Question About Hafner Trains

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know about Hafner trains and where I can find some further information? Picked a set up at an estate sale in Jersey this past weekend. It looks very similar to Marx. I put it on the track and it runs fine.

[CB_Fan]

You can find historical information about Hafner in "American Flyer Classic Toy Trains" by Gerry & Janet Souter published in 2002 by Michael Friedman Publishing Group, Inc., www.metrobooks.com. It's a pretty nice book, published at $35 but I bought my copy at a discount book store for about $20.

I have two windup Hafners -- a complete M-10000 with original box that my wife found at a nearby antique mall a few years back, and a 1933-35 "Century of Progress Special" locomotive that we found at a flea market in a cow pasture in Texas. Most of my collection is Lionel (prewar to modern), but these Hafners are nice additions.[:)]

[pbjwilson]

Check-out e-bay. Some nice sets are listed on there occasionally. I have a couple Hafner wind-ups - lots of fun!

Mystic - Check-out my Hafner wind-up on the "Sunday pictures" topic. It's yellow and is front of a Ringling Bros. billboard.

[Dave Farquhar]

Short version, from what I can remember:

William Hafner developed a clockwork motor around the turn of the 20th century, originally for a windup car. By 1905 he had put it in a train running on O gauge track. He had a friend, William Coleman, who owned a struggling hardware company, and he convinced him to start using that company's manufacturing capacity to make trains. Within a year, they were called American Flyer.

Coleman and Hafner parted ways in 1913. Hafner started his own company and continued manufacuring the windup trains. Content with the low end of the market, he never made an electric. Construction was very similar to what Louis Marx would later use. WWII interrupted production, and then Hafner resumed after the war, with son John Hafner at the helm. Hafner sold out to Wyandotte in the early 1950s, who in turn sold out to Marx when it went bankrupt. Marx shipped the tooling to Mexico to use in some of its overseas production; Marx mainly wanted to eliminate the competitor.