Tag Archives: Scale Model

Many motors make this massive LEGO MAZ mobile!

Earlier this year, Nathan Hake debuted this huge LEGO model at a convention, and we have finally been graced with pictures! This behemoth is a MAZ-537, a former Soviet vehicle used for carrying… Well, pretty much whatever you want, from armaments to heavy machinery. It’s typical of vehicles of its ilk and era, with great big tyres and utilitarian styling. In LEGO form, Nathan has combined Technic and System pieces to pull off the MAZ in terrific detail. And of course, there are plenty of play functions: it’s got working suspension alongside motorised steering and propulsion!

MAZ-537 Display

But how do you level up such a huge undertaking? With an equally huge diorama, of course! This makes for a very nice display piece, with the colours of the river, grass and appropriately autumnal birch trees providing some pleasing contrast to the grey hulk of the truck.

MAZ-537 Display

I recommend heading over to Nathan’s Flickr to check out some of the videos of this creation in action – even in the real wilderness!

A detailed LEGO plane that’s no mirage... Or is it?

LEGO builder Beat Felber is well known for his enormous models of industrial vehicles (exhibit A: our Beat Felber archives). But he’s ringing the changes with his latest model! It’s smaller than his usual fare, of military rather than industrial nature, and more at home in the air than on the ground. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the flawless attention to detail. This plane – and its loadout – is based on a real Dassault Mirage, on display in Beat’s native Switzerland. With the help of some custom decals, it compares very favourably!

Dassault Mirage III RS Swiss Air Force

It wouldn’t be a Beat Felber model without a bit of functionality as well: on here, the landing gear retracts into the undercarriage. You can see what it looks like in flight on this very smart display stand!

Dassault Mirage III RS Swiss Air Force

Learning about Iberian freight trains through LEGO

Something I really like about the global LEGO community is when builders take inspiration from their local surroundings for their creations. Sérgio Batista, for instance, has crafted this nice freighy convoy with a train from his native Portugal. Now I can’t confess to being a train expert, at least not where south-western Europe is concerned, but having seen Sérgio’s model, I’ve now gone down a bit of a Wikipedia rabbit hole reading about the history of railways in Portugal. So I can say with a modicum authority that this is a CP4700 series locomotive, with an attractive brick-built livery!

Just a Lego containers train

And you know what’s better than one great scale model of a Portuguese freight train? Two scale models of a Portuguese freight train! Here’s another slightly less modern consist, with the so-called ‘Nez-Cassée’ 2620 series built by Alsthom. Fun fact: ‘nez cassé’ means broken nose in French, and the stubby cab front is where they get this nickname from. Thanks for the educational trip, Sérgio!

Just a Lego freight train

We need to go bigger with our digger!

When it comes to enormous LEGO machinery, there are few modelers out there better than Dennis Bosman. So when he turns his hand to an excavator that’s already pretty hefty by industrial plant standards, you know it’s going to be great. And when he combines it with a truck that was impressive enough to be featured on its own a few months ago, that results are downright spectacular. Not to mention enormous – this whole thing is some 1.75m (5’10) long. On a good day, that’s almost as long as I am tall!

Scania R143E H.C. Wilson Ltd.

When we first featured the lorry, it had a skip on the back rather than a flatbed trailer. But make no mistake, this whole convoy was designed as a unit! Dennis tells us that the trailer is used by H.C. Wilson – which is a real company – in the UK. So it’s feasible that this could be seen trundling up and down the motorways and highways, transporting the Liebherr 964 to its next big job. Speaking of which – here’s a closer look at it! If you want a clue as to how big this colossus is, that guard on the windscreen is a 9×13 lattice piece. Yeah, this is big!

Liebherr R964C

Prototype by name, prototype by nature

If you know your motor racing, the 1999 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans will probably have you picturing a Mercedes-Benz CLR somersaulting the Mulsanne straight. Spare a thought for BMW, though – they won the race, and almost no one remembers their car! The aptly-named LEGO builder PROTOTYP sure does, though. This model painstakingly recreates the BMW V12 LMR in the brick, with the help of a few custom decals and wheels.

BMW LMR '99

Make no mistake, though – the bricks are doing the heavy lifting here! The detail is evident underneath the bodywork and on top, and this is where my motorsport nerd heart starts fluttering. The engine is there, of course: all 12 cylinders of it. But so are the radiators, the wiring, the cooling hoses, the driveshafts, and – my personal favourite – the shock absorbers, with red 1×1 round studs standing in for springs. This is attention to detail truly worthy of a winner!

