We were a bit underwhelmed by LEGO’s 42049 Technic Mine Loader set when we previewed it here towards the end of last year. It has pneumatics and a two cylinder engine, but…meh. However a recent upload by previous bloggee Tamas Juhasz (aka mbmc137) shows how it should have been done, and at about half the scale.

Tamas’ tiny Technic recreation of the official set might be small, but it packs in just as much functionality, and in doing so it might just be the neatest and most well engineered small-scale Technic model we’ve seen this year. It could even be a set, if there wasn’t one already…

With all the functionality of 42049, Tamas’ build squeezes in all-wheel-drive, articulated steering, pneumatic bucket elevation and tilt, and a two-cylinder piston engine (making it just as unrealistically underpowered as LEGO’s version).

There’s lots more to see of this incredibly tidy build at Tamas’ Brickshelf gallery and at the Eurobricks discussion forum, plus there’s a video of the loader’s features available below.

YouTube Video: