Tag Archives: Mining

Red Before Yellow

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This is a Bucyrus 495HR electric rope shovel, a 1970s-designed mining excavator capable of lifting over 100 tons at a time. Which make is very large indeed.

So large in fact, that this astounding fully-functional recreation of the 495HR is actually mini-figure scale, making this probably the largest ‘Town’ category post this site has ever published.

Created by Konajra of Flickr, it’s an update to his previously blogged Caterpillar 7495, adopting the original red livery of its creator Bucyrus before the design was purchased by Caterpillar, who painted it yellow and who still use it today.

With remote control movement via a suite of motors and several third-party programmable SBricks, LED lighting, and authentically replicated decals, Konajra’s creation is one of the most impressive of 2025, and there’s lots more to see – including some work-in-progress shots – at his ‘Bucyrus 495HR’ album. Take a closer look red rope shovelling before Caterpillar yellow via the link above.

Good Prospects

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This enormous floating monolith is – according to its maker Vince_Toulouse – a ‘T8-Prospector’, and it’s magnificent.

Whilst we know not what it does, we do know that Bionicle, Galidor, and Duplo pieces are used in its immense construction.

Motorised mechanics including the arm-mounted drill and LED lighting bring Vince’s spectacular creation to life, and there’s more to see of this other-worldly machine on Flickr via the link above.

Boring in Space

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Amazon just sent Katy Perry to the edge of space to promote her new album or something. Which shows we’re pretty close to space travel becoming as banal as flying to Bakersfield for a business conference.

Of course we know why Amazon sent Katy Perry into space; because it takes it one step closer to plundering its riches. Space’s, not Katy Perry’s. And riches there are, even on the lumps of rock hurtling around our planet, which are filled with rare earth metals including gold and platinum worth literal quadrillions.

Cue the ‘I.E.A Andromeda’, an enormous asteroid mining rig built to bore into the rocks of space in order to extract their valuable innards, built by Chris Malloy, and photographed in spectacular detail.

An astonishing feat of brick-built engineering, LEGO’s red rollercoaster track, giant gas-filled orbs, microscale spaceships, communication equipment, and a whole lot of rock all feature, with over thirty incredible images taken to capture the complete model.

A goldmine of photos is available to view at Chris’s ‘I.E.A Andromeda’ album, and you can join Jeff Bezos’ girlfriend, a morning TV host, and Katy Perry promoting her new music in space via the link above.

Microscale Mech Mining

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It’s sometime in the future, where humankind have traversed the vast void of space, colonised  whole new worlds, and yet are still digging big holes in the ground to extract minerals. Sigh.

Interplanetary destruction aside, Duncan Lindbo‘s ‘Gila’ six-legged mobile mining mech does look rather neat though, and it comes to life too, thanks to a motorised bucket-wheel and LED lighting.

There’s more of this microscale mech to see at Duncan’s photostream, and you can lay waste to an alien eco-system via the link above.

The Power of Crystals. Again

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LEGO were struggling in the late-’90s. Having decimated their Town line, and with Technic looking, well… like this, the LEGO Company turned to increasingly short-lived sci-fi themes to keep the wolves from the door. That meant some quirky new pieces, new colours, and plot development so lazy it makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe look like Christopher Nolan.

Yes, we’re talking crystals, the go-to for half-a-dozen late-’90s themes when LEGO couldn’t be bothered to think of anything else. One such theme was the amusingly-iconed Rock Raiders, which lasted just a single year, featured a comic and a video game, and – of course – a quest for crystals, because… shut up, that’s why.

Flickr’s Mathijs Bongers has returned to the crystal mines of the Rock Raiders theme with this immensely playable-looking ‘Modular Mining Unit’, complete with working suspension, drill, laser, magnetic crane, container modules, mining station, and on-board speeder.

There’s much more of the MMU to see (plus a whole heap more rock-based machinery) at Mathijs ‘Rock Raiders; Planet ONYXX Expedition’ album, and you can join him mining for crystals (as LEGO did about five times too often) via the link in the text above.

Wheelie Big

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This amazing machine is a Komatsu WE2350 wheel loader, a 270-ton, 2,300bhp leviathan designed to load the world’s ‘ultra class’ 400-ton mining dump trucks.

Originally a LeTourneau design launched in 2000, the WE2350 remains the world’s largest wheel loader, and – somewhat appropriately – rides upon the largest tyres ever produced. Which is a bit of a problem if you’re trying to build the WE2350 out of LEGO.