BMW LMR '99

Bringing modern WRC to life in LEGO bricks

As much as we’d love to spend all day writing about LEGO, we at TBB Towers do have day jobs to attend to. Without giving too much away, mine involves working very closely with rally cars like the one Instagram user dak_yuki has built. For those not familiar, this is the – deep breath – Toyota Gazoo Racing GR Yaris Rally1 Hybrid. Not the most catchy name, perhaps, but it has just ended a dominant season in the World Rally Championship with a victory in dak_yuki’s native Japan. So what better time to enjoy this fantastic scale model?

Follow the link to see more of this rallying beast!

The Tantive IV of the Star Wars prequels, in LEGO

Every AFOL has what I call their ‘white whale’ set. One that they longed for as a kid (and probably still do as a grown-up), but never owned. For me, that’s 7665 Republic Cruiser. In hindsight, it’s perhaps not the finest recreation of the Radiant VII. But when I was staring longingly at it in the pages of Argos catalogues, it looked as good as Fuku Saku‘s 1:250 scale model does! The subtle curves of the conical pod at the front look great; the way it meshes with the angles elsewhere is so satisfying. To be fair, the same could be said of the whole build. This ship did get a mostly grey militarised variant in the Clone Wars, but I much prefer its diplomatic livery from the opening scene of The Phantom Menace. It looks resplendent in red and white. You could even say it looks… Radiant!

Radiant VII Consular-class Cruiser

You don’t know jack!

For this year’s Rogue Olympics, Pohaturon has come up with quite the eye-catching LEGO ethernet cable. And clocking in at only 16 pieces, it’s quite the tiny blue marvel! The whole build centers around this light brick from the Exo-Force era, normally used to generate a red beam. But in this case, its shape is perfect for the standard RJ45 connector. The partially-connected 1×2 plate sitting on top if it is the perfect touch.

Ethernet Cable

“The foot stud’s connected to the leg tube...”

No bones about it, builder ZiO Chao knows their LEGO anatomy! Their impressive hybrid of System and Technic parts gives us a peek into our innermost core while still providing quite the possible finished model. The cranial crafting here is spot on, with an excellent pair of eye sockets and two dazzling rows of 1×1 plate teeth. And at the opposite end of the model, Mr. Skeleton’s feet are well-crafted. I particularly like the detail of a distinctly larger hallux, or “big toe,” compared to the rest of the foot. And the use of the robot arms for the metatarsals gives each pedal construction the perfect arch on their underside.

Mr. Skeleton

This enormous LEGO dragline excavator model is nearly 6 feet long and includes 9 motors

With small LEGO builds, it often takes ingenuity to make for an impressive creation. We are of course partial to these builds, but sometimes nothing beats the brute force of a gigantic, multi-thousand (if not tens of thousands) piece build. It’s hard to tell, but I think Beat Felber‘s colossus falls into the latter category. Just. Don’t you think?

P&H 2355

This isn’t a new build: Beat first uploaded a video of its operation a couple of years ago, which we’ll get to in a moment. But he has now uploaded a host of pictures of every nook and cranny on this P&H 2355 dragline excavator. Which is the perfect excuse for us to cover it in some more detail!

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Schloss Drachenburg in LEGO: Here there be dragons!

There are castles that are blocky grey fortresses, and there are castles that look like fairytales come to life. One such castle is the ornate Schloss Drachenburg, which bears resemblance to the more famous Neuschwastein. Just a few miles south of the German city of Bonn, this 19th century villa was the passion project of builder Caleb Schilling who replicated this building with an attention to accuracy. A range of earthen tones dominate most of the exterior, while the dark grey adorns the top sections. The overall appearance of this build already satisfies my hunger for beautifully built architecture, but there are plenty of details yet to savour.

Schloss Drachenburg

Click here to take a closer look at the many architectural details!

Life-size LEGO Iron Man model revealed ahead of San Diego Comic-Con [News]

LEGO has taken the wraps off the next life-size brick-built attraction to be displayed at their booth during San Diego Comic-Con this week. This six-and-a-half foot model portrays Tony Stark in his Mark LXXXV suit from Avengers: Endgame wearing the infinity gauntlet, with what appears to be light-up energy effects snaking up his arm. It took LEGO master builders 35,119 bricks and 255 hours to construct.

Check out this time lapse video chronicling the model’s construction, along with more photos below.