Al Hoffman

 

Al Hoffman, left, with Lloyd Keyser at the recent St. Louis RPM, courtesy of Steve Hile

Al Hoffman died recently at age 80. I met Al in the late 90s after a Naperville RPM. I was headed to the airport and Al, along with the late Bat Masterson, offered me a ride. That introduction led to an almost 30 year friendship. Al lived in Connecticut and when I moved back there in 2005, we saw each other frequently, usually weekly. 

Al grew up in the suburbs west of Chicago watching his beloved Burlington's trains. They became an outsized influence on his pursuits. He was a graduate of Shimer College in Illinois, including a year's study at Oxford. Al's professional work was for a leveraged buyout firm based in Connecticut. Al was the guy sent in to companies to look at the books and operations and effect the improvements that made such investments profitable. Employees of the firm received equity in companies that were bought out, in the form of stock. Al held his equity in one such company when all others in his firm had liquidated; that investment ultimately made Al "beer rich" (as opposed to champagne rich... his words!) That allowed Al to retire quite young.

brasstrains.com photo

Many of you may not have been acquainted with Al as he generally preferred to operate behind the scenes. However, you are almost certainly the beneficiary of his efforts. Al's post retirement life was focused heavily on his love of model trains and their prototypes. Al had been involved in many projects produced by brass importers, including Nickel Plate Products, Oriental, Overland, Coach Yard,and Challenger, among others. Al often created drawings for projects that he championed. He also imported some Burlington passenger equipment under his own line, Aurora Shops, including the car shown above. Al worked with many resin kit manufacturers, too, including Sunshine, Westerfield, Bethlehem Car Works, and yours truly, as Speedwitch. Al also collaborated with many makers of injection molded products, such as Intermountain, Kadee, Life Like/Proto 2000/Walthers, and Tangent. If a manufacturer ever responded positively to one's of Al's product "suggestions" they became intimately aware of Al's doggedness. For me, his biggest influence was introducing me to Michael Urac, with the Focus on Freight Cars series being the result. Al authored articles in historical society and prototype-related publications. He seemed to have his finger in many pots, with some of those efforts still to come.

While he didn't do nearly as much as he would've liked, Al did manage to build some models. The caboose above is one of his efforts, based upon a resin kit. I gladly painted it for him. Al was extremely gifted at working with brass and had a slew of partially completed projects where he replaced the tires and driver centers, turned new boiler fronts on his lathe, stripped and redetailed locomotives, etc. He was also an avid collector of what I call sad sack models and kits, exemplified well by the ancient Railmaster line of white metal kits, notably a 65-foot mill gondola based upon the AAR design. I am certain that Al owns more than 50% of the extant kits of this type.

In addition to all of these pursuits related to railroads and models, Al was an extremely generous human. I will spare the details, but he used his good fortune to aid others less fortunate, often anonymously.

In his personal life, Al was a life long bachelor until the last decade. He was wed to Mary (Gerritsen) of Valparaiso, Indiana. Al is also survived by a nephew in Colorado who he was deeply fond of.

One last thing I will share is that if you did not know Al, you were unaware of his extremely frugal side, that was sometimes belied by its very nature. Al owned a Toyota Camry from the mid-80s that he ordered with a V6 engine, manual transmission, and crank-operated windows (non-powered.) He ordered it because that combination wasn't available at the showroom. He drove it over 400,000 miles and when the frame began to rust, he had a new frame installed on the old car at great expense! That was Al. Rest in Peace and may the everafter be filled with Burlington resin kits

I had many lunches (often preceded by a visit to The Hobby Gallery back in the day,) trips to meets and shows, and long phone conversations with Al, especially about things that he wanted me to produce. I knew him as well as any of my railroad friends and will miss him greatly. He left too soon. 

Greetings from Vermont

 

Enosburg Falls, Vermont, September, 1941, Jack Delano, FSA-OWI Collection, Library of Congress

I spent several days in Vermont over the past week visiting with family. There were two outings that were tangentially related to railroads that I want to share. We had dinner in Enosburg Falls one evening with a family member who resides there. It is a quaint smallish town near the Canadian border with typical New England charm. It still has a town green/square (Lincoln Park) that even featured an orchestra playing favorites from film as part of an outdoor evening concert. Back in the day, the town was on the Central Vermont's Richford Branch (named the Missisquoi [sic] Branch on the Sanborn map) to Richford. It is as bucolic a modeling subject as your mind conjures. There's even some dude in Virginia modeling the branch! [Marty's blog contains all the details] Many of the bones of the line are still there, albeit as paved rail trails and heavily modified structures. It's an interesting walk into the past nonetheless if you squint and imagine.

New England Dairies, Enosburg Falls, Vermont, September, 1941, Jack Delano, FSA-OWI Collection, Library of Congress

Enosburg Falls Sanborn map, illustrating the area from the photo at top of the page, circa 1920

The other railroad-related outing was a walk with my wife on the Lake Champlain causeway. The causeway was created in 1901 to span Lake Champlain from Colchester to South Hero Island, Vermont (north of Burlington). There was a bridge, as well, that is now gone, replaced by in season ferry service to span the 200-foot gap in the causeway. Today, it's a path used by tons of cyclists and a smaller number of walkers/hikers. 

There's an avian critter (Great Blue Heron) in the angle formed by the tree's trunk and the large stone

A few things from St. Louis

New York Central System Historical Society

I brought home a few things from the St. Louis RPM. The first is a Sunshine Models kit of a Northern Pacific fifty-foot heavy insulation refrigerator car. I missed these when originally offered and managed to find one at the Resourced Rails table at the meet. The prototypes were built by the Despatch Shops in East Rochester, New York in 1946. At the time they were unusual for their length as well as the extra insulation for frozen food shipments. The kit looks like a fun project. I will create my own decals with NYC-style typeface stenciling to match that of the prototype. PS - you can order high res scans for $5 each of these cars at the NYCSHS site (links here and here) A more thorough post about these prototypes will follow at some point.

The next of the loot is a Monon container gondola offered by Forbes Train Models (Doug Forbes.) It's a 3D print of the prototype. Doug also offers a few other versions of the cars. The modeler adds the details such as grabs, wire, trucks, couplers, etc. The first page of the instructions, including Doug's email is included below. These are well-rendered straightforward kits, but are designed to allow varying levels of detailing, from basic up to completely tricked out. The images above are the 3D-printed body with a shot of Tamiya fine surface primer (aerosol can.)

From Dave Hussey's PBase gallery... link below

Last and out of era for me is the Cannon & Company kit for the Northern Pacific's 5300-series combination door waffle cars from Pacific Car & Foundry, kit FC-5015. I know it's too modern for me. However, I have always liked the premise of these kits (as well as the Modeler's Choice line) and relish the challenge of building one up someday. Link to Dave Hussey's PBase image gallery for the prototype and model.