KMT Trains

[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

[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.

[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.

[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]

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]

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]

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]

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: 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]

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: 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]

"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

[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

[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]

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]

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

[alton6]

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

[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.

[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]

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.

[alton6]

ogauge4cats....Most interesting to see an AMT caboose done in Burlington Route decoration. CB&Q is one my favorite roadnames! I didn't know such existed, but then American Model Toys was a midwestern firm so of course it was certainly possible. Are you sure that it isn't a repaint....?

Is the road number 13570 and the upper number 1357? It's a little hard for me to tell.

Carl

[Anonymous]

Here are some photos of what we have (working on better ones).

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cableconnection3/Photos/Trains/AMT.html

EDIT: Forgot to close parenthesis.

[Dave Farquhar]

Carl, thanks for the corrections. I've made the changes.

[alton6]

Perhaps, some of these were undecorated cars/assembled parts farmed out during one of the ownership transitions. Kris Model Trains offered reefers; I'm not aware that any predecessors did. Not sure about the Frank's Roundhouse cars of Frank Ra***hat came later. Maybe, the decals and rivets were an after-market project?

[Anonymous]

Alton6, If you read my post again, you'll see that I already know for a fact that certain pieces are what they are. My only real question was about the boxcars and reefers. We originally thought they were produced as some sort of basic undecorated & unpainted kit, but the trucks on a few are rivetd to the bottom (it is a non-discript (undetailed) piece of plastic and each one have four screws (one in each corner) attaching it to the shell).

EDIT: Forgot to close parenthesis

[alton6]

Dave Farquhar....Just a couple of comments on your commentary on your website about AMT and Kusan. I think kusan originally continued production of AMT's semi-scale cars and diesels, but found they weren't selling well. The atomic and "space" cars and sets and other "traditional" sized cars were molded in Kusan's own plastics shop and conceived by their own designers.

Also, Andy Kriswalus, (Kris Model Trains/KMT) died September 6, 1990. Kriswalus is certainly another little remembered figure in O gauge evolution.

Thanks for providing the information. Like you, I bought an intriguing semi-scale AMT stock car (CB&Q) a couple of years ago, and have been interested in the line ever since.

Carl

[alton6]

ogauge4cats.....I'm guessing that you may have some Williams items in your list. Williams reproduced versions of the modestly priced K-Series cars--dow tank cars, etc. in years past. I think Williams usually sold this line with metal trucks and wheels. Also, Williams has produced a LARGE number of roadnames in the F-series engines and box and stock cars in the semi-scale size.

The Kusan book is a good read. You might be on the lookout for The Story of Williams Electric Trains by John Hubbard (Greenberg, 1987) as well.

Carl

[Dave Farquhar]

I'm sorry, I don't have a very good knowledge of their product line. I got one of their cars dirt cheap, got curious about it, and tried to find out what I could about the company. Since all I could find online was about two paragraph's worth of info, I did some more research, and posted what little I was able to find out on my website so I could hopefully help someone.

There was a book titled Greenberg's Guide to Kusan Trains. It's out of print but your library may have it or may be able to get it for you. That'll be your best bet for identifying the cars and helping you determine if any are repainted. The Greenberg books are good at pointing out little variations that help you to identify a piece, like subtle differences on the trucks, etc.

[Anonymous]

Dave, I didn't realize that I was posting a link from a member of this forum or even a poster of this thread. I ran across your article when I was trying to acquire information on several AMT, Inc. passenger cars, rolling stock, and diesels we have, at the museum I help out at (see "Web" below post).

Do you have a good knowledge of their product line?

I know for a fact that we have three diesels (IC (A) & WM (A-A)), 14 passenger cars (NH, NYC, Pennsylvania, Santa Fe, & Texas Special), a C-101 Steel Sided Caboose (Burlington Route), a plastic SL&SF Caboose (probably Kusan-Auburn), and two 324 Cattle cars (M-K-T & Unknown). We also know we have a black tanker (DOW), two boxcars (Yellow w/ black roof & ends - UP), two hoppers (black Wabash - brown NYC), and four gondolas (black NKP, N&W, & Reading - brown WM) from Kusan-Auburn.

Our problem is that we have a large quantity of boxcars w/ add-on movable metal doors (17) and reefers (14) and a few have the same type of couplers found on the engines, C-101 caboose, and passenger cars, but have no manufacturers' stamp on them. They all appear to be the exact same mold for all boxcars or reefers, but come in a huge selection of colors and road names. All pieces are decaled and many are lifting or have peeled away. We have no idea if any of these pieces (except for the passenger cars) have been repainted. As far as I know there are no boxes for these items.