This is a list of

model railway Railway modelling (UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland) or model railroading (US and Canada) is a hobby in which rail transport systems are modelled at a reduced scale. The scale models include locomotives, rolling stock, streetcars, t ...

s. The world's first model railway was made for the

son A son is a male offspring; a boy or a man in relation to his parents. The female counterpart is a daughter. From a biological perspective, a son constitutes a first degree relative. Social issues In pre-industrial societies and some current c ...

Emperor Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...

in 1859 at the

Château de Saint-Cloud The Château de Saint-Cloud was a château in France, built on a site overlooking the Seine at Saint-Cloud in Hauts-de-Seine, about west of Paris. On the site of the former palace is the state-owned Parc de Saint-Cloud. The château was expand ...

. However, "There is a strong possibility that Matthew Murray, who built the geared-for-safety rack engines for John Blenkinsop's coal mine near Leeds, England, was actually the first man ever to make a model locomotive."

List

Carolwood Pacific Railroad The Carolwood Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a -inch () gauge ridable miniature railroad run by Walt Disney in the backyard of his home in the Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It featured the ''Lill ...

- USA *

Choo Choo Barn The Choo Choo Barn is a train display in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, in the United States, consisting of over 150 hand-built animated figures and vehicles and 22 operating trains. History The Choo Choo Barn was established in 1945 by George Groff ...

- USA * Gorre & Daphetid (HO) - USA *

The Great Train Story The Great Train Story is a HO scale model railroad display located in the Transportation Zone of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. It explains the story of modern-day rail transportation in a journey from Seattle, Washington, through se ...

(HO) - USA *

Miniatur Wunderland ''Miniatur Wunderland'' (German for 'miniature wonderland') is a model railway and miniature airport attraction in Hamburg, Germany, the largest of its kind in the world. The railway is located in the historic Speicherstadt neighbourhood of the ci ...

— the world's largest model railway and airport (HO) - Hamburg, Germany *

Miniature Railroad & Village The Miniature Railroad & Village (MRRV) is a large and detailed model train layouts diorama of western Pennsylvania from 1880 to 1930. It is a long-running display currently located in the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ...

- USA * Modelbane Europa (HO) - Hadsten, Denmark *

National Railway Museum The National Railway Museum is a museum in York forming part of the Science Museum Group. The museum tells the story of rail transport in Britain and its impact on society. It is the home of the national collection of historically significant r ...

- a railway museum including a model railway (O) - York, United Kingdom. *

Northlandz Northlandz is a model railroad layout and museum located near Flemington, New Jersey Flemington is a borough in and the county seat of Hunterdon County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Pendon Museum (EM '4mm') - Long Wittenham near Oxford, United Kingdom *

Roadside America Roadside America was an indoor miniature village and railway covering . Created by Laurence Gieringer in 1935, it was first displayed to the public in his Hamburg, Pennsylvania, home. The miniature village's popularity increased after stories wer ...

(O) - USA *

Sonoma TrainTown Railroad The Sonoma TrainTown Railroad (commonly called "Sonoma Train Town") is a tourist railroad and 10 acre amusement park in Sonoma, California. Its logo is based on the logo for the New York Central Railroad. Its main feature is a gauge miniatur ...

1:4 scale - USA *

Virginian and Ohio The Virginian and Ohio is both the name of a fictional railroad company created by W. Allen McClelland (1934-2022) and the HO scale model railroad he built near Dayton, Ohio featuring this railroad. The V&O is famous in the model railroading world ...

Grand Maket Rossiya Grand Maket Rossiya (russian: Гранд Макет Россия) is a private museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is a model layout designed on a scale of 1:87 (HO scale) and covers an area of . In this area, collective images of regions of th ...

(HO) - St. Petersburg, Russia * MinNature (HO) - Subang Jaya, Malaysia * Stanley Miniventure (HO) - Bangkok, Thailand *

EnterTRAINment Junction EnterTRAINment Junction is an indoor model railroad display located in West Chester Township, Ohio. This 25,000 square foot display consists of over 90 G-scale trains encompassing the early era of American railroading, the middle era, and the mod ...

(G) - USA
Smilestones
(HO) - 250 m² model with 1.3 kilometer of tracks at the

Rhine Falls The Rhine Falls (german: Rheinfall , a singular noun) is a waterfall located in Switzerland and the List of waterfalls by flow rate, most powerful waterfall in Europe. The falls are located on the High Rhine on the border between the cantons of Ca ...

