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.