This might just be the most impressive thing you’ll see today. Yes, even more so than whichever bottle cap challenge video has gone viral. This is the Marion 5760 mining shovel known as ‘The Mountaineer’, the first giant stripping shovel ever built and still the eighth largest to be constructed.

Completed by the Marion Power Shovel Company in 1956 The Mountaineer had an operating weight of 2,750 tons, working until 1979 before its scrapping a decade later. This spectacular fully functional 1:28.5 scale Lego replica of the 5760 is the work of Beat Felber of Flickr, powered by nearly twenty electric motors, with twenty-two pairs of LED lights, and controlled by several SBrick bluetooth bricks.

Weighing an estimated 35kgs (over 5kgs of which is steel ballast), Beat’s incredible machine can move and work just like the real thing. Each of the four crawling bogies is powered by a separate Medium Motor, with eight tracks being driven in total. These are steered by four linear actuators driven by another pair of motors, whilst another seven power the huge digging arm’s ‘crowd motion’, ‘swing gear’ and bucket. The drum hoist requires a further four XL Motors on it’s own, whilst a final micro motor powers a little passenger elevator that moves between The Mountaineer’s three floors.

Beat hasn’t just stopped with working functionality though, giving his creation a wonderfully detailed appearance afforded by its immense size, with hundreds of tiles and plates covering every surface to smooth the aesthetics, accurate railings, stairways, machine rooms, control rooms and cabins, plus authentically recreated decals to replicate the shovel’s original livery.

The’s much more to see of Beat Felber’s astonishing Lego recreation of the Marion 5760 on Flickr, where almost twenty superb images are available to view, each of which contains an in-depth description of the build. Head to Beat’s Marion 5760 ‘The Mountaineer’ album by clicking this link to Flickr, and see just how brilliant a LEGO creation can be!