Saturday, December 04, 1999
Great American Train Show rolls into convention center
BY MIKE PULFER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
At 74, Alvin Sadler still packs up his toys and goes home — about eight times a year at the conclusion of model railroading shows in the Midwest.
He'll do it again at the end of the Great American Train Show, running 11 a.m.-5 p.m. today and Sunday at the Albert B. Sabin Convention Center, downtown.
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IF YOU GO
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• What: Great American Train Show.
• When: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. today and Sunday. 4-5
• Where: Albert B. Sabin Convention Center, downtown.
• Admission: $6, children 11 and younger are free.
• Information: (630) 834-0652.
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The show, which travels to 90 cities a year, features 14 model layouts from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee and 400 sales tables. There are 28 workshops each day.
Mr. Sadler of Finneytown thinks he caught the railroading bug when he was about 14 months old and his father brought home his first train.
Today, he manages an intricate HO-scale setup in his basement (when it's not on the road) with help from four generations of family.
HO scale, which falls in the middle of the five model railroading sizes, is 1/87th the size of real trains.
Mr. Sadler's wife, Ruby, is as enthusiastic as most men hobbyists, he says. “Our best engineer is a 13-year-old girl,” his granddaughter.
His train cars and scenery are valuable, Mr. Sadler says, but the family interaction is more so.
“It's the pleasure you get from it, the quality time I spend with my grandkids. How can you put a dollar-and-cents value on that?”
Mr. Sadler's trains are unusual in that they are powered by “live” steam engines — simple engines driven by steam.
“There are no electrical hookups on the sets we demonstrate,” he says.
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