Spare Runways
Monday, 8th October 2007 by James Turnbull
If you happened to own an airfield, and you just happened to have some spare runways lying around – what would you do with them?
RAF Thurleigh was built during WWII and after the war became a development site known as RAE Bedford, until it was eventually decommissioned in 1994. Since then the airfield has been split into two sections; the Northern half is used for the Bedford Autodrome race track, and the runways are used as mass car-storage.
Last weekend I took a microlight flight over RAE Bedford for a closer look. I didn’t actually fly the microlight (the pilot was doing that), I just sat in the back and bored the pilot with “Oooh, it’s like a live version of Google Earth!” every couple of minutes.
Anyway, this extra insight enables me to tell you that most of the vehicles looked brand-spanking new, sometimes with 20 or so of the same model lined up next to each other.
Wombleton airfield was also built for WWII – operating as a Canadian Air Force “conversion unit”, where pilots who were used to flying small 2 engine planes were trained to fly 4 engines instead. Unlike the Bedford facility however, somebody decided that one of the main runways should instead be used for pig farming.
Unless this is a top-secret facility involved in the genetic engineering of pigs that fly?
Thanks to d5skipper, Oliver Laumann & others and Trina
They aren’t the Rovers are they?
There is also the Bernard Matthews turkey farms making good use of the old airfields in East Anglia
View Placemark / Google Earth
This one in the New Forest (UK) is a rather nice Campsite / Google Earth, even if the ground is slightly too hard to hammer tent pegs into! I am guessing it is WW2 in origin…
If you want identical cars: View Placemark / Google Earth
The former Downsview Air Force base in Toronto has similarly been used for overflow storage by Chrysler for several years:
View Placemark / Google Earth
Bombardier still uses the runways for their testing facility at the southern end of the field.
ha!
I recommended this site about a year ago. Great to see it up here, though. Just goes to show that when you buy a ‘new’ car, it’s actually been sitting in a car park for several weeks or months beforehand.
Also, south westish from the runway is this test complex, featuring a rather cool looking wind tunnel.
View Placemark / Google Earth
The biggest pile of wood in the world was established on a former military runway in Byholma, Sweden:
View Placemark / Google Earth
Closer pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ldybdahl/ByholmaWood?authkey=vEVe9dvKC9I
You could always build a racetrack around the old runway and then put a new one in just outside the track: View Placemark / Google Earth
This is Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, AL — 2.66 mile long raceway, home to 2 NEXTEL Cup events per year. The old runways inside the racetrack are now used as parking during race weekends.
Take your pick!
View Placemark / Google Earth
I didn’t thought pigs would look that pink from space.