Are KMT and Kusan somehow related? Kusan did make O gauge F-units; they had a noticeably blunt front-end, and these molds became the basis for Williams F-units many years later. No doubt the ones in the original poster's photo are repainted Lionels.
Quick lesson regarding the initials KMT: in the 1950s the American Model Toy/Auburn Model Trains line that was produced in Auburn, Indiana was sold to Bill McClain who owned Kusan Plastics in the mid 50s. McClain resumed production of the AMT line of O gauge trains and referred to them as KMT (close to full O scale trains), while McClain's 0-27 sized trains were referred to as Kusan trains. The confusion regarding the KMT name comes from the time in the 60s when Andy Kriswallis purchased the rights to the Kusan/KMT molds and tooling and started producing the former AMT full sized O gauge boxcars, reefers and gondola cars using his initials of KMT for branding.
The F units in the snaps are not the F units developed by Jack Ferris' for his AMT F units - Andy K didn't make any complete F units, although he may have run some shells which definitely look like the shells on Lionel's F units. Those are definitely Lionel sourced pieces.
I recently purchased this F3 set from a gentleman, where most of the contents were his childhood trains from the postwar era. He could not remember much other than purchasing them used from a train store many years ago. I did some brief research but couldn’t find any information about them. As far as I knew KMT didn’t make any motive power, but this set says otherwise. Does anyone have any info on these? The chassis appears to be from a 2353, and the shells possibly from the MPC era.
