KMT Trains

[Anonymous]

Next time I'm at the museum, I'll check.

My goal is to get detailed images of all non-Lionel products in the museum (AMT, Kusan/Auburn, Atlas, Marx, Plasticville, American Flyer). Anyone know of a link that supplies good information on setting up a digital shoot environment for S or O-Gauge products.

[Dave Farquhar]

This link isn't specifically about shooting S or O gauge products, but small objects in general: http://www.dansdata.com/phototute.htm

At the very least it's an entertaining read, and it ought to help you.

[Anonymous]

The "Upper" lettering is "CB&Q"

I still have not gotten good photos yet, but I'll post a link as soon as I get it finished.

[alton6]

Thanks for the caboose lettering info. I hope your project at the museum is going well. What is the emphasis there?

[Anonymous]

Maybe this link can help.
http://www.mercersburg.com/mcfadden

[alton6]

Very interesting. John McFadden must have been something of a "character" in his time. The Mercersburg model railroad museum seems to be a fitting and useful venue for his collection. I'm sure he would be pleased, if not surprised to see his name on the door...

Carl

[Anonymous]

Someone may find this interesting. I worked for Andy Kriswalus at Kris Model Trains in the 1970's. He manufactured his own line of trains, and was also a distributor for Lionel. I was a teenager then, and worked for him after school and over summer break. A good friend and I did the final assembly on most of the products he manufactured during that time. Andy was a very colorful character, and loved model railroading. The KMT facility was a train collectors dream. A huge warehouse with row after row of model trains. The plastic work and painting was done off-site, and then we did all of the final assembly by hand. He had his own personal collection at home--even had a train set up that ran through the house. His wife would put his morning coffee on a flat car and the train would run through the house into his bedroom. Unfortunately, I was not interested in model railroading and never took the opportunity to collect any of his products, other than a Coca-Cola set he gave me as a gift one Christmas. If anyone wants to know more, you can e-mail me at [e-mail].

J.R. Smith

[alton6]

J.R.... It sounds like you were a witness to a part of toy train history. It's interesting that you actually knew Andy Kriswalus. Do you recall if he ever mentioned Jack Ferris of AMT, Bill McLain and George Dunbar of Kusan or others from these firms? Did Kriswalus still have any of the older stock from these companies while you were there?

And....do you still have that train set?

Carl

[alton6]

"Carl: It's been a long time, so I don't remember the names of the people, but he talked alot about Kusan. Yes, he had tons of older stock around. There was a large storage room where he stored all of the tooling, dies, etc. for the car lines he bought from the previous company...was it Kusan? I can't remember. Anyway, the room was full of old box cars, engines, etc. He also had alot of old Lionel, as he was an avid collector. Yes, I still have the Coke set. It's stored at my parents house in New York. I live in Arizona."

Hi J.R......I copied your September 3 message here from your new thread--hope that's OK. Thanks for your response. I wonder what became of Andy's own private collection (standard gauge?). Do you think his kids might have been interested? Maybe a lot of KMT's own production ended up with Frank Rash as Frank's Roundhouse cars.

Were you involved with installing Lionel post-war trucks on the cars? I've wondered why that was done. Also, the switch to stamped steel frames from diecast--was that a cost saving measure?

Carl

[Anonymous]

Carl: I would assume that Andy's wife kept his personal collection...I doubt that she would sell it, but who knows. He had one daughter who had very little interest in the hobby, so I doubt the collection went to her.

Funny you bring up installing the Lionel trucks on the cars, YES, we did alot of that. Andy seemed to prefer the Lionel trucks to the ones he manufactured...more realistic as I recall. The change to stamped steel was both a cost saving measure and was the direction the industry was going at the time. I am not sure if you are aware, but KMT also manufactured track. We spent alot of time putting the little connector pins into the ends of the track and stamping the ties onto the rails. Over the 5 or so years I worked there, we pumped out alot of track...wonder what became of that? It was good quality stuff...had KMT stamped on the ties.

Equal work time was spent putting KMT cars together as was working in the Lionel warehouse. He wholesaled alot of Lionel product. Cartons were stacked to the ceilings!!

As I recall, he was most proud of the boxcars he did for the Boy Scouts of America. We also did alot of cars for companies that had nothing to do with railroading, but wanted a toy boxcar to give out to employees...banks, etc. Some of the cars even had little slots on the top to put coins into.

I also remember the candy cars...Hershey, Mounds, Zagnut, etc. He also did several Erie Lackawana cars, which was the "local" train in Endicott, NY.

