I say this because yesterday i saw two unused beechcraft fuselages being loaded yesterday and noticed that not a lot of care was being taken. Speaking to the crane driver he said they were going to the scrap metal merchant… how much are they worth? well if they were to be used then about £600000… each… as they were, to the scrap man… about £6000… 😯 depending how you look at it thats a lot of money to throw in the bin!. BTW there was nothing wrong with them its just that they stopped making them!

I working UK Naval shipbuilding.. spoilt for choice really!

mate of mine told me about a £1.5 million copper bus bar which went missing from the site over night.

Presumably scrapped in smaller chunks as i think it was on a low loader 😯

My late dad worked for an AV company and they would buy whatever they needed to do a job. Often things would come in package deals (ie, they needed a DVD player, it came with an amp bundled or they needed a monitor and it came bundled with a sound bar).

However they weren’t bothered about keeping all the stuff they didn’t need and it just got binned (as they didn’t have space to store it or inclination to sell it on).

Every few weeks my dad would come home with something else and it all got neatly stacked in the garage.

So here at work I have a high end Sony amp and Brookland Edition floorstanders. In the garage at home I have a similar amp (he literally had scores of the damn things) coupled with a set of JBL Control 1s.

Everyone else in the family has stuff and if anything pops, we just go and raid the garage again (my brother now lives in the house so its all been kept).

Seven years after his death the pile is quite depleted now though.

Ohh, scRap!!

Scrap metal merchants of the traveling persuasion, nicked the flashing off our garage roof, ££££’s of damage for a few quids worth of lead.

It would have been less hassle if they’d just nicked the car and scrapped that.

There was a room full of Thermocouples in work about 2 years ago, custom built to order, featuring platinum this and unobtainum that – made in Japan meant for Oil Platforms in the Middle East. I don’t know the whole story because they belonged to our Office Mates, but for some reason or other they were ‘wrong’ and they were ‘returned’ to manufacturer but instead of sending them to the factory they came from they sent them to the ‘Global Trade Office’ AKA our little office in Wales where they sat for a month or two.

I know theoretically they were worth a fortune, but they’re all custom so if they’re ‘wrong’ they’re worthless.

The Japs didn’t want them back, the Arabs didn’t want them so after a while they disappeared, I don’t them they were taken to be ‘weighed in’ as the local scrappy, but a few of them trousered a small pile of cash each.

Scotland’s police force’s computers? 45 million

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13110330.__45m__the_bill_to_replace_Scotland_s_police_IT_network/

Oh, and nearly Trident…

Not in the same league but there are a few local tales. One involved a piece of platinum mesh costing 10’s of thousands being repurposed in a self build rabbit hutch. There are also a few houses with rather natty polished titanium boiler tube curtain rails.

An aircraft carrier with no planes?

Bosses Aston Martin vantage.2weeks old fire brigade cut the roof off it after my bosses mate had a seizure in it and crashed into a wall.

I think the pics I took are still on wrecked exotic

Insured for 500 000. Payout was 400 000 (excess was 100 000!) Stolen and presumed melted down for scrap.

There is a 15 Megawatt diesel power station just outside Ikeja in Lagos, next to it is another 8 Megawatt power station complete with a water pumping station/water treatment plant, all totally inactive, apparently the money ran out after commissioning and they never went live, the site is guarded, the locals rely on small, shared petrol generators and have to buy bottled water.

I’ve got a few bits of F1 technology. One bit from the transmission is a lovely bit made from titanium. It must have costs £1000’s. Now it’s a pen holder.

An $80,000+ Ceramic bearing for a gas turbine engine powering a natural gas pumping station, my dad watched as the box that contained it fell from a stacker, not a great height but high enough to leave doubts regarding its safe use so the job was put on hold till a replacement was flown in a few days later.

Probably the skip round the back of the Mclaren factory full of rejected CNC parts.

There is a 15 Megawatt diesel power station just outside Ikeja in Lagos, next to it is another 8 Megawatt power station complete with a water pumping station/water treatment plant, all totally inactive, apparently the money ran out after commissioning and they never went live, the site is guarded

Oh well on that note I give you:

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant

US$2.3bn – completed but to this day never fuelled.

We had a similar beastie up the road (which bencooper has had some dealings with 😉 )

Was used albeit only at full capacity for 1 year during the 84-85 miners strike. Was designated a parts bin thereafter. Half of Hunterstons spares probably came from there and we’re seemingly eyeing up Longannets kit now it’s dead.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/robot-bike-co-r160

There are at least two local intensive care units that were built to meet specs (HBN 57 or HBN 04-02) and then downgraded or closed. Before staffing and portable equipment, the typical build cost is £400k/bed space so £3.2m for an eight bed unit. Not really scrap, though.

FiReControl

you can see the SW of England one just by the M5 by Taunton

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14974552

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33109433

4 billion NOK or $630 million cluster **** never produced a drop, abandoned due structural cracks within the jacket structure, due to be decommissioned or might even have started. Talsiman YME platform offshore Norway installed 2012ish

My first posting in the RAF (RAF Locking near Weston-super-mare) was a training unit for radar operators/engineers and as a result we were the holding unit for quite a bit of (expensive) radar kit.

One day we received a signal from Command asking us to scrap 12 very expensive ‘valves’ that were used in the main air defence radars used by the RAF both in the UK and Falklands. To ensure we scrapped the right ones a list of serial numbers was included but, given the cost of the items, we contacted Command by phone to double check.

“The serial numbers are as listed, what is so difficult to understand” was the response we got from a desk jockeying Chief Tech.

I think you can see where this is going…

The serial numbers were actually those of the serviceable valves, the Chief Tech had interpreted the manufacturer’s instructions incorrectly.’Lil old LAC Sootyandjim and his trusty sledgehammer “made unusable” £14.4 million worth of previously perfectly serviceable equipment one sunny Friday afternoon, leaving the RAF without serviceable spares for 4 months.

No disciplinary action was taken against us mere Stackers, I don’t believe the Chief Tech got away so lightly.

I think Sooty wins?!

Seem to be a few military balls-ups. This lot wasn’t scrap but was just chucked away
My pub-quiz team-mate’s uncle runs an army surplus shop, but bigger stuff, mainly Land Rovers but also decommissioned tanks, armoured-cars, that sort of thing.
Went to the auction one day, came back with the usual haul of old Landys and a largish truck, one of those DROPS system ones with a shipping container on the back and no key for it. Pain in the preverbeal to break into but he got around to it a couple of months later.
Found 12 brand new, still in the packing crates they were delivered in, motorbikes. MOD knew nothing about them and didn’t want them back…

The Nimrods (mra4s?)

Cost was in the billions wasn’t it, as they were never used

Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign?

The Nimrods (mra4s?)

Aye, a great procurement success there. Scrapped despite great expense; had to borrow P-3s from other NATO nations (RNorAF?) to fill the gap; now buying P-8s off the shelf.