Is this one of Lorenzen's?

[ScaleCraft]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/O-GAUGE-BRONZE ... 2297013471

Not exactly sure how "early" early is. First real ones were 1945. My SC stuff there fore is REALLY early, right?

Can motors, modern gearboxes.....

[rogruth]

If they would be given to me I might make an attempt to make them into something I could sit on my layout somewhere. Or maybe not.

[bob turner]

Ken Krayer. They are lovely French sand castings, with good rivet detail. Motors and trucks look MTH-ish. A good buy at this price ( says a guy with five of them).

[Carey Williams]

Ken Kraft .. out of PA.1949 .. Beautiful,castings ...
They also advertised an EMD F unit ...any body have one of those ????

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Looks like a marriage of convenience - bronze castings and drives from wherever.....but to answer the question, no, not from LWS.

[bob turner]

Jan did have an arrangement with Penn-Erie, which may have been related to Ken. Penn-Erie did mostly aluminum castings, the best of which were the Sharknoses. Last name was Krayer; "Ken Kraft" was a business name.

[R.K. Maroon]

Jan did have an arrangement with Penn-Erie, which may have been related to Ken. Penn-Erie did mostly aluminum castings, the best of which were the Sharknoses. Last name was Krayer; "Ken Kraft" was a business name.

Several things:

-- The cast bronze FAs were indeed developed originally by Ken Kraft. That company lasted for barely one year before becoming Century Locomotives. It lasted not much longer, and the FA line was acquired by Pearce Tool, which carried it into the 1990s.

-- Ken Kraft was not owned or operated by Ken Krayer. This is a persistent notion but it is wrong. The company was owned and operated by Ken Rupp of Meadville, Pennsylvania. Meadville is the known home of Ken Kraft. Ken Krayer's father, Edwin Krayer, who lived in Erie, PA, was listed as an associate in the Ken Kraft advertising and sales flyer. There is no evidence at all that Ken Krayer was involved, but it is easy to see how the "Ken-Kraft is Ken Krayer" thing got started. The evidence for all of this is presented in the O Scale Archaeology column in OST #103, May-Jun 2019.

-- Ken Krayer formed Penn-Erie sometime in the 1960s. Bob is correct that Jan Lorenzen's LWS did sell Penn-Erie castings. This lasted from around 1969 or 1970 to sometime in the 1980s. I think it is highly likely that Penn-Erie sold more models through LWS then they did on their own, and toward the end LWS was not consistent about calling them Penn-Erie's, so it is not surprising that many modelers refer to Penn-Erie's as LWS models.

-- Finally, in the early years Penn-Erie sold the Ken Kraft FA. It is not known if they had new-old-stock or if they were getting casting sets from Pearce Tool. For a very short period of time, the Penn-Erie FA was carried by LWS, along with the aluminum GE casting sets. There is some possibility of course that they actually sold a few, so, technically, there may be some FAs out that that could be called LWS units, or maybe LWS-Penn-Erie-Pearce-Tool-Century-Ken-Kraft units.

Jim

[bob turner]

I guess I read Ken Kraft on the casting and it translated to Ken Krayer. I shall double-check tomorrow; all five are on display at the airport. Maroon studies this stuff; I admit to zero source material.

[De Bruin]

Ken Kraft .. out of PA.1949 .. Beautiful,castings ...
They also advertised an EMD F unit ...any body have one of those ????

Beautiful indeed, the downtown club received a donation last year described here in earlier posts, having some cast diesels that included a pair of these Ken Kraft FA's; very nice castings and maybe the "best of breed" imo in terms of prototype accuracy as well as the additional, and to me very significant bonus of being based on more common FA1 prototype car body, as opposed to the FA2's done ad-nauseum by most other manufacturers in our scale.

Included in the collection though were these two rather interesting, albeit very rough (just like the steam I posted earlier) EMD cabs, per Jim one is an Adams & Sons FT and the other a Ken Kraft F3 which, while based on the A&S FT cab, employs specific F3 based castings for the roof and sides.

They do look like hell but have sturdy drives and, since they're castings, can be worked down to a tighter fit with all those car body holes filled in as well. At least for now that's the plan.
As an aside , all of the locomotives in this donation were equipped to operate on an amped-up version of GE's Astrac, the now-primitive but at the time "out there" 1960's era precursor to the DCC systems standard for many now. It is difficult to describe the wiring for this system per each unit, but on first glance, it is not intuitive.

[R.K. Maroon]

Thanks for posting those pics, Pete. An FT and an F3 make a great pair, as more than a few railroads had both.

I see that the both the FT and the F3 have rivets. Many, if not most, of the FTs I have or have seen do not have rivets (too bad). Adams and Son made a point of announcing "now with rivets" when they made that improvement. The similarity between the F3 and FT is undeniable, which dates the F3 to the era of the riveted FT. I imagine that there are not many who are much concerned with such arcana, but "for the record", there it is.

One other thing: Those are Baldwin F-unit sideframes under the F3. There is no shortage of the (superior) A&S sideframes in the parts bin here in Dallas, so we can spiff that F3 up when time comes (if interested).

Jim

[bob turner]

I got all tangled up with a landing gear change and forgot to look! Memory like a sieve.

[ScaleCraft]

hopefully your oleo's aren't like a sieve....

[bob turner]

I hate oleos. This one was a gear leg that got all beat up by prop wash. We use rubber bands for shock absorbers.
Tomorrow! I also have to check some aileron stops - all that and I get to fly! Yippee!
Did I tell you I am building a Dockside? Fuel and water tanks tonight. Off I go . . .

[ScaleCraft]

I hate oleos. This one was a gear leg that got all beat up by prop wash. We use rubber bands for shock absorbers.
Tomorrow! I also have to check some aileron stops - all that and I get to fly! Yippee!
Did I tell you I am building a Dockside? Fuel and water tanks tonight. Off I go . . .

you didn't specify a/c type initially.
Bungee Cords. Ever seen a Helio with them? Flew a patched one back from Northern Colombia after a prang. Blew the gear strut out on one side, tied it to the other with bungee cords...duct tape to hold the windscreen in..and some other creative, unauthorized patches.

But I've seen those "rubber bands" on a Cub.

[Carey Williams]

Pete thank you for posting the photos of the engines ....is the Ken Kraft stamped on the roof casting and or truck castings ..like the FA's ?

Thank you Cheers Carey