Erector sets featured in free toy show that’s bridge to past

At 60, Calhoun attorney Randy Sauder feels like a kid again when he builds things out of Erector set parts, some nearly a century old.

But Sauder doesn’t just throw together basic bridges or stale skyscrapers. His Coney Island Fun House, featuring more than 2,000 moving parts, won the best model award last year at the A.C. Gilbert Heritage Society national convention in Chicago. That was neat since the gathering celebrated the centennial of the founding of the company that brought the world Erector sets, American Flyer trains, chemistry and magic sets, dozens of other educational toys and an array of appliances for the adults in the house.

This weekend, the Gilbert Heritage Society convention will be held in Atlanta for the first time, and its toy fair on Saturday at the Atlanta Marriott Northwest will be free to the public.

Hundreds of toys from the now-defunct A.C. Gilbert Co., everything from Atomic Energy sets to slot car tracks to running American Flyer trains, will be on display (as will a scattering of items from other makers). Some items will be for sale.

Like the other 450 or so A.C. Gilbert Heritage Society members across the country, Sauder is an enthusiast of the vast array of products made by the New Haven, Conn., company from 1913 to the 1960s, when it went out of business. But he holds a special spot in his heart for Erector sets, having been introduced to them by his father when Randy was a youngster in the late ’50s.

Pulling out his own boyhood Erector set from the ’30s, Harvey Sauder would get down on the floor and help his son build bridges and all manner of mechanical things. By age 4, Randy already was aware that tightening a bolt too much would strip the threads.

“So to a certain degree, Erector is a wistful throwback to my childhood,” said Sauder, a former state representative who served Smyrna for three terms, until 1999. “And part of my motivation is to rekindle that era in the eyes of children in our modern age.”

Sauder’s obsession with Erector sets took a breather for a couple of decades after he went away to college, then pursued his law and political careers. He collected antique cars for a while, before deciding they demanded too much space. About 15 years ago, he came across an Erector set on eBay and, feeling sentimentality surge, bought it.

He’s snagged countless more since in what he calls “an addiction of fun.”

The Coney Island Fun House, which took more than a thousand hours of his spare time over two years to construct, incorporates some 30 different Gilbert Erector theme sets.

Based on the New York theme park during its 1920s heyday, Sauder’s fun house boasts 30 circus rides moving in different directions simultaneously, including a central merry-go-round with horses gliding up and down, a Ferris wheel and spinning tea cups.

To animate them, the three-level frame (30 inches long by 18 inches deep by 27 inches high) contains more than 250 gears, wheels, pulleys, axles and bearings. (A small number of the parts are from makers other than Gilbert, including Meccano, a British competitor.) A single motor powers the various drive bands that bring the fun house to life, accompanied by music and laughter.

“Sometimes a complex engineering problem will take a month or more to unravel,” Sauder said. “While these are only models, the truth is they require the same building concepts as the real thing.”

He also has built two elaborate 1920s tool shops, one of which will be on view here. It won best model at the 2012 Gilbert show and features always-moving equipment such as a cross-cut saw, water wheel and an elevator occupied by a dog.

Tucked under the Christmas tree on the tool shop’s lower level are boxed Erector sets. That’s not mere nostalgia: Though Gilbert is gone, the Erector brand was acquired just last year by Toronto-based Spin Master, which plans a relaunch.

Sauder said constructing these elaborate models is very rewarding and “better than TV.” He thinks it’s pretty cool that real-life projects from the George Washington Bridge to Disney World rides have started with Erector set models.

“Building one of these mega projects is like reading a good book,” Sauder said. “You really don’t know how it’ll turn out until you finish. But the long hours are worth the effort when young children and adults alike stand and watch a thousand moving parts all spinning in different directions, driven by only one small motor.”