American Model Toys was founded in 1948 in Auburn, Indiana by Jack Ferris (who had earlier, from 1929 till 1940, made 0 gauge scale models under the name Scale Model Railways) and offered a range of 0 scale passenger cars made of extruded aluminium, with lettering of the New York Central and Santa Fe railway companies. With these aluminium cars AMT beat Lionel to the market by two years and for a few years AMT was the US fourth largest maker of toy trains (after Lionel, American Flyer and Marx) and had an almost total monopoly of 0 gauge streamline passenger trains. But when Lionel offered its own versions in 1953, business slacked. In 1952 AMT started producing plastic 0 gauge goods stock and in 1953 also offered an F7-type diesel locomotive, in both powered and non-powered (dummy) versions. In 1952 AMT also made HO gauge streamlined passenger cars.

In 1954 AMT reorganized as Auburn Model Trains and was later that year sold to Kusan, a plastics and toy company in Nashville, Tennessee. Kusan produced model trains using the former AMT tooling as well as new tooling of their own until 1960, when Kusan ceased production.