MTH Premier VS RailKing Scale?

The so-called Railking Scale F3's are reproductions of the old 1950's Lionel F3's.  They're slightly undersized and lack any fine detailing.

 

Premiere F3's and F7's are considerably better detailed and are the proper size.

 

Rusty

Usually Railking Scale locos are old premier tooling. I say go premier or go home.

If you don't loose sleep over the lesser detail than the Railking scale isn't a bad deal. Same sound and electronics as a premier model. 

I have a few of the Rail King Scale diesels and I think they are decent value, especially if you are buying them on the secondary market. I've bought RK Scale switchers with PS/2 for under $200. As has already been mentioned, most of them are built on old Premier tooling that has been rendered out of date in the Premier price bracket by the general upgrading of detail in scale 3-rail engines. They also tend to omit a few features like lighted number boards, etc. If you insist on full detail on everything, this isn't the way to go. If you want a nice looking, scale size engines and can live with somewhat less detail than Premier, they offer good value for money.

Though most of our collection is either scale or Premier, I do own a Railking Scale Trainmaster... I absoultley love it! Great puller, looks great and sounds great. In this video you can see the RK Scale Trainmaster run by. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...yFU-JnoVHIDt87O_klvA

Hope I helped,

Greg

www.youtube.com/trainbros89

As O-31 capable Premier diesels are re-tooled, the old, less-detailed tooling becomes Railking Scale. Examples include (but are not limited to):

• SD9
• GP7/GP9
• RS27
• SD60
• U30/C30-7
• SD45
• GP20
• FP45
• F3
• GP30

Some scale-sized items started out in Rail King as new items:

• RS1
• SW1500
• SW1 (looks a bit fatter than scale)
• SW8/SW9 (look a bit large)
• RS3

In either case, they represent a good value for hi-rail use (and kit-bashing) and look good with scale-sized cars (Premier, Atlas-O, Weaver, etc.)

 

What has surprised me is what hasn't made it into RailKing scale by now.

• GP38 from old tooling (unless they reworked it for the Premier units)
• 18" Passenger cars. The consist-accurate tooling technique used in the H.O. line is applicable to O scale (I think it's being used in the European passenger cars). Maybe next year.

 

RK Scale items - all diesel or electric, so far as I know - are, generally, the best value

around. These are 1:48 models in most cases - and were "Premier" items a few years

ago, and were being drooled over then - and, as I do not equate extreme, often delicate, detailing with "quality" (that is a word I reserve for durable and reliable construction), I would buy them all day long if I wanted them.

 

Mostly I'm steam and TMCC, so the point is a bit moot, but I do have some RKS, and

find it to be quite nice.

 

The MTH PW-style F-3's, however - and I have a beautiful GM&O ABA set of them - have the

same visual shortcomings that their Lionel inspirations do. Not bad, mind you, but

if I were after F-3's today, I too would go for new tooling - probably Lionel

or Atlas, but that's because of the TMCC.

And beyond that they are just really good models, too.  Great value for the money in my opinion.

I've owned both, and typically there is no comparison.  I have a set of the Railking F3's, and while the detail is more than good enough for me, for detail hawks they fall a bit short.   In my experience, detail rises proportionately with fragility;  I actually sold a Premier Mikado and am waiting on a RK Mikado to take it's place.  In terms of detail, it isn't even close, but the Premier model looked out of place with my other engines and I was always afraid to touch it.  The RK Imperial version is quite good to my eyes, and doesn't look nearly as awkward traversing smaller radius curves.