Ken Krayer GE U - boat

[Carey Williams]

Hello all
Fresh from a great March Meet ... wonderful friends and trains.

Bargains ( good value) found at Bill Davis' tables ...cast aluminum GE U25B introduced in 1963.
Featuring a CLW drive !
Please see link for action video.

https://youtu.be/wY4wZ-jpxjY


Cheers Carey

[steamaheadstephen59]

Another great acquisition. Carey, the thrill of a new find, nothing like it.

[R.K. Maroon]

NIce unit, Carey. Have you ever seen any evidence that Ken Krayer sold units under his own name? He was the sole proprietor of Penn-Erie, and as best I can tell, he marketed his line of cast aluminum GE locomotives (and the Baldwin sharks) under that name. Here is the story as I know it, as related to me by Ken Krayer's son:

Ken lived in Erie, PA, home to GE locomotives. Ken never worked there but his uncle did. Ken built that first scratch-built U25B for himself. The GE brass found about it and approached him to make similar models for GE to give to customers are promotional thank-you items. Ken developed the casting sets and recruited his family to help him build and paint the models and mount them to display stands. These were unpowered. Here is one such model:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mfyuibvcw7gxu3uj1tg9f/Penn-Erie-NH-U25B-01.JPG?rlkey=hlw1vahj5xkcqdw4q4qy543xg&dl=0

He later sold both casting sets and finished and powered models to modelers under the Penn-Erie name. The known exception is Ken's relationship with Locomotive Workshop, which listed Penn-Erie castings for many years. At first LWS made a point of calling them Penn-Eries, but later listed them without the Penn-Erie name. Perhaps Ken quit the business and sold his patterns and remaining inventory to LWS? A comprehensive article on these models appeared in issue #107 of O Scale Trains.

Jim

[Carey Williams]

Hello Jim

No ads yet to surface under Ken Krayer
The article from Jan 1963 RMC describes the uboats as aluminum cast and rubber band drive...

Searched the next 18 months ...no ads ..

Guessing the foundry cast up a good number of them which created a pile of inventory to last a decade or more .

Assume Locomotive Workshop was happy to add the castings to their list of available items on the shelf now.

Cheers Carey

[bob turner]

There was a time when I had Lorenzen’s newsletters from Avon Lake with his offerings - but I never paid much attention.
Jim has supplied me with a set of aluminum castings for a six axle U boat, and pewter castings for the U-50, and I have an aluminum PRR E44.

Oh - and a Shark A unit.

It might be fun to have a list of what was available - I think it persisted into the 1970s.

Want pictures? You have seen them before .. .