Dominion of Canada and Potential Disposal Story/Rumour

Assuming the comparison is for working vintage locos vs working vintage planes, then maybe it has something to do with ease of use - you need a substantial storage building/workshop plus rails (and an ability to relocate to other rails) to own and show off a steam loco. A vintage aircraft however still needs a storage building / workshop but may only need a field to take off from and then can more or less go anywhere they like to show it off.

I suspect the other thing may be that families or business owners with large disposable incomes may be more likely to have members / staff with pilots licenses than with loco driving qualifications & experience.

 

I'm not entirely sure a Spitfire is an investment.
Have a read of this:
https://www.goodwood.com/sports/flying/latest-news/so-youre-thinking-of-buying-a-spitfire/
The tl:dr is "In excess of £2,500 per hour in the air if you're sensible and don't exceed 1/3 max throttle and +4.5g in manouvers"

The article comments how cheap a Spitfire is compared to a classic car, and if you compare current price to original purchase price I'm sure that's right.
Getting a figure from Wikipedia for the Spitfire and GWR minutes for the Castle class, then around 1939 a Spitfire cost roughly double what a new Castle did.

If from the above link a Spitfire now costs 1m - 2m, and the NRM paid 2.2m for 4472/60103, then that suggests that the steam locomotive is relatively more expensive than the aeroplane...

 

The driving force behind the "fly in a Spitfire" and "fly alongside a Spitfire" markets. Enables owners to make some money out of their expensive toys.

 

One big difference between owning your own loco as opposed to a yacht or spitfire is that you can't realistically do your own thing with it. If you want to run it you are essentially reliant on others, especially the owner of the track. Having an A4 really needs more than a few hundred yards to run it on and I know of no one that personally owns a railway longer than that. You can just about do it with an industrial 0-6-0, like the late Bill McAlpine did, but even he didn't do it when he had Scotsman. There are people out there who are happy to own a loco and let others operate it but there aren't that many.

 

You can build a Spitfire from scratch now without even the data plate to give it some historical provenance. Having the data plate enable people to say "look, we've restored this Dunkirk veteran," when most of that "Dunkirk veteran" is brand new.

 

Flying Fox - although would probably be just as useless as the other "Fox" . . . .


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It is totally off topic but the big difference between the Spitfire/A4 loco is access

I have never ever flown in a Spitfire and not likely to (like most of the population) and nobody gets the chance unless they are a very experienced pilot or wealthy enough to buy their own.
However with steam locos you can just ride on the footplate of one for free, or become a volunteer and drive them for free. In other words there is little advantage to ownership of them. You can book a driver experience on one for a few hundred quid and get to experience driving it. Can't do that with a Spitfire.

 

you might want to look on one of the many wsr threads and revisit your comment.

 

Have you heard if Dave is interested in buying 4489?

 

Fixed it for you ...

Tom

 

Incorrect. There are a number of two seat Spitfires in which one can purchase a flight. Prices start from around £2750 and whilst not cheap, are within reach of many people who are neither an experienced pilot nor wealthy enough to own one. Tax free lump sums when drawing a private pension are a useful sort of funding for such flights. That's what a mate of mine did.

 

Done deal he tells me. Coming straight from the hornby factory.

 

Didcot are already ticking off which bits they can use for their The Great Bear new build - all the wheels are the right diameter, counting the spokes next ....

 

Don't give 'em ideas...

 

The inside connecting rod is missing: see 7:145:24 in the video.
Edit: reference corrected.

 

7:14 is the end of the video. I think you mean around 5:24 which shows the crank axle.

Keith

 

Surely a Castle sacrifice for Great Bear would be logical given its eventual destiny ? There is already a good supply in the UK.

 

Thank you. Now corrected.

 

Agreed, if there were a good reason to build a new Great Bear at all, but the case for that is extremely weak. It was a dead-end design, and may even have been intended by Churchward as a demonstration of what the GWR didn't need. Anyway there are plenty of better things to do with a spare A4.

 

If I had the money and the permission to repatriate DoC, I'd still use it to do a new build Typhoon 1B to see and hear one in the air. Given that the only survivor will never fly again. Come to think of it, the flipping Canadians have that as well at the moment... so if there's a boat coming this way