You won’t find them on eBay, and they’re too big for a standard garage sale.

But with tunneling complete on the Spadina subway extension to Vaughan, the TTC is looking to unload four giant tunnel-boring machines, each weighing the equivalent of about 280 cars.

There is no new transit line that the machines can immediately begin tunneling, and the technology will be dated by the time the Bloor-Danforth extension breaks ground at least five years from now.

The giant borers for the six-stop Spadina extension were purchased for $58 million from Lovat Inc., a Toronto company. Lovat was bought out by heavy equipment giant Caterpillar, which announced earlier this year it is getting out of the tunnel-boring machine business.

Even if the TTC stored the machines — affectionately christened Yorkie, Torkie, Holey and Moley — there wouldn’t be any service support for them, said TTC spokesman Brad Ross.

“We’ll sell them to the highest bidder who can use them immediately,” he said, adding that he had no idea what the machines could go for.

The machines used on Sheppard were sold to two construction companies in Russia for $2.5 million each.

They couldn’t be used on Spadina because the tunnel needed a slightly larger radius to accommodate a curve on the newest subway line. The Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown tunnel being built by Metrolinx is wider still.

Completion of the Spadina tunnel at Vaughan Metropolitan Centre last month marked the end of one phase of the $2.6-billion project, which is being funded jointly by Ottawa, Queen’s Park, Toronto and York Region.

But the subway is far from complete. Now the stations, the track and signalling system have to be built. The line won’t be in service until late 2016.

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