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Hello,

I bought 4 Scale Craft cars  back in the late 1980's - PFE Reefer and undecorated tank, hopper and cattle cars. I have always assumed these cars are from the 1930s or 40s, but not sure. I have attached one of the boxes for those with more information.

Thanks,

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Good assumption.  WWII killed the O Scale hobby, and only fragments survived to 1946.  The way I hear it, Elliott Donnelly was ordered to give up his train manufacturing and join his father full time in telephone book production.

 

The only thing that survived, to my knowledge, was the 4-8-4, produced for maybe a decade by CLW in the 1950s.

I believe that Scale Craft (located in Chicago???) was very active in the 1930's, producing lots of nice engine and box car kits, and they also made structure kits. Some of their engines made from kits were particularly well detailed and very nice. AFAIK, they were 2 rail products.  By the late 1940's the companies model RR activities were largely gone, but the scale market may not have been a large market even back then. I seldom come across Scale Craft products as they are quite old and were probably made in small numbers.

HI,

 

The boxes shown are from the pre-war (WW2) period.  The post war boxes for the same kits were all blue and longer/narrower boxes.  Scale-Craft made some very bad decisions after WW2 including changing its whole loco line.  This was never completed but it is a long story that has had threads here before.  They concentrated on OO scale after the war and the O scale prewar designed car line was eventually sold to Thomas Industries who had them available to around 1960.  The Loco tooling from before the war was not useable for many reasons, it was sold in turns to Central Loco Works, All Nation then Henry Pearce Tool Co.  Bob Stevenson may have parts of it now. Nothing was ever made.  The 4-8-4 was a post war design finished by CLW and now owned by Bob Stevenson.

 

J2M

Scale Rail,

 

Nope.  Scale-Craft came out with OO well before Lionel who copied their cars and was sued for patent infringement by Scale-Craft.  Scale-Craft had patented their truck design and claimed copyright infringement for the cars which were nearly direct copies by Lionel. Lionel settled.  Rumor was that Lionel wasn't interested in reviving OO after WW2 as they didn't want to pay any royalties to Scale-Craft - I don't know if that part is really true.

 

J2M

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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

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