MTH Boxcar Sizes

Premier line of boxcars have scale dimensions, and look right at home on an O Scale layout, except for 3 rail wheels and couplers.

Railking boxcars are semi-scale (?) compressed to suit O27/O31 layouts.

Rugged Rails boxcars are even smaller yet, the size of Lionel 6464 boxcars.

MTH Premier on the left, Railking in the middle, and Lionel 6464 on the right. Mark is correct that the 6464s are pretty equal to Rugged Rails. Hope that helps.

That's the answer I was looking for.A picture is worth a thousand words.To me it looks like MTH premier boxcars are what I call "standard" gauge.Thank you Zeke

HWB,

"Standard gauge" for the most part refers to track that is 2.125 inches between outside rails, where "O gauge" refers to track that is 1.25 inches between outside rails.  So standard gauge cars are normally a lot larger than O gauge cars, and standard gauge cars cannot run on O gauge track.

Lets look at Zeke's cars again.  All three are O gauge.

The car on the left is considered "scale sized", while the other two cars are considered "semi-scale".

@Zeke posted:

MTH Premier on the left, Railking in the middle, and Lionel 6464 on the right. Mark is correct that the 6464s are pretty equal to Rugged Rails. Hope that helps.

To confuse things and I think where you are coming from, Lionel calls their O gauge scale sized cars "Standard O".  MTH calls their scale sized cars Premier.  Williams was less precise, but usually said on the box if it was scale sized.  Weaver, Atlas and 3rd Rail cars are scale sized.

If it doesn't say "Standard O", Premier, or scale on the box then it is semi-scale, O-31, or O-27 size like the two cars on the right.

As you mentioned, the 11.5" on the box is the total length from coupler to coupler.  But if you measured the car body, it is probably very close to 10", or 40 scale feet, the correct size in O scale for a 1:1 40' boxcar.

I'll also add that some Railking stuff is scale sized, not all is semi-scale.

Thanks to everyone for the information.CAPPILot mentioned Lionels "Standard O".gunrunnerjohn mentioned "Semi Scale".Those are the answers to my boxcar size differences.All the boxcars I have are the "Semi Scale" size.I guess it's a matter of what you like.To me the "standard O" rolling stock is a little oversized to run with "Semi Scale" rolling stock.I don't have a lot of knowledge about O Gauge.I only know that I enjoy it.Sometimes all the variations of the same product really confuse me.Thank again to everyone for the info.          When I was a kid I would stay over at my grandparents.My grandfather used to ask me if I wanted some more breakfast.I would tell him "I think I'm full grandpa".He would bellow "**** it ,what did I tell you!" I would reply ; "If you don't eat,you don't s--t,you die.I'll have some more grandma."