Ade, I wish there was an economical way to get a 40foot container of those CS engines over here, maybe a transporter beam or something, 
You have been around long enough to remember the container load fiasco of 15? years ago. Gary saved it after the originators dissappeared and then got stuck with most of them due to no show "buyers"
Hah! I drove around half the country in a shagged out old 7.5t lorry with a crane on it's back (that wouldn't do more than 45mph at the best of times) picking the damn things up! I had about a dozen in my workshop at one point... The most eventful day I had, I didn't actually take the lorry (it would have been too slow) - I took my car trailer. I had a boggo 6/1 (or maybe a 3/1) from Newcastle-upon-tyne and an FR2 (IIRC, it might have been the CD2, it was pretty big & chunky) from a place called Hawick in the Scottish lowlands. I called in on my sister who lived in a town called Biggar, just south of Edinburgh, then drove home to Liverpool. Started at about 5am, at about 6 or 7pm I was about to pass Carlisle (on the border of Scotland & England) when I dozed off at the wheel... luckily, I woke up immediately (even back then, we had rumble strips built into the lines which delineate the road from the shoulder or median - pretty sure that's what woke me up), scared the shit out of me. I stopped at the next services & had a really strong coffee & about 30 minutes rest - made the rest of the trip without incident.
Those engines hung around my place like a bad smell for ages. Eventually, a gentleman who's name I've since forgotten took them all in, IIRC he made the stillages they were mounted in. He also gave me a nice lump of graphite he had lying around - I still have 3/4 of it - which I planned (still plan) to use to make the displacer cylinder in a small Stirling engine. The other 1/4 went to a local guy who went by the nickname Bogstandard - an excellent machinist, who DID use it for a stirling engine (and told me later it was one of the best bits of graphite he'd ever used).
Would I do it all again? Hell NO! But honestly, I wouldn't recommend it. Using eBay alone, it'd take you 5 years to fill a 40ft container, and half of the engines I see these days are wrecks. I've kept my ex-Startomatic 6/1 (and hopefully, I'll still have it the day I die, then it's a problem for the kids!); and I'm actually kinda hoping to press it back into service one of these days, to generate 3-phase power for my lathe & mill... but that's aways away yet.
I do still watch those auctions somewhat wistfully, though; and I try to help out if someone's listing an engine & they're not entirely sure what they've got.
Ooh, I just remembered another one: Trying to get an 8hp VA (rare air-cooled CS engine) out of a guy's engine "hut", somewhere up in the hills in the middle of nowhere. He'd just had his entire driveway done out in some really fancy expensive stone, and I wasn't to mark it... I either didn't have the lorry then, or access was too tight or something, so I had a little home-made trailer (made by someone else - I bought it from a guy in Liverpool because it only cost £50) barely bigger than the engine to drag it home. It had to be lifted 3 inches off it's foundation bolts in a "hut" that was 4ft nothing high (I'm 6ft 4ins) and not a great deal bigger than the engine, spun 90 degrees to get it out of this hut, then somehow lifted a couple of feet onto a trailer, all without marking this italian marble, or whatever the hell it was. Good god, talk about challenging! It took me 2 full days to free it, and most of a 3rd to load it on the trailer & get it home! The guy himself couldn't help so much, as he had a bad back (so he told me....). Well... bolted it to the trailer, and by god it bounced like a bloody trampoline this thing! Driving home, every single bump in the road BOIIIING! Anything over 30mph and it literally would launch itself a foot in the air... Funny thing, it had a good wide track, so it was never in danger of falling over, but if it got a sideways bounce going, the only thing you could do was pull over and stop... it just started to bounce left, then right, then left - like a guy desperate for a piss bounces from one foot to the other... Absolutely freaky watching a fecking big Lister engine (the VA has a huge cowl on it) jumping up and down in your rear-view mirror!
God, those were the days.
Cheers!
Ade.
