Piko Motive Power

Relatively new to the G scale market, at least US prototypes.

They seem to have gotten some of the old MDC rolling stock molds, which are 1:32, but the US outline locos are all new.

In 2014, a forum member emailed Piko and got this reponse from Jonathan Meador of Piko America:

"Most items are in the ballpark of 1:27, which is a compromise, much as LGB did with their models based on standard gauge trains. The American-style freight cars so far are made from the old MDC-Roundhouse tooling, which PIKO purchased and refurbished. Those are in the 1:29 range. Of course, freight cars on real railroads come in all different sizes, with older cars generally being smaller than modern cars. So unless you’re measuring details like ladders and doors, considerable variation in car sizes is quite believable."

So that makes sense, and why some of the locos look so large.

In my opinion, the US outline locos are somewhere betwen Bachmann and LGB in quality. Nice construction, but not build bulletproof or expensively.

But the electronics are ok, they often come with a DCC sound decoder that is not bad.