Cue Flickr’s Beat Felber, who – over the past week of so – has uploaded an entire mine’s worth of equipment in 1:28 scale.

His incredible recreation of the Komatsu WE2350 is the latest in his series, and rides upon brick-built wheels measuring a huge eighteen studs in diameter, each centred on a twenty-two-sided cylinder wrapped in Technic rubber lift-arm connectors.

Each if those remarkable wheels is powered, with two XL Motors driving the axles, an M Motor the articulated steering, whilst another XL and M Motor operate the mammoth loading arm and bucket, the real version of which can lift 41 cubic meters of material.

It’s all remotely operable thanks to two third-party SBricks, plus there’s working head and tail-lights, an oscillating rear axle, deployable ladders and stairs, plus opening doors and hatches.

It’s a spectacular piece of Technic engineering, and you can see more of Beat’s Komatsu WE2350, and the other amazing mining machines that accompany it, on Flickr. Click the link above to take a closer look.

Top Grades

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After extolling the virtues of creations that don’t need a suite of electronics earlier today, here’s one with a suite of electronics. Because shut up, that why.

It is astonishing though, coming again from Flickr’s Beat Felber who is on something of a mass upload. This one is a Champion 100-T motor-grader, a Canadian design from the 1970s, and the world’s largest.

Powered by one LEGO Power Functions L Motor and eight third-party CaDa micromotors, Beat’s grader can drive, steer, lean its front wheels, pivot the cab articulation, plus raise, lower, angle, pitch, and side-shift the blade, all remotely operable via bluetooth thanks to three SBrick controllers. Which would make it an unmatched Elf-squishing device if it wasn’t so slow.

Still, whilst the TLCB Elf that found Beat’s Champion grader may be disappointed, we certainly aren’t, and there’s more to see of this astonishing creation at his ‘Champion 100-T’ album. Click the link above to receive top grades.

Enormous Dump

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Nope, not Detroit, but this; an utterly gargantuan Terex Unit Rig MT 6300AC. Designed to work alongside the world’s largest rope shovels, this 400-ton truck operates in an Australian open-cast ore mine, and is pictured here – to scale – alongside a Hilux-style pick-up, showing just how huge it really is.

Powered by a twenty-cylinder with electric assistance, the MT 6300AC produces 3,750bhp, and is now – like every piece of mining equipment it seems – part of the Caterpillar empire.

This incredible replica of the Unit Rig MT 6300AC still wears its Terex livery however, and has been recreated in phenomenal detail by recent bloggee Beat Felber, who is on something of an upload spree.

His latest build merges System and Technic building with several well chosen third-party components, including RC tyres (LEGO don’t make any large enough), SBrick bluetooth control, and a CaDa micro-motor, along with a suite of Power Functions parts to provide remote control drive, steering, tipping, and lighting.

There’s also working suspension, opening doors and hatches, plus deployable ladders, with much more to see at Beat’s fantastic ‘Terex Unit Rig MT 6300AC’ album on Flickr. Take a look via the link above, whilst we await an angry comment from a Detroit resident.

Backwithanotheroneofthose…

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…block rockin’ beats!* OK, we don’t often feature a title referring to the builder rather than model, but seeing as Flickr’s Beat Felber appeared here only two days ago with another spectacular model, it’s warranted.

His follow-up is even more impressive, an enormous 1:28 scale fully remote controlled (and working) replica of the world’s largest hydraulic excavator, the near 1,000-ton Caterpillar 6090.

Powered by two Cummins diesel engines the 6090 makes over 1,400bhp, and is able to move 43 cubic meters of material with each chomp of its bucket. It’s also, like Beat’s recently-blogged coal excavator, actually an O&K design that now wears Caterpillar branding.

Unlike his previous build however, Beat has chosen to recreate the 6090 in its current Caterpillar livery, creating one of the most visually lifelike creations this site has ever featured. But it’s the lifelike mechanicals that we’re more interested in…

Powered by three Power Functions battery boxes and controlled by four third-party SBricks, Beat’s creation features (deep breath); motorised crawler tracks (one XL Motor per track), a slewing superstructure (two M Motors), a fully operational boom, stick, bucket tilt and clamshell opening (each operated by pneumatic cylinders, controlled via four servo-motorised valves, and an on-board compressor driven by twin Buggy Motors), two motorised boarding ladders (one M Motor each), spinning engine and oil cooling fans (two 9V Motors), plus full LED lighting (five pairs of Power Functions LEDs).

