Whats with rugged rails?????

[pennsy_fan]

O.K.,I understand MTH Premier lines is "top-o-the line O-gauge" stuff. Railking is geared toward the 027 market w/ "locosound" as well as "proto 2". So now I see locos for the "rugged rails" line. What, exactly is the difference between the railking line & the rugged rails line? they're all O-gauge train lines.Is Mth trying to muscle in on Williams? or what?

[Anonymous]

rugged rails are cheaper versions of the rail king line. the locos are usually forward-only (direction) type, and they are mostly made out of plastic. the same thing goes for the cars, which are cheaper also[^]

[spankybird]

Don’t you love competition. It’s great for us, the consumer.

MTH first came out with Rugged Rails for rolling stock under $20.00. The then added the Ready to Run starter sets in this. They now as some great little Steam engines (2-8-0 consolidated type) with FULL PS2 for $199.00. Just think, FULL DSC PS2 engines for under $200.00. I have one and love it.

tom

[Bucksco]

"rugged rails" were originally just frieght cars. What's happening is that some of the older engine tooling that isn't quite up to the current level of detail on newer pieces are being relegated to this line.

[brianel027]

Initially some of the Rugged Rails engines were forward running only. This has been changed and now all are F-N-R.

What got the ball rolling on Rugged Rails (and Train-19 from K-Line) was Industrial Rail. Sure now slaes on the IR cars have fallen flat. BUT when they were first introduced and the product line was being expanded - and folks realized that re-issued cars came with different car numbers - the IR cars took away sales from the others.

As far as cheap goes, the Rugged Rails cars are very solid construction, painted bodies with die-cast trucks. They're certainly made better than the basic Lionel stater cars which only recently started to have painted bodies.

I wish MTH would make the Rugged Rails line to run against Williams by making the engines with that banner with just the basics - no sound or speed control. Leave those feature for the Railking line. It would certainly make things less confusing.

As Bucksco said, the former more scale-sized Premiere line tooling that was made in the early years is becomming Railking. You've all noticed the move with Railking product becomming more scale-sized prouduct. Now there's even a product line variation with Railking, I guess called Scale Railking or something. The smaller proportioned Railking engines have been slowly issued under the Rugged Rails banner.