Oh. Crap.

That’s what went through this writer’s head when he entered TLCB Towers this morning. The Elves don’t have a bedtime as such, returning to the office as and when they find a blog-worthy creation, although they often sleep in their cage room when we turn the lights out in-between foraging for builds.

Normally this is a peaceful affair, with only minor scuffles reported the following morning. That was not the case today.

Squashed Elves where everywhere, ingrained into the carpet or slammed against furniture. They’re resilient little creatures so they’ll all be fine (probably), but recovering our Elven workforce to a functioning state and cleaning up the Elven bodily fluids spilt during the night is not a fun job. Still, at least we get paid to do it. No that’s not right…

The cause of the destruction was found abandoned in the corridor with an Elf squashed underneath it and another swinging miserably from the crane mounted on the rear.

But what on Earth was it? Well it turns out ‘on Earth’ is the wrong place to start, as this amazing machine is apparently a ‘Martian Heavy Transporter’, a six-wheel-drive, skid steer, off-road crane truck, built to carry containers across the Martian landscape.

Each of those six wheels is fully suspended and powered by an individual XL Motor, with all six hooked up to a BuWizz bluetooth control that delivers up to eight times the power of LEGO’s own Power Functions system. No wonder it could catch the fleeing Elves.

Mounted on the top of the chassis is an enormous remotely operated linear-actuator powered crane that can pull a large container onto the rear of the vehicle with ease, in a manner somewhere between LEGO’s neat 1994 6668 Recycle Truck and something from Robot Wars, or slide it to the ground by unfurling itself rearwards.

It’s a seriously slick piece of engineering and one we’re properly impressed by, even if it the cause of some considerable tidying up plus the need to administer a bit of Elven healthcare. Whilst we get on with that you can see more of this remarkable vehicle courtesy of desert752 of Eurobricks / Kirill Mazurov (aka Desert Eagle) of Flickr.

Head to Eurobricks and/or Flickr via the links for more, where a video of Desert / Kirill’s ‘Martian Heavy Transport’ and a complete gallery of imagery can also be found.