Yellowknife (Mar 21/03) - Blair Weatherby has shipped tanks, cartons, even entire houses, but he'd never shipped anything like this before.

Weatherby brought the ruined fuselage of the Buffalo Airways DC-4 that crashed last August at the Diavik mine.

There were a few surprised people on the road from Diavik.

"We got a lot of looks, a lot of comments," he said.

This is no wee Cessna. The DC-4's fuselage is 15 feet wide, 112 feet long and 26 feet tall with the tail.

Weatherby left Diavik on Wednesday evening and drove through the night, parking his unique load at Prosperous Lake.

There, the tail was separated from the plane's body so it would fit beneath the power lines outside Yellowknife.

A softening ice road from recent warm weather meant moving the plane sooner than planned, Weatherby said.

The downed plane is on its way to Hay River.

The only challenge, once the tail was separated, was to get the plane through Frank's Channel near Edzo.

The plane was carrying groceries and building materials into the mine camp when it crashed.

The four-engine aircraft landed short of the Diavik runway, coming down so hard that a wing was torn from the fuselage and a small fire erupted. The pilot received minor injuries in the crash.