I love the fact that it’s listed under “collectibles.”
That “no postage” thing has me kind of turned off, though.
Actually, I think the moles in my front yard have one already.
I like the descriptive line:
. What part is no longer operational?
Does it no longer spin as well, but makes a really neat high-pitched whirring noise? It’d make one helluva mosquito attractor if you were lab-testing bug repellants. Does it not make a hellacious noise, but the blades still spin adequately? That would be a great way to break into an underground bank vault without being noticed.
What? No personal checks?
“Due to the nature of the item, return after sale is not possible” - no kidding
BTW, does anyone know if that’s the machine that you can see from the road to Dover docks?
According to the description that is the one. It has been out in the open for ten years so I imagine that it is in a very poor state of repair , with corrosion from rain and salty winds from the nearby sea.
Too bad. I can just see someone buying it and turning it into a house, though!
It’s listed as being 580 tonnes (how many tons is that?), but how large is it in size - height, length and width? (Comparisons to other common vehicles might help, since I’m terrible when it comes to visualizing numbers and units.) Morgyn’s suggestion about turning it into a house intrigues me. Of course, even if I could afford to buy the thing, it’d be a real task getting it to Canada. (If it still worked, maybe I could tunnel under the Atlantic. 
)
Anyhoo…
Dimension-wise…the tunnel is 7.6 metres in diameter, and you can guess the length from that and the photo.
Sorry, you asked for comparisons…
put it this way - the tunnel carries trains, which carry lorries. Pretty big.
Conversion factor .9842, so near enough the same.
Hmmm, arguable, at best …
Huh? 1000kg in a tonne, or 2200lbs, compared to 2000lbs in a ton. They are roughly comparable, but the difference is 10%, not 2%.
According to http://www.thetipsbank.com/convert.htm :
tons tonnes 1.016
tonnes tons 0.9842
I think you’ll find there are 2,240 lb in a ton.
To answer your question, TOTBP, 580 tonnes is around 1,279,000 pounds. This is about 639 tons if you’re using 2,000 pounds = 1 ton, or the “short ton”. If you use 2,240 pounds = 1 ton, or the “long ton”, it’s about 570.8 tons.
Ooh, since we’re arguing about this now, I should probably provide a cite. http://www.sizes.com/units/ton.htm provides very nice descriptions of the difference between short tons, long tons, tonnes, register tons, water tons, and many more. http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/weight is a conversion utility that distinguishes between short and long tons.
Is the word “ton” losing all meaning for anyone else yet?
Had to send my Dad the link for that. A company he worked for made parts to that and other tunnel borers.
Just goes to show that you can find anything through the SDMB.
Why don’t they just cut it up sell it to a scrap yard? Wouldn’t the steel alone be worth a bunch?
Just to throw gas on the fire, in my crowd “ton” means 100MPH.
Unclviny
Does anyone else think that that thing is being sold way too cheaply, so therefore that auction is merely a scam? Am I the only one? Doesn’t that thing cost millions to make?
Yes, but if it’s not worth anything as scrap (per my previous question) then the cost of disposing of it is probably way more than any intrinsic utility it has except possibly as a tourist attraction, and that evidently hasn’t worked out or they wouldn’t be selling it. All the electronics and power guts of any value were probably removed before it was put on display. What’s there is probably just the body and main structural components.
As a commercial realtor I’ve learned over and over that what something cost to build (especially something special purpose and mechanical) has little to do with it’s arm’s length market value when it’s sold. I (on behalf of clients) have paid people tens of thousands of dollars to tear up and remove machinery that cost millions to build and was only 5-10 years old.