Rugged Rails vs RK vs Train 19 vs Industrial Rail

Rugged Rails is MTH’s version of the Lionel O27 line of cars. Except no plastic trucks. They, of course, track better. Industrial Rail, basically the same. Both are crisply decorated. K-Line Train 19 are a cheaper, lighter version of K-Line’s Classic Line. I only have one. After I bought, it was enough to turn me off to the product line. K-Line Husky I have no experience with, but from pictures, they look very toy like.

Rugged rails IS the old/original/initial Rail King.

When the Rail King line was updated (some with new models, like the F3/Lionel clone and some with downgraded Premier models) some of the original Rail King line was re-branded as Rugged Rails. An example is the short/stubby F3 locomotives.

Industrial Rail was a brand new line of cars from a company called UMD(?). The line was later purchased by Atlas.

K-Line "Husky" was a low cost line for starter sets and was plain and stripped down. The early offerings even had their own style of couplers that would not mate with the regular K-Line rolling stock.

All of these are O-27 and were meant to have lower prices for starter sets and children and folks new to the hobby.

Industrial Rail was the first to hit the market, made for and by United Model Distributors, not a train company but a wholesaler. They could then sell to retailers at attractive wholesale prices, which no doubt contributed to the popularity of the line. These cars were of new tooling and for the most part, right on par with their traditional counterparts from Lionel. Save for the 4-bay covered hopper, which was a little smaller than the Lionel version, and the first caboose offered by IR, which was pretty much to S scale proportions, smaller than even Lionel 027 compression.

The Train -19 cars and the Rugged Rails line up came about to meet the retail "threat" from Industrial Rail. The K-Line Train-19 line (from existing regular rolling stock tooling, placed under the Trian-19 banner). These cars were mostly from the 6000-series of traditionally size cars, not the 5000-series of 027 cars produced from the original MARX tooling. In my opinion, the Train-19 line had some of the nicest, well operating die cast trucks anyone has offered. The early first incarnation of RMT rolling stock used these trucks on their rolling stock. The K-Line Husky line originated from pre-existing product tooling found in China, that K-Line adapted to create a low-cost, Kid friendly line of trains. And yet, STILL used the same nice trucks used on the Train-19 cars.

MTH used Industrial Rail cars for their initial introduction: I've seen photos of the prototypes. The typical Rail King cars, are for the most part larger than the traditionally proportioned Industrial Rail cars. The RK single dome tank car and flat car are the closest to Lionel traditional size. The Rail King boxcar is absolutely bigger than the IR boxcar and stayed in the Rail King line. I don't know for certain whether MTH went to the expense to create new tooling for their RR cars, or whether they could access the IR tooling, OR were buying unpainted molded shells. I'd guess that eventually after using the IR cars for their initial prototypes, they created new tooling. That to me, sounds like the way Mike would do things: His own tooling, done in his own factory.

Edit: I just checked photos of the MTH pre-production tank car using the Industrial Rail tank car as their paint sample. Then compared to the MTH RR production run of the same car, and though they are pretty similar, there's also some significant differences, so I'd say Mike did indeed do his own new tooling for his Rugged Rails cars.

The locomotives that got moved into the Rugged Rails line up were indeed former Rail King items, albeit smaller ones like the F3, which fit nicely into the Rugged Rails line.

To answer the OP's question, these are ALL nice cars for the money (though some current auction prices are a tad on the ridiculous side, so it pays to be patient and shop around). The IR box cars are ALL plastic, yet the frame is thicker and better braced than the Lionel types with plastic frames, also the K-Line Train-19 boxcars, which also have plastic frames. And the IR frame locks into the box car shell in 4 places... a very nice touch that shows some thought went into the engineering of these cars. The door guides are also plastic BUT painted the same color as the car. Another real nice touch that MTH and K-Line didn't do on their cars for the most part.

Being a die hard true 027 guy, I run the traditionally sized cars along with the 027 cars. Just in my mind, the traditional 40 foot box car, becomes a 50 or 60 foot box car on my layout. All these cars run on 027 track curves, so they'll certainly run on 031 curves. With the early issued Railking locomotives that later became Rugged Rails locos, I believe most will negotiate actual 027 curves, but it'd be best to ask specific questions first before purchasing. I had one of the early Railking Dash-8 locos, it certainly ran on my 027 layout, but I personally it looked just a little too big for my tastes and I sold it.

@Mark V. Spadaro posted:

@RoyBoy posted:

@brianel_k-lineguy posted:

Thank you all very much for these very informative answers.  I appreciate them.

It "eases my heart" to know that RR is mostly "old RK", and thus is worth pursuing (depending on the price), or at least not shunning (Unlike Husky).
I've learned a lot from you folks, and thank you very much!

@Micro, no you might have missed the point. The Rugged Rails cars ARE NOT mostly former Railking cars, but are likely from new tooling that was directly inspired by the size of the Industrial Rail cars. Again, there are photos of the pre-production Rugged Rails cars that were actually made from Industrial Rail cars. I compared some of those photos and while the differences are subtle, they are there, so I conclude MTH made new tooling for their Rugged Rails cars. They are definitely NOT Railking.

