"If Railking is the Cadillac, what does Premier compare to?"
I said the MTH sets were the Cadillac level of sets. And priced accordingly. Premier is the mid-level to lower end of the high end of standalone locomotive sales, with Lionel Legacy locos usually having a few more features, more reliable digital system (in my view), superior sound and better after market service. And the Legacy locos, like the MTH sets compared with LionChief, are priced at a premium compared with Premier MTH locos, like it or not, and agree with my assessment or not.
And MPC wasn't the wasteland you make it out to be. There were some decent quality products, and frankly, they were the only game in town from 1970 to the early 1990s. PS1 were nice locomotives, but the control and sound electronics were inferior to those made by Lionel once TMCC hit the shelves in the mid-1990s. Appearance and mechanical reliability were excellent. PS1 electronics, to be charitable, had many glitches (the infernal internal battery, the mediocre sounds, the tendency to go south under some circumstances). So it's not like MTH locos were revolutionary advances. What they were were economic and scale appearance advances. Much better scale appearance for more reasonable prices.
Not as simple and clearcut as you suggest, but just my take on the 1990s to present, and the MPC era.
Certainly MTH forced Lionel to up their game, but Lionel's production of TMCC forced MTH to up their game and come up with something less kludgey than PS1. So competition was good overall.
I think that Lionel and MTH sets are addressing rather different markets, so I'm not sure it makes a good analogy. I think LC and LC+, and their success did inspire MTH to come up with something better that the Remote Commander, which was mediocre and trailing edge technology at best. The Explorer looks much more functional and good value.
I also think you are unduly critical of LionChief sets. They serve their purpose admirably in most instances and represent good value in the toy market. They also include Fastrack, which is, to the best of my knowledge, a better product and more likely to last a long time than the corresponding MTH product. So not as straightforward as perhaps you are suggesting. You seem to be saying that MTH sets are wonderful and LionChief are crap. Perhaps I am misreading you. But if not, I think you are incorrect in a number of respects.