LEGO World Records (with a TECHNIC Twist)

[DLuders]

From the "Lego World Records" website http://www.recordholders.org/en/list/lego.html , here are the some of the records for Technic-related items:

"Largest LEGO Car-- Built in Chicago, and using more than 650,000 LEGO components, the LEGO Group's designers worked for 1,500 hours to design a life-size LEGO Super Car, and the company's model builders and technicians spent a further 4,000 hours assembling it. Though the life-size version of the LEGO car is 10 times bigger than the set sold in stores world-wide, it uses 500 times more LEGO elements. The LEGO Super Car is approximately 4.72 m (15 feet 5 inches) long, 2.28 m (7 feet 5 inches) wide and 1.24 m (4 feet 10 inches) high, weighing more than a ton, making it the biggest LEGO car in the world."

"Largest LEGO Bridge-- The largest LEGO bridge was a 37 m (122 ft) long bridge built on 26 October 2003 at the Cargo Lifter hall near Berlin (Germany) for a TV show dedicated to LEGO. The widest free span -14 m (46 ft) - had a 20 m long bridge that has been constructed from 16 September - 5 October 2008 at Science Museum Phaeno in Wolfsburg (Germany) from 80,000 bricks. The previous record [about 12.5 m] was for a model of the Gibraltar railway bridge built by Bart Efdé, Benny Efdé and Marco de Vries from 650 kg of bricks. Ted Michon of the Southern California LEGO Train Club has built a 4.5 m (15 ft) operating LEGO train bridge. The double decked, 4 tracked, working suspension bridge measures 576 studs from anchor to anchor and has a main span of 384 studs measured tower to tower."

"Tallest LEGO Crane-- The tallest crane is a almost 6 m (20 feet) tall scale model of a Liebherr LR-11200 1000 ton Crawler built by Alvin Brant. PHOTOS

Alvin has also built another 6 m-tall model of a Terex-Demag CC-8800-1 TWIN."

"Fastest Time to Built the Technic Mobile Crane (Set 8421)", using 5 builders = 1 hr 10 min 46 sec.

"Fastest Time to Built the Technic Tow Truck (Set 8285)", using 5 builders = 1 hr 15 min 9 sec.

"Fastest Time to Built the Technic Crane Truck (Set 8258)", using 5 builders = 1 hr 13 min 50 sec.

There are MANY MORE interesting Lego records, so be sure to see all of them at http://www.recordholders.org/en/list/lego.html .

[DLuders]

The website referenced above did not elaborate on the 2nd-longest Lego bridge free-span -- the 29-meters-long [size="5"]Lego Gibraltar Bridge.[/size] Based on the T.Y. Lin proposal for crossing the Straits of Gibraltar (between Europe and Africa), this huge bridge is chronicled by Marco de Vries on MOCPages:

"THE RECORD FACTS

Longest LEGO BRIDGE: 29 METRES (1141 inch)

Biggest span: 12,45 METRES (490 inch) NO steel, wood, ropes, glue etc. -- 100% LEGO!!

Altitude: 4 metres (157 inch)

Parts: ca. 200.000

Weight: ca. 450 kilo

Hours of work: 350 h.

THE PREPARATION

As a member of the Dutch independent LEGO-club "de Bouwsteen" we've got the oppurtunity from LEGO Benelux to build the "GIBRALTAR LEGO BRIDGE". When we've got the green light the drawing and counting begins! With help from the TV-documentaire we made a work-drawing in scale 1 to 20 cm. In that scale the drawing is 1,5 metres wide! (59 inch)

In the Brickshelf-folder you can see the drawings we made ("B-Gibraltar-bridge- sideviews") With help of the first LEGO-designs (see the Brickshelfpictures "C-first-design frame and C-first-design-traindeck") and the scaled drawing we could decide the sorts and the numbers of the LEGO parts and make the order-list of ca. 250.000 parts, with a total weight of 650 kilos!

THE IDEA

The Project is inspired on the documentaire 'Engineering the impossible' seen on Discovery Channel in which the engineers want to span the Gibraltar Street with an enormous bridge of 1 km (40000 inch) high and a total lenght of ca. 14 km (550000"). This should be the highest and greatest bridge ever build. The reason to use this bridge as inspiration is that this bridge has a huge span compared to the altitude, because only 3 main towers can be placed due to the enormous depth of the Gibraltar Street. With the LEGO bridge the depth isn't a problem, the altitude is. We create a similar problem: making a span as long as possible with a low altitude in proportion.

The designers solved this problem to combine two classic bridge-designs: the cable-stayed bridge and the suspension bridge. The main-towers with the revolutional 'diagonals' work as a cable-stayed bridge; Between the ends of the 'diagonals' the main cable of the suspension part is attached. De LEGO bridge has in contrast to the real project two in stead of three main towers.

THE SHOW

When after a lot of work all the LEGO compartments were ready, the exciting Try-out day begins: Will the LEGObridge hold it's 12,45 metres long traindeck? In the "Try-out-day pictures" you will notice that after 8 hours building with 4 people the bridge works! Who would have thought that? Minimal alterations and improvements were made and the bridge is displayed on the big LEGO-event in Zwolle, the Netherlands, called LEGOWORLD. The bridge is shown on national television in three different programs and it's pictures occured in many papers. What a great project. Enjoy the pictures!

-- Benny Efde (Stanley Efu) and Marco de Vries"

There are 25 pictures on MOCPages and 36 on Brickshelf, where Benny Efde (Stanley Efu) wrote "Below you see pictures of the preparation, drawings, building and the try-out day of the Lego Gibraltar bridge....Comments welcome on efde@planet.nl ".

Pictures of the final, in-place bridge at LEGOWORLD (Zwolle, The Netherlands) can be found on this Brickshelf folder.

Did any Eurobricks AFOLs remember seeing this HUGE bridge at LEGOWORLD 2004?