60409 Mobile Construction Crane

Now I like cranes (one of my favourite YouTube subjects) and I like Lego so when I went to the Sheffield Lego store to check out new Notre Dame Kit I came out with the also recently released Mobile Construction crane instead.

I already have the previous much smaller crane, which is to the same mini fig scale so could easily be posed helping with the setup of its big sibling, as we often see on site. Looking at the model itself it is an impressive piece of kit. The build is fairly straight forward. There are four “modules” to the chassis, with an interesting connection method, presumably for strength. Then there are the four stabilising arms, then the boom, control cabin and counterweights each as a sub-build. None of the many wheels steer( let alone the astonishing flexibility of its real-life counterpart) so don’t expect this to do anything other than roll in a straight line! The cable reeving is very simple, which is a bit disappointing. but this just a toy not a scale model. There is also a nice gender balance to the well equipped construction crew.

Functionality includes all the basic movements, including quite a nice transport stowage position for the control cabin. Overall this captures the look of something like the Liebherr LTM 1500 (and with the removal of a couple of axles and a tweak to the cabin you could produce a convincing Grove GMK too).

Fully assembled (as per the photos) this takes up a great deal of space so I’ll be displaying this in its transport configuration and hopefully will find the time to build the tractor unit from the new car transporter instructions and pair it with a custom built Noteboom crane trailer for the stands and counterweights.