I have a question: After 72 years and many ownership changes, who owns the tooling to produce the 14" aluminum passenger cars. I know it went from American Model Toys to Auburn Model Trains to KUSAN but after that it is unclear.
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Try this link.
Probably to the scrap yard.
Rusty
I am familiar with the info on the site but it does not address the question. After following the trail there one could assume that they went to KRIS then WILLIAMS then maybe K-LINE then maybe to China through Bachmann or the K-Line settlement.
However, they disappeared from the discussion after they went to KUSAN I think.
Then they were likely scrapped.
That is always a possibility but the other dies that AMT developed are still in use today.
I have a set of these - termed my "Katrina cars" because they came out of the N.O. area after that hurricane and after some time under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico/river/bayou/sewage "mixed blend". Mobile and N.O. being only 150 miles apart, we saw many Katrina weathered (hoo, boy) items locally at train shows for a while.
Any - Way: the cars' (great cars/trucks) tooling I have never seen on any other products, so I assume that it didn't survive. Too blasted bad - handsome, well-done and sharp - love the trucks - they would have been great slightly upgraded (couplers/window glazing/dome) and put back on the market. Probably my favorite modern, fluted scale-y passenger cars.
(Maybe RMT will find the tools in one of its many, many warehouses. Cheers all around!)
The cars have an important place in history. If they had not been developed, Lionel probably would not have responded a couple of years later with their streamlined aluminum passenger cars. If that had not happened my 2343 would probably have been stuck with pulling the really small 027 plastic passenger cars. Bummer. They are nice cars but not behind The Chief.
It is really unusual for tools, either for molding or extrusion to be thrown away. Lost perhaps. All of the AMT molds, the Kusan molds, most of the Marx dies and or molds, the American Flyer tooling, the post war Lionel tooling and the Williams/MTH tooling is still in play. These went missing somewhere along the line and it probably was not to the scrap yard.
The question is, anyone still alive that knows?
The passenger car tooling along with the other rolling stock tooling went to Andy Kriswaulas in 1968. He never used the tooling because of the cost to produce the aluminum car bodies. You could ask Jerry Williams if he acquired the tooling from Andy.
@ed new haven line posted:The passenger car tooling along with the other rolling stock tooling went to Andy Kriswaulas in 1968. He never used the tooling because of the cost to produce the aluminum car bodies. You could ask Jerry Williams if he acquired the tooling from Andy.
Difficulty:. Jerry Williams passed away in 2016.
I thought that I had read about Jerry Williams passing, so the mystery question of the passenger cars continues. There are too trains of thought regarding the passengers cars; the dies could have been saved for historic reasons somewhere along the line or being that the cars would look crude by today's standards and it was felt that there would not be any interest for any future purchasing by the model train buying public. Two people that I know do have a complete collection of the eight cars in the set in several road names but I never cared for them.
AMT used a company in Michigan to make the extrusions for the carbodies - somewhere in my AMT stash I have a blueprint with the name of the company that did the work. As for the trucks, frames and other parts those have never been used by anyone following their final production by KMT/Kusan. I also have the paste-up for the artwork for the Pennsylvaina passenger cars tucked away - it's too big to get a good shot of it.
