Expanding LEGO City's latest harbour set into a full diorama

Find out how to expand LEGO City 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship into a full diorama using pieces available entirely through Pick a Brick.

In our in-depth review of 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship last year, we came away from the LEGO City build suitably impressed with the detail, colour scheme and models on offer – yet there's clearly more to be extracted from this concept for builders with the budget and capability.

With the parts library available at Pick a Brick to choose from courtesy of the LEGO Group, we began to visualise what an expanded version of this set could entail. Fortunately, like all the best LEGO sets, 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship offers a great launchpad for all sorts of ideas – especially for older fans desiring a sea-based display.

What's missing?

LEGO harbours have seen huge sweeping changes over the years, from the more recent removal of the larger hull piece to the increase in complex, detailed, and realistic designs, mixing play with realism. Analysing that latter point formed the basis of our concept: identifying how LEGO City's harbours have grown and what they're all still missing.

There's only one common thread that ties these sets together, and it's the absence of water. Whether through blue baseplates, connected curved plates, or even a mix of disconnected water builds, the LEGO City harbour sets have never included water aside from in the foundations of the models. This can be seen in 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship, where, at most, the water goes one stud away from the shore. Instead, LEGO City has always relied on the imagination of fans to fill in the gaps.

On the one hand, this keeps the costs of the sets down, but on the other, it's not ideal for older fans who might be hoping to display the sets as a standalone scene – something that 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship excels at with its level of detail and realism compared to other official harbours. Expanding on the waters of LEGO City suggested in 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship simply had to be done.

Looking at techniques across the talented members of the online LEGO community, we set out to chart the seas of LEGO City in an expansive diorama building on the foundations of 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship, but taking the model further than the designers ever intended.

Adding water to 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship doesn't have to be as rudimentary as picking up a pair of baseplates and adding some transparent tiles, though. We can dive even deeper into this idea to help older fans of LEGO City make the most out of the newest harbour build.

Aquatic angles

As it comes in the box, 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship covers an adequate amount of harbour, a minimal beach space, one sizeable cargo ship and two additional water-based vehicles. It's just missing water, aside from a handful of plates for the foundation. As mentioned above, our mission was to expand on the boundaries of 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship and provide a seamless scene to slot the recent LEGO City set into.

That desire – and the specific goal of slotting it in and out of the diorama – has formed the foundation of our expansion, building on 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship while framing it on an aquatic base. Given the angular nature of the model, embracing this ended up hugely impacting the shape of the display. We've opted for an oval shape with a space for the set to slot in and out easily, rather than the squared-off approaches that most official LEGO dioramas target.

This way, we're building on the shape of the official model rather than modifying it – something that would have made this project easier but less satisfying. It also helps it to stand out compared to the likes of the impressive NINJAGO City range, which has some display-ideal LEGO water to take note of, too.

'Til transport logistics do us part

While it's more challenging, embracing the angular shape of 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship offers the opportunity to tackle the obstacles that come with fitting it into a standard-plate design, which in turn leads us to new opportunities. Using wedge plates and BrickLink Studio to determine the layout of the model, we calculated the exact space needed to create a slot for it to easily slide in and out of the larger display.

In practice, it makes the display model easier to transport as the official set and the additional sturdy base can separate – perfect for transporting to LEGO events without disassembling much of the model. The non-standard shape also sets it apart from other LEGO dioramas, both official and unofficial.

Building beyond boundaries

With the on-land structures of the set positioned at the back of the build – since the back of the restaurant is open for play – we used the model as the main segment of the diorama's backdrop, continuing its boundaries with rock formations, and extending the beach with a rock pool for minifigures to explore.

The concept of expanding on 60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship remained at the core of our design throughout the entire process, resulting in a build that embraces a simple but effective LEGO City concept while expanding the world that is only teased on the box but was not necessary for the official model.

Our custom creation offers inspiration on how you can expand other LEGO City sets to make them much more realistic and detailed, depending on your budget. Thanks to the LEGO Group for providing the set and pieces for this model, the latter of which all came exclusively from Pick a Brick – even the more unique pieces you might have your eye on.

60422 Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship is available now – not including our diorama – for £94.99 / $109.99 / €109.99, and you can take a closer look at the official set by clicking here.

Check back soon for the next part of this build project, which will examine the techniques and parts used in closer detail.

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