Tour. The tour takes you to where they are currently building F-150 trucks.

The historic and storied Rouge Factory Complex is huge.

 This picture taken from the observation deck of the F-150 assembly building gives you an idea of the size of the complex - every building you see in this picture is a part of it.

They've made the site more green, with living roofs on some buildings and transforming what were slag-heaps into green-spaces.

We then entered the building.  The tour begins with you traveling to two different theaters.  The first gives a short film with the history of the Factory and Henry Ford. The second is an impressive show complete with lights, lasers, and robots,  that demonstrates how an F-150 is made.  Both were impressively well-done and set the tone of the tour very nicely.

You then head up to the observation deck, and we chatted with a knowledgeable and friendly docent who was a retired Ford employee, who gave a really informative chat as we  saw what was there.

Each F-150 gets driven on a test track after assembly:

Every 58 seconds while the factory is working, a new F-150 is born.

We then walked a catwalk above the factory floor and got to see the trucks being assembled, as they were working on Saturday.  No pictures or cell phone usage was permitted.  Watching the trucks being built on the assembly line was very impressive.  MrGarabaldi, with a background in automotive, provided some very knowledgeable color commentary about the process that made it even more interesting. The catwalk tour was 1/3 of a mile long and was only a portion of a side of the factory, which gives you an idea of how big the building is. Real big is an understatement. We got to see the line shut down for the lunch break, which was interesting to see everything go from humming alone to a dead stop in an instant.

After the catwalk, we got to examine a Ford F-150 cutaway that was neat to poke around.

MrGarabaldi's heir left the tour wanting to buy an F-150, and I understand that completely.

After the tour, we left the museum grounds briefly and I took them to a coney restaurant so they could get some local flavor.  The Coney Dogs were pronounced good and the Gyros received MrGarabaldis' stamp of approval.

We then returned to the museum and toured it until it closed. Lots to see.

From Ford's Quadracylce, the first commercial vehicle he made:

 

To the first Mustang and Taurus-

We saw the sweep of automotive history.

Not neglecting aviation, we also saw the Ford Tri-Motor and many other flying machines in the museum.

To complete the Planes, Trains, and Automobiles set, we of course, had to checkout the railroad section.

Once the museum closed, we exited and then headed off to Buddy's Pizza so the intrepid travelers could experience some Detroit Pizza, which was excellent as always at Buddy's.

It was a great short trip and great to see MrGarabaldi and his heir in person again.