Case in point: Here's a link from the BlueBox trains page with a couple photos. The main difference (at least that I can see) between the IR tank car used for the pre-production mock up and the actual RR tank car is the supports on the tank body that go into the frame of the car.

https://blueboxtrains.tumblr.com/image/171350695249

So long and short is that all these cars in discussion (except the K-Line Husky cars) are pretty on the mark size-wise to the decades of Lionel rolling stock, now called "traditional." The Railking cars are, for the most part, bigger than all these cars being discussed, especially the boxcars. Again, the RK 40 ft. flat car and tank cars are slightly smaller and the closest to being in the same size with all these other traditional cars.

The topic here and of the original post is for rolling stock. BUT if we are talking locomotives, YES, some of the older Railking locomotive models were moved to the Rugged Rails line. The original RK F3, the original RK Dash-8 and others became Rugged Rails locomotives as MTH moved more scale proportioned locomotives in to the Railking line: "Railking Scale."

All were experiments of the past, don't even bother with any of them. Non-breakable diecast Rugged Rails was targeted for toddlers. K-LINE O Scale Classics was exceptional but other K-Line items all over the map. Seems they just couldn't focus on a few product lines. Mostly stuck in cheap toy land.

Models have advanced since then in scale and non-scale with exception of Industrial Rail. Atlas I.R. was the best non-scale ever offered. I would take them over Lionel or R.K. any day but the line never got off the ground due to the abundance of RailKing.

I'd be closely watching the new RMT issues.

@brianel_k-lineguy posted:

OOOh, okay, thank you.

With all due respect SIRT, as you are a talented modeler, why are you even posting anything here. Obviously with all your postings, this sort of product is not your area of interest. So you really offer nothing positive. You like what you like... fine. And we like what we like. And besides, the traditional products are what make the scale products even possible, otherwise prices on them would even be a lot higher than they are now.

It's the same thing when people make posts about problems with new high end scale products (of which there are many, on a daily basis), and someone chimes in to stick with postwar. That kind of comment offers nothing towards a solution to someone's problem.

Like it or not, different strokes for different folks. Obviously there are more postings here on this forum about scale products. Some of that is undoubtedly due to not being able to get answers from Lionel or MTH (and with MTH that's understandable as it's a one-person company). And some of that is also due to warranty issues and the recent changes in warranty policies and repairs. We traditional "toy" train guys are still out there in force, but maybe we just don't have as much to say. Or have the same amount of issues with our trains not working. Besides, the slogan of the Model Railroader magazine was "Model Railroading is Fun."  Well, I have fun - as I suspect many of we traditional guys do - and therefore I am a model railroader.

Furthermore, you have posted some misinformation. Rugged Rails cars were not die-cast and were created to meet the sales threat from Industrial Rail, actually using Industrial Rail models for their pre-production paint mockups.

Yes, the Atlas IR cars were indeed nice and paint schemes had a higher degree of accuracy as far as paint schemes. The original IR black painted Norfolk Southern box car immediately comes to mind as something that wasn't so accurate. When Jim Weaver was heading Atlas 0, he obviously had a more diverse vision of expanding their 0 gauge line into the traditional market. Even though their Atlantic model steam engine was kind of a goof proportionally, though well made and a good runner.

Three things worked against the Atlas IR line, of which the supposed abundance of Railking was not one of them. One of the real reasons was the $10-15 blowouts of the previous UMD made IR products by HobbyCo, who bought out the remaining UMD inventory.

The second reason was when Atlas 0 acquired the UMD Industrial Rail tooling, like any other company, they raised the list prices - which were totally reasonable. But there was quite an outcry - here on this forum too - over this. People were unfairly comparing (though I suppose understandably) the new Atlas IR list prices to the recent deep blowout prices. And now you know why all the scale products you like are built to order, to minimize the chances of blowouts, which undercut regular retail pricing.

The third reason, which affected every manufacturer, was when Sanda Kan dropped some 60 companies from their production, leaving them all scrambling to find new and qualified vendors to manufacture their products. Paul Graf of Atlas 0, said that in this process of moving, much of their tooling was damaged and required extensive and expensive refurbishing. Though he never specified, one can safely assume the Industrial Rail tooling was also damaged and was going to need expensive repairs. That and with the passing of Jim Weaver (the vision of Atlas 0 changed), they likely decided it wasn't in their plans or worth the expense of refurbishing the IR tooling.

Now back to Railking. Mike Wolf has always said the RK line was the best selling of his product lines. And still he was never able to put a real dent in the market that Lionel has always held... the traditional starter market. As of two years ago, Ryan Kunkle said it was the traditional starter set line that keeps Lionel in business. Maybe that has changed in the last 2 years, but I suspect not. So you should be thankful for those products, even if you don't buy them yourself.