He was not into having people visit the factory or the warehouse. We had calls all of the time from model railroading buffs who wanted to visit our "store." It's not that Andy wasn't friendly...he just did not want people coming by. A big no-no was that "back room" I told you about. That's where he kept the older rolling stock and engines, as well as the Kusan stuff. It was kind of a "vault."

Around the time I left, he was working on an electric motor for a series of engines he was going to start building. As I recall, the motor was supposed to have been quieter and more powerful than anything on the market at the time. I do remember him running prototypes on the track we had set up in the workroom...kind of a secret project. Not sure if anything ever came of that.

JR

[alton6]

How many employees were there at that time? Did he have full-time people too?

Do you know of any particular reason why Andy didn't reproduce any of Kusan's K-Series stock? Did he not care for it, or was it not very marketable at that time?

It's interesting that he was designing a line of locomotives. Can you tell us more about the prototypes? I wonder if they were to be an upgraded F7 product, or steam.

[Anonymous]

Carl: There was only one full time employee besides the boss. Everyone else was part-time working scattered hours. There were a couple of guys that came in nights to work.

Don't know the answer about the K series. Sorry.

The locomotives only made it to the engine and chassis stage when I left. I will say that his motor could pull ALOT of cars and was super quiet. He was also working on a contoller/transformer that was large and very realistic. He did not like the little transformers that Lionel and others were making at the time, and wanted something more robust. He had large hands and thought that model railroaders wanted something a little more substantional to control their trains with. Not sure if that went anywhere or not.

[alton6]

JR....You mentioned earlier that the plastic extrusion work and painting of the cars was outshopped. Any recollection of who did the work and where it was done? Did Andy do his own decoration design?

I think the track line went to K-Line. At least this is what a number of posters have stated. I have not seen track marked "KMT", but the K-Line Shadow Rail track is said to look very much like it. Incidentally, quite a few of K-Line's Classic boxcars, hoppers and tank cars very closely resemble Kusan's K-Series cars, albeit with a few modifications. Manufacturing toy trains must not have been a very large community in those days...

Carl

[Anonymous]

Carl: The plastic work and painting was done at various shops around Endicott, NY. I also believe that there was a sub-contractor somewhere in New England. The metal work was also done in the Southern Tier of New York.

I will say that if anyone has one of the red/black KMT window boxes for the train cars, I wouldn't mind having one. It's weird that I say that now because I certainly handled way too many of them back in my teen years. However, it would be nice to have one now as a keepsake.

JR

[alton6]

Hi JR....Sorry to be so long in responding. Thanks for the info on KMT's outsourcing.

I wasn't aware that KMT used window boxes. The ones I have are the (regular?) blue and red ones. Did KMT offer any passenger cars? Maybe these would have come in boxes with windows.

Carl

[Anonymous]

Does anyone on this forum know how/where I can contact Jack Ferris. I need either an address, phone #, or email address. I'd like to talk to him about the Pullman car "Glen Alta" which he owned at one time and later saw service on the Royal American Shows train. "Glen Alta" is now at the Illinois Railway Museum.

Thank you,

Fred

[alton6]

fred30,

It would be a bit difficult to connect with Mr. Ferris these days. My understanding is that he died in 1979.

Carl

[Anonymous]

Those who wi***o have images of my 5-car Santa Fe AMT Streamliner set and of the one original box I got with it and a few other miscellaneous AMT, Kusan, Kris and Frank's Roundhouse (After Kris and before Williams) items for web posting, respond to this thread. I will provide photos on condition that I am given photo credit on the web page.

[Anonymous]

Hi
are any of you aware of the Mexican Kusan connection? there were a few years the tooling was sold to a Mexican Plastic Co. It is mentioned in Bradshaw's book. but not much is covered. I am reseaching these trains - they are very rare - the book states that aprox. 10,000 sets/ cars /locos were produced but I have been interviewing a man who bought trains from the plastic company owner and he was told that in the whole 4 years they produced the trains there it was under 5000 total produced.

[alton6]

The Mexican items are definitely not real common these days. Considering the quality (not especially outstanding), it is doubtful that very many were cherished enough to have survived. That being said, there was a Mexican caboose and boxcar (Sears, I think it was) offered on eBay recently. The caboose fetched a goodly sum.

Some have said that Mexican Kusan is becoming something of a hot collecting subset of late. We will probably be hearing more about them. Hey, maybe even Mexican Lionel will become sought after!

Carl