Is there any difference between these two passenger car sets? They are both New York Central, they look to be painted and lettered identically. The only difference is the packaging. One set says only Railking and the boxes have detailed labels with the product number of each car. The other set says Railking Rugged Rails with no labels on the boxes.
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Rugged Rails is MTH's 0-27 starter set line. My guess is there are no numbers on the Railking box because it's from a 4 car set.
Sean,
Are there any differences in the cars themselves or are they identical? They look the same to me!
NYC Fan,
For some reason I do not fully comprehend, MTH downgraded their 13.5" long cars to a Rugged Rails product line without changing the cars. These cars are larger than Lionel's 027, and they are the same physically as their Rail King predecessors. I know this to be true because my passenger car roster is 99.9% predecessor Rail King and Rugged Rails.
Actually, the 13.5" long MTH Rail King / Rugged Rails cars have a scale width and body height, but they are shorter than scale. SO in Pennsy parlance, the Rail King / Rugged Rails 13.5" long heavyweight cars are actually comparable to P54 commuter cars, but they represent P70 heavyweight cars.
I hope this helps, and by the way, the Rugged Rails label connotes a lower price than just Rail King which is beneficial to our wallets. And another by the way, Rugged Rails freight cars and Bantam locomotives are 027 in size!
For overall appearance, a string of 13.5" Rail King / Rugged Rails cars looks much better than a string of longer cars because:
My PRR heayweight set is identical except for the boxes and catalog numbers. If I had to take a guess, I'd say the "Rugged Rails" name was dropped because the product was seen as too "toy like". My boxes say Rugged Rails and the catalog only says RailKing. My coach is 33-6224, the catalog coach is 33-6209, yet they are exactly the same. I always thought it odd that they were under the Rugged Rails name since they have diaphrams, wire handrails, and detailed interiors. I think, for semi-scale, they gook great.
NYC Fan,
For some reason I do not fully comprehend, MTH downgraded their 13.5" long cars to a Rugged Rails product line without changing the cars.
Probably when MTH added 18" cars to the Premier line, they moved their 15" line to RailKing, bumping these cars to Rugged Rails.
---PCJ
Railride, Now that follows sales logic, and makes sense to me. They get more use of a good set of molds and avoid mixing sizes within current lines this way.
I suspect the rugged rails cars have a bit less detail as well if one compares closely.
This is consistent with the continued use of older molds.
They have done the same thing in engines, Some old Premier molds become Imperial Railking molds when New Premier molds go into use.
Thank you all for your replies.
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