As for K-Line, yes they were all over the place with their product lines, as is Lionel. But what put K-Line out of business was not the starter set/traditional products, but too many new scale products in too short a time period, from new expensive tooling. And furthermore introducing some of the new products as KCC member purchase items at rock bottom prices - even lower than their already lower list prices. It was one thing to put the MP-15 diesel as a KCC member incentive: That tooling was likely paid for. It was quite another to put brand new high end scale models as KCC incentives. Again, there were many posts at that time of "What are you getting from the new K-Line catalog" with answers along the lines of "Nothing. I'll wait to see what K-Line offers as the new KCC member incentive." Little wonder that K-Line was over $5M in debt: $3.8M to Sanda Kan alone.

And that wasn't from the 027 K-Line S-2 or similar products. And a testimony to the popularity of that locomotive was the RMT improved reintroduction of the K-Line S-2 as the RMT Bang S-4. That is one of the hardest engines to find these days. And not because it was built to order and RMT only made 100 of them. Obviously people like them and are keeping them, even though you don't see numerous postings on a daily basis about them.

Personally, we always thought the regular K-Line member catalog was too expensive to get everything we wanted.  Dad went for "1 car a year for the kids" and it couldn't be above (I think) $40; often $25 (well, the local hobby shop charged more than the catalog, of course). He dropped his KCC membership after a few years because it was too pricey compared to what he wanted to spend.
The average cost of scale engines was beyond what I could dream about--back then, let alone now.  Back-then's prices are still too high, even now, for the K-Line Scale engines.

IR was an option, because of the low cost & decent build quality.  I have 1 Train-19 item (K661-1751: the NYC flatcar with U-shaped fences, a die-cast F-150, & a few guys).  The fences pop off, but the car runs great.  Then, we stopped buying new cars for... oh, at least a decade.  Menards cars are nice enough, but kinda big for the majority of our rolling stock.

We upgraded to O-31 curves because Grandpa downsized, so we finally had enough track to make it worth while.  This opened up a whole world of cars that "could work", but the O-27 size is still nicer.  I tend to pretend that O-31 boxcars are "high-cube O-27 cars."

But, we never had RR, Husky, more than the one Train 19, or more than a couple of Semi-scale RK.  Thus the question about the product lines as a whole.

There might have been a wee bit of confusion regarding die-cast and Rugged Rails. There are a few die-cast cars in the RailKing lineup, they were packaged in gray/brown boxes that bear a superficial resemblance to the brown boxes that Rugged Rails rolling stock were packaged in at some point.

The single-dome tank car did indeed move from RailKing to Rugged Rails. Another single-dome tanker took its spot in the RailKing line. You can tell the difference in the car ends -- the RR tankers have rounded end caps while the current RailKing cars have nearly flat end caps and a slightly 'fatter' tank. I noticed this while I was inventorying my chrome-plated tank car binge (now up to 38 examples)

---PCJ

If you like traditional sized rolling stock Industrial Rail and Rugged Rails are great options.  I have several Industrial Rail cars (UMD and Atlas) and like them a lot.  Not too "plasticy" at all (compare to Lionel MPC) and all have die-cast trucks, metal weeks, and needle point axles.  Rugged Rails are nice too and have metal sprung trucks, metal couplers, and decent weight.  Send me an email if you'd like some pictures.  I also have a few cars for sale.

Don

This is one of those posts that can be taken in a lot of directions due to (1) the various names over time our hobby has given to the products and (2) the marketing tactics that the manufacturers have used.

One specific point relating to the OP's questions: In the non/semi-scale market, MTH's Rail King line originally included short 13-1/2" passenger cars labeled O27 as well as 15"-16" passenger cars that were roughly 60' but not exactly to scale as I understand it.  I own some of each.  After I made my purchases, I noticed that the newer O27 versions began being cataloged as Rugged Rails. I don't think there was any material difference with the Rail Kings I owned, just a re-branding by MTH, as least that's how I characterize it.

As far as freight cars go, @brianel_k-lineguy really nailed it above. I have a mix of PW Lionel O27, modern Lionel Traditional, K-Line across its spectrum, MTH Rail King and Rugged Rails, and Industrial Rail. I like them all. No doubt, Rail King box cars, stock cars, and four-bay hoppers are noticeably bigger than the other brands. The only Rail Kings I avoid are the Rail King 4-bay hoppers which are huge as well as the Rail King woodside cabooses which are absurdly large.

@raising4daughters posted:

The only Rail Kings I avoid are the Rail King 4-bay hoppers which are huge as well as the Rail King woodside cabooses which are absurdly large.

I think that the Rail King and Rugged Rails woodsided cabooses use the mold for the Lionel Standard O woodsided cabooses, so they are scale-size. (At the very least, the shell is the same dimensions, and virtually identical.)

Some RailKing pieces were close to (if not completely) scale-sized if the real-life railcar was smaller than typical. One example is the RailKing ore hopper, which is pretty much scale-size (and occasionally appeared in the Premier line). A very close second is the Airslide hopper, which is so close size and detail-wise to its Premier cousin, that it's virtually indistinguishable rolling by in a train if you didn't know they were present (images sourced from another post I made in 2017):

Premier (above), RailKing (below)

As the prototypes get bigger, the amount of reduction to produce a RK or RR version gets more pronounced, for example the 33k gallon tank cars, for which the difference between Premier and RK is very obvious.

---PCJ