Crane operator rebuilds his Liebherr EC-H tower crane in Lego

The crane operator who rebuilds his Liebherr tower crane in Lego, piece by piece

By day Thomas Körmer sits in the cab of a tower crane; by night he recreates the machines in Lego. His biggest build so far is a 2.80-metre remote-controlled replica of a Liebherr EC-H top-slewing crane that erects its own tower and moves loads.

Twenty years in the cab

Körmer works as a crane operator at a family-run building construction business with around twelve employees near Spielberg, close to Gunzenhausen in Bavaria. A trained bricklayer, he holds both a crane operator’s licence and an excavator operator’s licence, and completed his crane operator training around 20 years ago. Since then he has operated tower cranes from a range of manufacturers – experience that now feeds directly into his unusual hobby.

For the past ten years he has been building functional crane models made exclusively from Lego, designing them entirely himself and without any computer planning, working from photographs of the real machines.

A 2.80-metre EC-H that erects itself

His largest project to date is a remote-controlled replica of a Liebherr top-slewing crane from the EC-H series. The model stands around 2.80 metres tall, carries a two-metre jib and a counter-jib of roughly 0.90 metres, and is controlled by mobile phone or a PlayStation controller. It can erect and telescope its own tower, extend the jib, luff the jib tip through around 45 degrees and move loads – just like its full-size counterpart on site.

The build took around a year, with Körmer repeatedly adapting the design as he built, tested and improved it. The hardest part, he says, is structural.

“On the real thing, a lot is bolted or set in concrete, whereas with Lego everything is simply plugged together. You constantly have to consider what is actually feasible without the crane tipping over.”

— Thomas Körmer, crane operator and model builder

Kormo Technic finds its audience

His daily work on site helps him reproduce crane movements realistically, and under the name Kormo Technic he presents the models on YouTube and Facebook, where more than 5,800 people from around the world follow his builds. He swaps ideas with fellow model builders in WhatsApp groups and at trade fairs, and says he is particularly pleased when crane operators recognise their own machine in one of his models.

The next project is already chosen: a replica of a Liebherr HC-LH crane, whose adjustable-jib mechanics, he reckons, lend themselves particularly well to Lego.