FORT WAYNE – Job skills, a childhood hobby and local inspiration come together brick by brick in Scott Sanburn’s creations.
Sanburn, from Warsaw, has been a fan of Lego construction toys since absorbing his sister’s collection as a kid. He got a little more serious in recent years, laying out detailed, train-crossed cities using AutoCAD software, and for more than a decade has been taking them on the road.
Saturday and Sunday was his first time sharing his work close to home, at the inaugural Brickworld Fort Wayne convention.
“I assimilated my sister’s collection at age 4 and never got out,” he said, sitting in the middle of a 10-foot-by-15-foot mini city with 18 motorized trains circling the outskirts. “It’s been a lifelong activity.”
The trains pass a farm, movie theater and town hall before going through the arches of a big red train station. Sanburn pointed out the police station in one corner, which he said he modeled after the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department – with one major difference.
“I didn’t have enough tan bricks, so I had to make it all white,” he said.
He plans to recreate other local features in future displays, including the county courthouse, a Lake City Bank, a Big R and his church, Warsaw Missionary.
“A lot of ambition and planning goes into each one,” he said.
Sanburn got his first job working with computer-aided design in 1996, and realized he could apply the same principle to town and track layout. The model train enthusiast in him enjoys working with the electronics and automatic track switches.
He started showing at Lego and train conventions in 2000 and attends as many as six in a year. His display in the Grand Wayne Center was surrounded by creations from 22 other members of Brickworld, who came from Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
On one side of him was a giant chess set with motorized pieces, and a working slot machine and ATM made of Lego; on the other side, space ships, replicas of famous architecture and mosaic works of art. Many of the cities were modeled after the creators’ hometowns, including one with towering skyscrapers by a Michigan group.
Brickworld started in Chicago in 2007 and also shows every year in Indianapolis, but enough people from Fort Wayne attend that organizers knew they wanted to bring the convention there, said co-founder Bryan Bonahoom. He noted that more than 3,000 kids and their parents attended the show over the weekend.
“We’re happy with that. We do the show for fun; we all have day jobs,” Bonahoom said. “It’s worth it when you watch kids walking out with smiles on their faces.”
