MTH was a latecomer to HO, having been in 3-rail O-gauge, the adding 2-rail
scale O,
then HO. Mike Wolf (as in Mike's Train House-he literally started selling from
his parents'
garage after his split from Lionel in the early 90's) was with Lionel under
Richard Kughn in
his early 20's heipng to reissue some of the large, Standard Gauge tinplate
stuff of the
30's.
Doug, perhaps some of the toy-like stuff you saw was in their semi-scale O
"Rail King"
line, not to be confused with their more detailed, scale "Premier" line. The
latter though
still makes concessions to 3-rail O-gauge track like separate-swinging pilots.
Being in O-gauge myself as well as HO, I would like one of their Premier Royal
Hudson's
which I'll likely get from one of the large discount houses in the US. They
also make the
RH in Rail-King semi-scale at less than 1/2 the price.
I have their CN 6060 which is nice kit-weighs almost 10 pounds, well-detailed
albeit with
oil tender (bunker section longer than coal versions). The sound is
amazing-what a
difference being able to get a larger speaker in there makes.
Jon Archibald
I am going by the their web page. The models shown there do not look like
scale models, certainly not of the quality I would be prepared to buy. I did
not look at every model they had in their catalogue, but I tried to look at
a few and I saw a toy train look to many of them. I don't buy toy trains.
Just the fact it may sound good is not reason enough for me to buy
something.
Doug
