Experience w/ KMT - Have you bought this brand?

[Buckeye Riveter]

The photo below shows a KMT box car. Does anyone have any experience with this brand? Are the couplers compatible? Is is full O Scale or more towards O-27? Maybe I better ask if it is 3-Rail or 2-Rail?[?]

[Dave Farquhar]

I only have one KMT car. The couplers are compatible with Lionel, but not the best fit. He did sometimes use Lionel couplers though, so it varies from car to car. My KMT car is pretty close to 1:48. It's noticeably bigger than O27 though it might not be full O scale. It'd look fine in a string of 1:48s or 6464s.

KMT's been gone a long, long time (there was a discussion here about Kusan and KMT within the past month) but its cars are fairly common with the box, and prices tend to be pretty low.

[Buckeye Riveter]

Thanks Dave. Do you happen to know how it compares to a MTH Railking Box car in terms of size?

[lionelsoni]

I have a couple of these. They are 2 1/2 inches wide, 3 3/8 inches tall from the railhead, and 11 1/4 inches between coupler pulling faces. They have the same shell as my Williams 3205 (GN-29252) and 3232 (UP-108847). I would say that they are intermediate between O27 and scale. The couplers are different but, as Dave says, they can be forced to mate with Lionel. The wheelsets are all metal and suitable only for 3 rail.

[Buckeye Riveter]

Bob,
When you and Dave say forced to mate with Lionel, how much forcing are you talking about? I have tried filing couplers before to get them to match.

[lionelsoni]

They are snug. The force is nothing that would break anything. I slide the closed couplers together vertically. The KMT has, as I recall, a vertical rod under the coupler that is pushed up to release the knuckle.

[Anonymous]

KMT's story goes back to1950. A company known as American Model Toys made extruded aluminum passenger cars/sets in "O" gauge 3-rail. A couple of years later they started making near scale freight cars. these cars used a die cast coupler with a mechanism similar to an American Flyer knuckle coupler, These couplers were called Lift-a-matic couplers. By 1955, AMT was bought out by Kusan. The earlier Kusan freight cars were identical to the AMT cars. In the early '60's Kusan began bringing out some chintzy "o" gauge trains with smaller bodies. This is the true genesis of the "Beep" tooling. After Kusan died, Andy Kriswalus of Endicott, NY purchased the tooling and brought the AMT freight car tooling with die cast trucks/ Lift-A-Matic couplers under the Kris Model Trains banner. Later on KMT used Lionel MPC Symington Hi-Speed trucks and the last KMT cars used a plastic Bettendorf style truck. After the demise of Kris Model Trains, Williams got most of the tooling and uses it to this day. After a while they sold the Beep tooling and Ready Made Toys now uses it with an improved mechanism. K-line ended up with some of the other low end Kusan tooling as well. Most of my freight car fleet was made by AMT/ Kusan/ Kris, and I love my 6-car AMT NYC streamliner which is pulled by a Lionel 2344. The original AMT F-units had VERY poor gears and very few if any of these things can run today. However, Williams uses the AMT body shell molds to make their F-units today (again with better mechanisms).

[ben10ben]

I have one Kusan car. The couplers mated very well with my postwar Lionels, okay with modern Lionels, and wouldn't stay coupled at all with K-lines. My solution was to change them out for a set of plastic trucks that I got in a junkbox. The center holes had to be drilled out a little bit, and I had to do some snipping on the couplers to allow them to have their full swing, but other than that, they fit fine. The new trucks have metal wheels also, compared to Kusan plastic wheels, so they roll quite a bit better(with no squeeking).

[Anonymous]

Ben, you must have gotten a later one,

[Anonymous]

Earlier Kusan and AMT freight cars were very well made with cast aluminum floors and Die cast trucks/couplers. Kris cars had flat 18 gauge sheet steel floors. Later Kusan freights were real junk with 1-piece molded wheelsets and dummy couplers. But I'll take one of the better ones over a 6464 ANY DAY!!!

[ben10ben]

John,
I guess that mine is a later one. It's a solid plastic hopper with pretty nice detailing, but the trucks were horrible. Before I changed them out for nicer plastic and metal trucks, I could hear the squeaking of the wheels over the Railsounds of my engines, even after oiling.

[Anonymous]

Those hoppers were late Kusan tooling but were quite nice, blowing Lionel's 6456 body out of the water. Using metal trucks on that car would be worthwhile. I do not have any of these but K-Line's Train 19 hoppers use the same tooling.

[ben10ben]

I run mine in the same train with my 6456, and find that it makes the perfect transition from scale cars to O27 cars, or by itself for the perfect transition from scale to Standard O cars. I might still put die-cast trucks on it if I can find some that will readily mount. Right now, it's using fairly modern(MPC era?) Delrin plastic trucks with needlepoint axles and fast angle metal wheels, which mounted right on after I drilled out the center hole and did some quick surgery with the diagonal cutters(on a non-visible part).

[Anonymous]

The Kris/Kusan cars compare very closely with
the Lionel 6464 series of boxcars. They should
look a tad larger than the 027 standard boxcars.

I have a couple of pieces of Kusan and the box
car is very close to a Lionel 646825 NH boxcar.
The mold detail is almost identical except the
Kusan 70203 boxcar has single doors vs the
Lionel NH having double doors. The Kusan
caboose that I have is a #2710 and is the same
caboose that K-Line, TaylorMade Trucks and
now ReadyMade Toys is using. Not a bad item
when it is detailed out. The best caboose of that
type that I have, I think, is the TaylorMade Trucks
Lionel version on their flatbed trailer. I have the
whole train of these cars including the loco which
I powered with an old Williams chassis (snapped
right in!).

One interesting feature of the Kris/Kusan line is
that the couplers are a bit shorter than Lionel's and
that allows closer coupling which looks better.
They still run on 027 track without bonding or de-
railing. Wonder why Lionel or others haven't done
this?

[Anonymous]

Ches Bch Ry, You are also talking about the late stuff. Earlier Kusan and AMT boxcars, reefers and cattle cars are a good bit larger than 6464's Look at a Willians boxcar to see what the good tooling looked like.