Brick by brick: B.C. man spent hundreds of hours building a replica SeaBus out of Lego

A Burnaby man’s latest transit-themed creation is his biggest and most ambitious build yet.

William Fong has a love for Lego, and a love for transit.

The first time he combined those passions was in 2015, when he built a replica SkyTrain out of the little plastic bricks.

It was so well received, he went on to build replica transit buses and street cars. This year, he was ready to try something even more challenging.

“I wanted to build something completely different from what I have. I wanted to build something big, I wanted to build something local again. Why not build the SeaBus?” he said from the Lego studio at his home in Burnaby.

“So I started playing around with pieces, geometry, that sort of thing. I thought, okay, it’s actually feasible.”

In January, he started the design process by riding the SeaBus and taking photos of every detail, inside and out.

“I thought to myself, okay, there are all these extremely complicated angles. I get out the protractor, measure this out by hand, and just go, ‘Okay, this piece works’,” he said.

“For scale, I use a website that you can convert actual measurements into Lego studs.”

Fong estimates he spent hundreds of hours on the build, which took four months.

“Over the ten years I’ve been doing this, I’ve managed to accumulate enough pieces where I’ve been able to build it physically, for the most part, without having to accumulate more,” he said.

While there are some final details left to build, like handrails and the inside of the bridge, Fong is ready to reveal the nearly-finished product.

It is a replica of a specific vessel: the Burrard Pacific Breeze.

He designed vinyl decals to apply to the bricks to match the exact look, and he’s already brought it to SeaBus headquarters to show TransLink employees.

“They were just amazed, some of the details that I put onto it. Because I don’t have an engineering background, but I do see little details here and there. I’m more creative and artistic,” Fong said.

As for why he spends so much time and money building transit-related Lego?

“It gets people talking about their experiences on transit, the future of transit, that sort of thing. It’s really about stories and about nostalgia,” he said.

The Lego SeaBus will be on display throughout Metro Vancouver this spring and summer, starting with the Cloverdale Rodeo in a few weeks.

For Fong, showing off his creations might be more satisfying than the build itself.

“People love pulling me aside and talking to me,” he said.

“There are parents who have come up to me who have children with special needs who are like, ‘My kid who is mostly non-verbal can’t stop talking about this’.”

While the SeaBus is his biggest and best transit build, it won’t be his last.

“I do see myself continuing to build transit models,” Fong said.

“I don’t know what I’ll build next, but yeah, it will continue.”