N.Y. / REGION

Five-Alarm Obsession: A Fire Truck Buff Custom Builds Models

JAN. 2, 2015

Tom Eve has about 300 model fire trucks, including his own collection and replicas for clients.CreditJulie Glassberg for The New York Times

Tom Eve, 63, still remembers the day in 1958 that the firehouse on his South Bronx block got its new pumper: a gleaming new Mack whose cab could fit five firefighters.

It was a Model-C with a Thermodyne engine that purred, compared to the roaring 1939 Ward LaFrance it replaced, recalled Mr. Eve, who even at age 7 was already a fixture around the firehouse, Engine Company 60 and Ladder Company 17, on East 143rd Street.

He has not lost his boyish enthusiasm for fire trucks, as attested by the dozens of miniatures crowding the shelves in the basement shop of his house, just off the Staten Island Expressway.

Mr. Eve, a retired postal worker, custom builds ultrarealistic models for clients who request replicas of pumpers and ladder trucks — historic or current, from the New York Fire Department or, sometimes, other departments.

“My trucks are on shelves all over the world,” he said. “Most of these trucks are ones I’m working on for other people.”

The little plastic models may resemble toys, but they can cost upward of $300, and they reflect a lifetime obsession with, and deep knowledge of, New York fire apparatus.

Mr. Eve builds the models to be historically accurate, down to the make and model, type of accessories and firehouse insignia. He currently has about 300 trucks between his own collection and those being built for enthusiasts as well as retired New York firefighters wanting a souvenir of their service.

“Most firefighters have a favorite truck they worked on that meant a lot to them,” he said. “They feel like, ‘This is the wagon I rode to battle on.’ ”

While some clients may furnish photographs and descriptions of the truck they want replicated, it often falls to Mr. Eve to recreate the rig.

“It’s second-nature for me because I’ve been a buff for so long — I’ve been studying the trucks since I was a kid,” said Mr. Eve, the son of Dominican immigrants, who grew up down the block from Engine Company 60 where an old buff, Jimmy Ginty, took him under his wing.

“Jimmy could remember horse-drawn rigs,” Mr. Eve recalled. “He’d give me pamphlets and memorabilia as old as the hills.”

During the 1970s, when “half my neighborhood went to hell” from constant fires, Mr. Eve said, he would follow the trucks to the fires, then help wash and pack up the hoses.

He also had an active music career as a guitarist. He formed the band Eve of Eden in the 1970s, and played with the likes of Luther Vandross and stars from the disco era. These days, he is a sideman with prominent doo-wop groups.

He keeps his sheet music stacked next to his library of fire reference materials that include books, magazines and pamphlets about New York fire apparatus.

There are decades of WNYF magazine, the official training publication of the Fire Department, and Fire Apparatus Journal. Mr. Eve also has made his own master index of New York fire rigs compiled, he said, from a lifetime of “buffing.” It has minute and historical details on roughly 1,000 rigs used from the 1940s through the 1970s.

For most of New York City’s 218 firehouses, Mr. Eve can tick off a detailed list of the assigned rigs, from the past and present. His mind is its own index of makes and models: Macks, Seagraves, Ferraras, Hahns, Howes, Maxims — and the old Ahrens-Fox rigs.

“They were the Rolls-Royce of fire apparatus,” he said. “They had the pump in front of the front wheels.”

Mr. Eve browses online and at yard and estate sales for truck models that he strips and rebuilds with materials and accessories bought in hobby shops and craft stores. He has drawers full of miniature extinguishers, spotlights, ladders and other parts.

Mr. Eve monitors fire emergencies on a scanner and is active with buff groups, including NYC Fire Buffs.

“Firefighters tell me, ‘You know more about us than we do,’ ” he said.

Sometimes Mr. Eve enlists his wife, Maria — they have seven children between them — to help out. She carved the tiny, plastic steer horns that Mr. Eve was attaching on a recent weekday above the windshield of a tower ladder truck from Ladder Company 13 in the Yorkville section of Manhattan.

He pointed out another ladder truck: “An American LaFrance 900 series from the ’60s — I made it from scratch.”

“That’s a tough truck,” he said. “It’s lasted me through three marriages.”

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