[SEL] A blow to the Old Machinery Movement in Australia

[Jeff Allen]

Peter,

You are damn lucky that some will still give away engines in OZ. I have 
never been offered anything for free here, and have been willing to pay 
a fair price for what many consider scrap. Many times I have paid more 
than I should have to rescue old iron. My choice.

Get your mates to get off their collective asses and purchase just over 
scrap price if you want to save it. You will still be getting a bargain, 
and it will not be going to China. The scrap man is just trying to make 
a living.

We can't save all of it! There are only so many of us that care about 
saving this. With limited space and budgets we will have to watch some 
of it go to scrap. My brother and I ran an auction business for a time. 
One estate auction had over 200 antique cars and it broke my heart to 
see some of them go. The scrap man was there and purchased about 30% of 
the cars to send to the crusher. The 1949 Studebaker convertible was one 
of them. It's gone. I didn't and still don't have the space to rescue 
what I would like to. That is the real world. If you have the space, 
time, and money to rescue all of this then get off your ass and do it.

Jeff Allen



peter ogborne wrote:

> When i first posted to the list on the above subject i felt very 
> despondent about the future of our hobby. Things have not changed . 
> What all this is about is the unprecedented hunger for scrap steel by 
> China . I can understand farmers who have a lot of old scrap that has 
> been lying around for ever trying to make some cash from the sale of 
> it . Unfortunately there is going to be included in that scrap the 
> sort of things that we collect and restore and then display to the 
> public . The development of China and it's manufacturing industries 
> ,the affect on the rest of the world especially the large 
> manufacturing countries ,i.e. the US and Europe will be devastating. 
> My country ,Australia may be OK but only as a quarry ,a source for raw 
> material but never again as a manufacturer .This side of things died 
> years ago , but the US will suffer or probably is now suffering ,just 
> look around you and see how many things are now made in China. The 
> cheap labour costs and their demand as a consumer is frightening!This 
> is of course progress...........not much we can do about it .
>
> I do feel sorry for those of us who are new to this hobby ,it will now 
> be so much more difficult to ''Find'' the beautiful old engine in some 
> farmers paddock or shed . The value of engines will rise ,nothing will 
> be given away . When i think back to when a friend and i found a 
> almost Compleat 1904 Ruston Proctor portable steam engine. It was 
> given to us by a farmer who in past years had sold the engine to a 
> scrap merchant twice , it had never been collected . That engine is 
> now perfectly restored and is shown to the public regularly .That 
> farmer saw the engine in  it's restored state before he died ,he was 
> so glad that he had given it to us and the scrap merchant had found it 
> too difficult to collect .
> I can only implore those who have ''scrap '' to consider we restorers 
> before you sell it to the Scrapie .
> Peter Ogborne
> Little Grove ,Albany
> West Australia
> ''Heart of the Rainbow Coast ''
> jopeter at omninet.net.au
>
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