Steve Scanes, center, demonstrates a train at Steve's Hobbies in Sylvania to customers Joe Walczewski, left, and Tom Holmes. Scanes is preparing for the train show on Sunday.
Folks will have an opportunity Sunday to indulge their train-loving children (and inner children) at the Big Train Show at the Lucas County Recreation Center.
More than 100 dealers from Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania will set up 375 tables with toy and model trains of all sizes and scales, as well as books, magazines, T-shirts, paintings, photographs, and train memorabilia, such as old lanterns and lights.
Joyce Sorgenfrei, one of the event's organizers, said she also expects one area man to bring an assortment of model train parts and tools, so he can try to fix damaged trains.
“He just likes to tinker,” Ms. Sorgenfrei said with a chuckle.
Merchandise will range from brand-new products to old items that have been sitting in someone's house for years, even decades.
“Some of it's new stuff, sold by people who have shops,” Ms. Sorgenfrei said. “But a lot of times, it's people who are rotating merchandise - they buy a table and get rid of stuff they already have so they can buy more. Or you get people who are cleaning out Uncle John's basement. And you get collectors. We get all walks of life.”
The show, sponsored by the Friends of Toledo Model Railroaders, will also feature three working model train layouts.
One, from Michigan, is geared toward children, with the trains and scenery at a lower level so youngsters can see everything. Another model railroader club will bring layouts in HO and N scales, she added.
HO scale, the most popular model train size, is about one eighty-seventh the size of a real train. N-scale models are one-sixtieth the size of real trains.
The Big Train Show runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Lucas County Recreation Center, 2901 Key St., Maumee. General admission is $3; children 14 and under are admitted free with an adult. The entrance fee is $6 for an early admission badge, which allows people to enter the show between 9 and 11 a.m.