Northwest Airlines  Convair 580  N3418      (c/n  61)

                                    

                                        When Northwest absorbed Republic in 1986 they were saddled with (if that's the right word) a
                                        small fleet of 14 or so Convair 580s.   Roughly half of them (like this one) were originally built
                                        as Convair 340s and converted to turboprops sometime in the late 1960s.   NWA surprisingly
                                        still operated these for several  years out of NWA's "mini-hub" at Wold Chamberlin Field,
                                        Minneapolis, on the old North Central (and Republic) routes thoughout the northern mid-west.
                                        Photographs of them are quite rare and I am indebted to Chris Novak for the above image. I am
                                        surprised that NWA didn't sell them off right away, but that evidently didn't happen and, in fact,
                                        at least one is still registered (albeit in storage) to NWA today (early 2006).   N3418 was
                                        originally built to a Braniff order, and would have looked just like its sister illustrated in B&W
                                        on my entry.
                                        For more of Chris' selection of airliner images (including more rare ones like the above) go to:
                                        http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?photographersearch=Chris%20E.%20Novak&distinct_entry=true