Is there a big difference in appearance between the Railking and Premier boxcars? Does a Railking appear the same size as a Premier?
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Generall Railking is semi scale and Premier is scale. But lately it's a compare each car. Railking are usually shorter than the premier counterparts and have less details.
Its probably the old premier tooling. Newer premier boxcars have hand applied grabirons, ladders and other separately applied details. They used to have molded in bars where the grab irons and ladders go. They're passable next to one another in a moving train, but if you look at them closely, you can see the detail differences.
Some RK cars have been nearly identical to the premier ones, while there are noticeable differences on others in both size and detail level. The fact that it calls it a 50' boxcar would lead me to believe its scale, and just less detailed (i.e. the old tooling).
Go to the MTH website, go to the product locator and look up any Rail King 50' boxcar and any Premier 50' boxcar. The page will show the length of the car. If it's a 50' scale car, it will be about 12-1/2" long, since one inch equals four feet. I have some RK 50' boxcars and they are definitely smaller than scale and are NOT recycled early Premier models, but I will not make a flat-out statement that all RK 50-footers are smaller than scale.
The recycled Premier items are mostly diesel locomotives, such as the AS-616, the SD-9, and a whole bunch of others. Most RK cabooses are on the same scale-size molds as Premier cabooses, just slightly different trucks and a bit less detail. The RK cars are all over the map in terms of scale proportions, but the vast majority are smaller than scale but bigger than traditional Lionel size. The 40' Hi-Cube boxcars are actually scale length, but a bit undersized in height and width.