It’s a truly spectacular feat of Lego engineering, and there’s much more to see at Beat’s ‘Caterpillar 6090 FS’ Flickr album, where over thirty incredible images and a video of the model in action can also be found. Click the link above to take a look, where we get the feeling we might be back again with some block rockin’ beats imminently…

*Today’s (excellent) title song.

Coal’s OK

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This astonishing creation is an O&K RH 120 C, a 200-ton mining excavator used in British open-cast coal mines in the 1980s, and – as the most successful excavator in its class – all around the world.

Subsequently built by Terex and then Caterpillar, the RH 120 C is still in production today, with this spectacular brick-built replica paying homage to the design’s first incarnation.

Constructed by Flickr’s Beat Felber, this 1:28 scale model recreates not just the O&K’s exterior in brilliant detail, but the operation of the excavator too, thanks to a suite of Powered-Up, Control+, and Power Functions components hidden within.

A pair of Powered-Up L Motors drive the tracks, another the slewing, whilst a Power Functions XL Motor drives the huge boom. A further two motors operate the bucket, with all six able to be controlled remotely via two Control+ hubs.

Authentic period-correct decals, superb attention-to-detail, and fantastic presentation make Beat’s O&K one of the finest models to appear here this year, and you can find the full gallery of incredible imagery at his ‘O&K RH 120 C’ album on Flickr. Click the link above to visit a British coal-field c1985, and take a closer look.

4970 Redux

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You wait ages for a reimagining of a long-forgotten phallically-symboled LEGO theme and then two come along at once. Yes we have another Rock Raiders redux today, with this one coming from F@bz of Flickr, who has redesigned the 4970 Chrome Crusher set and added a whole lot more… well, everything. Except chrome. There’s less of that.

Monster wheels, a frankly terrifying drill, some sort of rail-gun, and a whole heap of superb building techniques make this a model well worth digging into, and you can tunnel over to F@bz’s photostream for more via the link above.

Big Tow

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Mining trucks are slow. But even slower are the tracked vehicles that fill them, designed as they are to move very heavy things very short distances.

Which means if you need to relocate an enormous bulldozer or tracked excavator to the other end of the mine, you’d better clear your schedule for the next few weeks.

Which is where this curious machine comes in. Effectively a Komatsu mining truck with a gooseneck hitch in place of the dump body, it can tow the aforementioned mining machines to their new location aboard a specially-designed single-axle TowHaul Lowboy trailer, capable of transporting 250 tons. We bet parking isn’t fun.

This spectacular fully remote controlled recreation of the world’s biggest vehicular trailer comes from previous bloggee Beat Felber, whose converted Komatsu HD785-5 mining truck features motorised drive, steering, and gooseneck hitch, enabling the model to load and tow a huge TowHaul Lowboy trailer and its Komatsu D575A-3 ‘Super Dozer’ load.

There’s loads more to see of the both the Komatsu HD785-5 truck and the TowHaul Lowboy 250 ton trailer behind it at Beat’s Flickr album, and you can watch the whole rig in action courtesy of the video below.

YouTube Video

Weekend in Drag

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This a dragline crawler crane, used in open-cast mining for digging really big holes. Built by previous bloggee Beat Felber, this incredible creation is a fully-working replica of one the world’s largest; the 700-ton P&H 2355 diesel-electric dragline that worked the Rix Creek Mine in Australia.

Remotely controlled by three SBricks, Beat’s creation can hoist and drag the bucket, rotate the superstructure, raise the boom, drive and skid-steer, and even raise the two access ladders thanks to seven Power Functions and two Micro Motors.

Four pairs of LEGO LEDs illuminate the floodlights and interior, whilst removable panels give access to the motors and winches within.

It’s a spectacular build, with a fully detailed machine room and interior to match the astonishing working mechanisms, and you can head to the mine via Beat’s ‘P&H 2355’ album to get in drag.

Rugby Injury

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This is a Jama SBU 8000 Mechanical Scaler, and it is so far outside of our vehicular knowledge it might as well be sci-fi. It’s also entitled ‘Skrotare’ by Swedish builders Sefan Johansson & Robert Lundmark which sounds like a horrific rugby injury, so we’ll leave the description there. It is an incredible creation though, with stunning detailing capturing the real mining machine in spectacularly life-like fashion. There’s more of the build to see at Stefan’s photostream and you can head into a Swedish tunnel via the link above.

Building Big

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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.