- Reaction score
- 3
- Points
- 430
Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.
Original link
For Sale: One destroyer engine, slightly used
By Richard Foot, Canwest News Service September 9, 2009
HALIFAX — John Wilson never dreamt there might be anything of value inside the old cargo container he picked up for $400 at a Nova Scotia junk yard in 1998.
So when he finally opened it a decade later, he was astonished to find a fully refurbished gas turbine engine, that once powered the naval destroyer HMCS Athabaskan.
This week, after months of talks with the RCMP and Military Police — to make sure he wasn't in possession of stolen government property — Wilson put the engine up for sale on Kijiji, the classified ads website, for $30,000.
"Open to offers on jet engine . . . used in Tribal Class destroyer," says Wilson's Internet pitch — not the kind of wording you usually see in a classified ad.
Wilson says there were seven cylindrical shipping containers sitting in the Annapolis Valley junkyard when he purchased one in 1998. He wanted to use it for building a culvert beneath a small stone bridge on his property in the village of West Paradise, N.S.
But for years he procrastinated on the project and the cargo container just sat in his yard. Then in 2008 a scrap dealer came looking for metal parts, and Wilson asked him to cut the ends out of the container.
"The fellow cut it open and came running down to me and said, 'Did you know there's a jet engine in there?'
"I stuck my head in the container and I said, 'Oh my, I'm going to jail. I didn't buy a jet engine, where did that come from?'"
Wilson now says although it looks like an aircraft engine — and is a similar model to the Pratt and Whitney engines used on Boeing 707 airliners, as well as on Canada's Cold War era Voodoo fighter jets — his engine is in fact a marine gas turbine (FT12-A3), originally worth more than $100,000.
A log book also found inside the container says that it was one of two cruising engines used on board the HMCS Athabaskan — one of Canada's three destroyers — until the ship went through a major refit in 1991.
The navy took the engine off the ship during the refit and sent it for an overhaul to Pratt and Whitney in Montreal, where it was equipped with a brand new fuel pump and other new parts.
The engine was then installed briefly on another destroyer, HMCS Huron, before being stripped from the Huron when that ship was mothballed due to military budget cuts in the late 1990s.
Defence Department officials contacted this week in both Halifax and Ottawa could not say whether the navy lost or simply discarded the working engine.
And although Wilson contacted the department in 2008 to let it know what he had found, it has never explained to him how the engine ended up in a junkyard in Nova Scotia.
"I'm amazed by this," says Darrell Petley, a retired marine engineer and navy crewman who once worked on the engines on both the Athabaskan and the Huron.
Petley lives down the road from Wilson and has examined his find.
"When I first heard what John had I said, 'Nah, can't be true.' And then I went down to have a look at it — it's the same damn thing I used to work on in the navy.
"There's a lot of money in those engines," says Petley. "They've got titanium blades and a stainless steel shell. But I have no idea what their value would be today."
Wilson says the engine isn't worth what it once was, because of its dated technology. But he's hoping it will fetch about $30,000, and has already had calls from across North America, including one potential buyer looking for an engine to run a small power generating plant.
Meanwhile, Wilson is wondering what kind of lost military hardware might have been inside the other naval containers he saw in the junk yard a decade ago, and what became of them.
"There were seven of them altogether," he says. "The others are probably over in North Korea, being turned into missiles!"
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
Original link
For Sale: One destroyer engine, slightly used
By Richard Foot, Canwest News Service September 9, 2009
HALIFAX — John Wilson never dreamt there might be anything of value inside the old cargo container he picked up for $400 at a Nova Scotia junk yard in 1998.
So when he finally opened it a decade later, he was astonished to find a fully refurbished gas turbine engine, that once powered the naval destroyer HMCS Athabaskan.
This week, after months of talks with the RCMP and Military Police — to make sure he wasn't in possession of stolen government property — Wilson put the engine up for sale on Kijiji, the classified ads website, for $30,000.
"Open to offers on jet engine . . . used in Tribal Class destroyer," says Wilson's Internet pitch — not the kind of wording you usually see in a classified ad.
Wilson says there were seven cylindrical shipping containers sitting in the Annapolis Valley junkyard when he purchased one in 1998. He wanted to use it for building a culvert beneath a small stone bridge on his property in the village of West Paradise, N.S.
But for years he procrastinated on the project and the cargo container just sat in his yard. Then in 2008 a scrap dealer came looking for metal parts, and Wilson asked him to cut the ends out of the container.
"The fellow cut it open and came running down to me and said, 'Did you know there's a jet engine in there?'
"I stuck my head in the container and I said, 'Oh my, I'm going to jail. I didn't buy a jet engine, where did that come from?'"
Wilson now says although it looks like an aircraft engine — and is a similar model to the Pratt and Whitney engines used on Boeing 707 airliners, as well as on Canada's Cold War era Voodoo fighter jets — his engine is in fact a marine gas turbine (FT12-A3), originally worth more than $100,000.
A log book also found inside the container says that it was one of two cruising engines used on board the HMCS Athabaskan — one of Canada's three destroyers — until the ship went through a major refit in 1991.
The navy took the engine off the ship during the refit and sent it for an overhaul to Pratt and Whitney in Montreal, where it was equipped with a brand new fuel pump and other new parts.
The engine was then installed briefly on another destroyer, HMCS Huron, before being stripped from the Huron when that ship was mothballed due to military budget cuts in the late 1990s.
Defence Department officials contacted this week in both Halifax and Ottawa could not say whether the navy lost or simply discarded the working engine.
And although Wilson contacted the department in 2008 to let it know what he had found, it has never explained to him how the engine ended up in a junkyard in Nova Scotia.
"I'm amazed by this," says Darrell Petley, a retired marine engineer and navy crewman who once worked on the engines on both the Athabaskan and the Huron.
Petley lives down the road from Wilson and has examined his find.
"When I first heard what John had I said, 'Nah, can't be true.' And then I went down to have a look at it — it's the same damn thing I used to work on in the navy.
"There's a lot of money in those engines," says Petley. "They've got titanium blades and a stainless steel shell. But I have no idea what their value would be today."
Wilson says the engine isn't worth what it once was, because of its dated technology. But he's hoping it will fetch about $30,000, and has already had calls from across North America, including one potential buyer looking for an engine to run a small power generating plant.
Meanwhile, Wilson is wondering what kind of lost military hardware might have been inside the other naval containers he saw in the junk yard a decade ago, and what became of them.
"There were seven of them altogether," he says. "The others are probably over in North Korea, being turned into missiles!"
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
