William Frederick Hafner in 1901 designed a clockwork motor for toy cars, for which he founded the Toy Auto Company in Chicago, Ilinois. In 1904, the name was changed to the W.F. Hafner Company and from 1905 an 0 gauge clockwork powered train was produced. Facing financial difficulties, in 1910 Hafner teamed up with William Ogden Coleman, a hardware store owner in Chicago, to produce clockwork trains under the name American Flyer. In 1914 Hafner fell out with Ogden and started to make 0 gauge toy trains under his own name again, founding the Hafner Manufacturing Company, specializing in inexpensive lithographed clockwork trains. Early trains bore the names Overland Flyer, New York Flyer, Canadian Flyer and Sunshine Special on the sides. Locomotives were of the steam outline type, but in the 1930s Hafner also made diesel-outline streamlined sets. In 1944 Hafner’s son John took over control of the company and ran it until 1951, when he sold it to the All Metal Products Company, makers of Wyandotte Toys. This company continued to make the clockwork trains, which for a brief period appeared with both the Hafner and Wyandotte names on them, later on only Wyandotte. When All Metal Products went bankrupt in 1956, the original Hafner tooling was bought by Louis Marx, it is said in order to prevent acquisition of the tools by a competitor.

Apart from the trains, the only accessories Hafner made were a lithographed passenger waiting platform, a freight shed and a passenger depot, all with a length of 10”. These were made from the early 30s onwards, Hafner before then having sold some simple Bing station buildings. This was supplemented in the mid-30s by a somewhat shorter (6 ¾ “) station called Glen Ellyn, while Lionel supplied Hafner with an arm signal (semaphore) and a railroad crossing sign.