Yesterday, a KMT (Kris Model Trains) electric train kit for a Reading gondola arrived. Although clearly branded as KMT, the producing company is still listed as Kusan-Auburn in Nashville (TN). It was KMT # 0305:1.69. Although the kit is not dated, I think it should be from the early sixties of last century. A special advertisement was added for an "Atomic Train", which dates it before the seventies and makes it completely non-European.
The artwork of the box and of the instruction sheet is nice to see and hence I have added them. A memory of an old toy train brand and the cold war time gone by, when "atomic" was considered positive.
The gondola itself is fairly dirty and will need a wash. Especially the plastic wheels have picked up a thick layer of black stuff that will need to be removed. The scale of the gondola car is also surprising: it is larger than the underscaled 027 gondola's of Lionel, but also smaller than the zero scale gondola's of Lionel. Also interesting is the fact that the kit box is too small to accommodate the assembled gondola. So, that makes me double lucky to have find a complete gondola car with the original box and paperware.
