At the beginning of the week, we announced that Maersk Line had provided us with the opportunity to build the Lego version of their first vessel from their Triple E series – the Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller.
We’ve all been very excited about this unique project and have looked forward to getting things underway.
Our Directors Brian and Glenn Hack took charge and laid the first bricks of the all-important hull.
Lots of pictures being taken to document the process
Thankfully Lego has made things easy for us amateur ship builders by numbering each bag!
Glenn and Brian grouped each of the uniquely coloured bricks into piles
Lego have done a fantastic job with this model, as every little detail from the actual vessel has been replicated into tiny bricks. If you look closely at the image below, the clear windows have now been put in place to enable viewers to peek through to the engine room.
This build includes rare coloured bricks – medium azur, dark red, sand blue and sand green
The tiny propellers have been clicked in place and are now able rotate on their own.
Did you know that the propeller from the huge Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller has a diameter of 10m and weighs a MASSIVE 70 tonnes? These props are cast in moulds with 500 tonnes of weight placed on top of them. The alloy is then forged at a mind-blowing temperature of 1,190° Celsius. Casting the propellers only takes 10 minutes but it takes 10 days for them to cool!
The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller’s place of registration is Hellerup, a beautiful town in Denmark.
We have received a lot of support and interest in our Lego build. We even received this chocolate treat sent to us from over 5,400km away in New Zealand (thank you to our Facebook follower Toni Woodcock) to celebrate the commencement of the project (and to give us ‘energy’ throughout the build).
Looks almost too good to eat. We like all things to do with shipping here at EES. Especially chocolate things
The section below took approximately an hour to build, with the Hack brothers stopping several times to document their progress and locate the position of each piece. The actual vessel took a little over a year to build and become operational. If we work really hard we just might beat that.
The hardest part of this section to build was the bow
Construction has halted for the week. We’re up to page 68 of the instructions.
Want to see what we’ve tackled next week? Stay tuned for regular updates. If you would like to be a boat builder and help us with this BIG project, send us an email.
The length of the lego model is 65cm and the length of the actual Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller is 400m. If Michael Johnson (400m world record holder) ran like he did in 1999, it would take him 43.18 seconds to get from bow to stern.
