Tag Archives: Marathon

Building Big

Really, really big.

The human in the above picture is Beat Felber, a Lego builder of gigantic proportions. His models we mean.

Surrounding Beat are ten spectacular fully remote controlled pieces of mining equipment, many of which have featured on these pages over the years, including the Komatsu D575A-3 Super Dozer, the Marathon LeTourneau L-1200 loader, the Marion 204-M Superfront cable-operated mining shovel, the Terex 33-19 Titan mining truck, and the astonishing Marion 5760 ‘The Mountaineer’ 2,750-ton mining shovel

Beat’s assembly is even larger and more impressive than your Dad’s collection of speciality magazines, and we suspect it makes Beat more than capable of tunnelling underneath his own house should he choose to.

Head to Beat’s photostream via the first link for a closer look at the jaw-dropping image above, and you can check out some of the individual models pictured within it via the links in this post or via the search function on this page.

Big Yella

Lego Marathon LeTourneau L-1200 LeTro-Loader

This absolutely enormous contraption is a fully working 1:28 scale Lego replica of a Marathon LeTourneau L-1200 LeTro-Loader. Built by Beat Felber of Flickr this amazing creation all the functions of the real LeTourneau, a machine built to load 170-ton mining trucks with just a few scoops of its 22-cubic-yard bucket.

Beat’s Lego recreation of the L-1200 includes that huge bucket, controlled by two four-cylinder pneumatic pumps each powered by a Power Functions L motor and a Servo-actuated valve. Two more motors drive all four wheels via in-wheel planetary gear reduction, and the articulated steering is taken care of by a fifth electric motor, all of which is controlled remotely via three Power Functions receivers.

All in it’s an incredible feat of engineering and there’s more to see at Beat’s photostream – check it out via the link above if you did this build as much as we do.

Taxi Driver

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One of the greatest movies of all time – Martin Scorsese’s 1976 ‘Taxi Driver’ – created two very different but equally brilliant stars in Robert De Niro and a very young Jodie Foster. There was another star of course; the bright yellow Checker Marathon cab driven by De Niro’s Travis Bickle. Already world famous, the Checker didn’t need the movie to earn its notoriety, but it did probably become much cooler as a result. This perfect replica of the iconic classic cab comes from TLCB regular Ralph Savelsberg aka Mad Physicist, and you can see more here.

Lego Taxi Driver Checker Marathon