See a Crossrail tunnel boring machine made from Lego

Published on 11th February 2014 by ianVisits in Miscellaneous

There is a modern rule that any large engineering project has to involve Lego at some point, and Crossrail have finally complied with Regulation 17 subclause 13a of the Lego Engineering Act 2008.

Hence, a video, not actually from Crossrail, but from one of their contractors, Bechtel about a project to build a working scale model of a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) out of LEGO.

One of the largest engineering machines, made from some of the smallest building blocks.

LEGO-Tunnel-Boring-Machine

Fully functional in how things move around, it might not sadly survive an encounter with actual soil — but wouldn’t that be fun to see in action?

Indeed., I see an entire market in Lego based TBM’s carving out little Lego lined tunnels under the streets of London for telecoms companies.

Lego has previous form with London Transport — having previously provided these Lego based tube maps.

Tube map made from Lego

And of course, Lego fans enjoy recreating bits of the Underground from little plastic bricks.

All stations to Farringdon Street

Tagged with Elizabeth line / Crossrail, lego

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2 Comments on “See a Crossrail tunnel boring machine made from Lego”

  1. I’ve seen this Lego gas turbine in Rolls-Royce in Derby. Not sure the press release pictures really do it justice.