While not locomotives, I have some kit built O scale models that are about as old as I am or more.
These two are older than I am. The Scale Model Railways C&O box car from 1937 is numbered for similar type AAR boxcars C&O used for post WW-II auto parts shipments. They were fitted with special racks to haul engines, rear axle assemblies or automatic transmissions to assembly plants. A friend sent me five aluminum castings (two ends, two sides and a roof) which made the body in 2000. I scratch made a floor and put on full underbody detail.
The Lehigh Valley hopper is a rebuild of a Scale Craft kit OF-134 from 1936, found on E-bay in 1999. I didn't get to work on it until 2017. It is also made up of several cast aluminum parts. Today, epoxy makes building (and rebuilding) these old models a lot easier than it was in the 1930's. Back then, you drilled and tapped the parts for screws, whose heads had to be countersunk and hidden with putty before painting, or drill holes to drive in brass pins. An Intermountain coal load made for their plastic USRA hoppers fit this 84 YO piece perfectly.
In the 1930's, cast aluminum was widely used in making model train kits for freight and passenger cars. Some could turn out quite heavy, especially Mi Loco cast aluminum Pullman cars. Hauling trains with those cars in them required a big motor which could also quite a juice hog.
Also added are two more kit built cast aluminum cars: a 40' Scale Craft stock car from 1939 that well models a T&P car of that time. Also Walthers' 12 wheel cast aluminum, depressed center flatcar from 1940. With wide-spread rural electrification programs being done during the 1930's, cars like these shipped hydro-power generators and transformers from eastern factories to where generating plants and power distribution networks were being built.
S. Islander