, Switzerland.
Chemins de fer du Käsenberg
(HO) - 610 m² model with 2.045 kilometres of tracks in

Granges Paccot Granges-Paccot (; frp, Granges-Pacot is a municipality in the district of Sarine in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland. History Granges-Paccot is first mentioned in 1317 as ''Grangiarum ante la mota dicti castri''. The municipality was f ...

, Switzerland.
Swiss-Miniatur
(1:25) - 14,000 m² park with Swiss Landmarks and 3.5 kilometres of track in

Melide, Switzerland Melide is a municipality in the district of Lugano in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. The village lies very close to the mountain Monte San Salvatore and is directly on the Lake of Lugano. The Melide causeway to the east was built to make ...

Swiss Museum of Transport The Swiss Museum of Transport or Verkehrshaus der Schweiz (literally "Transportation House of Switzerland") in Lucerne opened in July 1959 and exhibits all forms of transport including trains, automobiles, ships and aircraft as well as communicati ...

(HO) – Replica of the

Gotthard railway line The Gotthard railway (german: Gotthardbahn; it, Ferrovia del Gottardo) is the Swiss trans-alpine railway line from northern Switzerland to the canton of Ticino. The line forms a major part of an important international railway link between nort ...

. *

Sydney Live Steam Locomotive Society The Sydney Live Steam Locomotive Society was formed in 1948 and built a miniature railway along a drainage channel behind houses on Anthony Road, West Ryde, Sydney, Australia. The site has been transformed by the addition of fill from excavatio ...

West Ryde, NSW *

The Model Railroad Club of Toronto The Model Railroad Club of Toronto (MRCT) is an O scale model railroad club founded in 1938 by Harry Ebert and Borden Lilley. History Originally located in founder Ebert's basement, the MRCT soon moved to new premises at Toronto's Union Station. ...

Toronto, ON * Arizona Model Railroading Society,

Phoenix, AZ Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the onl ...

Golden State Model Railroad Museum The Golden State Model Railroad Museum is an operating model railroad exhibit located in Point Richmond, California, within the boundary of the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline park. It is located in the Brickyard Cove area and features dozens o ...

Point Richmond, Richmond, California Point Richmond, also sometimes referred to locally as The Point, is a neighborhood in Richmond, California, United States, near the eastern end of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, between Interstate 580 and the San Francisco Bay. History Ori ...

* Highland Park Society of Model Railroad Engineers, also known as the Highland Pacific Club of

San Gabriel, CA San Gabriel (Spanish language, Spanish for "Gabriel, St. Gabriel") is a city located in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, California. At the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census, the population was 3 ...

San Diego Model Railroad Museum The San Diego Model Railroad Museum is a model railroad exhibit in San Diego, California. At 27,000 sq. ft., it is the largest such indoor exhibit in North America, and one of the largest in the world. The museum is located on the lower level of th ...

San Diego, CA San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

Tech Model Railroad Club The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Historically it has been a wellspring of hacker culture and the oldest such hacking group in North America. Formed in 1946, its HO sc ...

, HO scale, student organization at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) * Cherry Valley 2-rail O scale, Merchantville NJ. *

New York Society of Model Engineers The New York Society of Model Engineers (NYSME) is an American 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of the model engineering, model railroading, and the preservation of American railroad history. Formed in 1926, it is the ol ...

, Carlstadt NJ. Incorporated 1926.

UK and Ireland

A theme through many of these has been a movement away from the 'mass of moving trains' approach to a more

pictorial An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

approach, producing scenes and

diorama A diorama is a replica of a scene, typically a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum. Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies such as military vehicle mode ...

s that represented the appearance of their original prototype. Many of these standard gauge railways avoided the compromise of

00 gauge OO gauge or OO scale (also, 00 gauge and 00 scale) is the most popular standard-gauge model railway standard in the United Kingdom, outside of which it is virtually unknown. OO gauge is one of several 4 mm-scale standards (4 mm to 1 foot, ...

in favour of

finescale standard Finescale standards or Fine Standards are model railway standards that aim to be close to the prototype dimensions. Reduction in toylike, overscale flanges, pointwork, etc. In Britain it is particularly used because small British prototypes meant ...

s such as EM and P4. Others modelled the

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structu ...

. In both cases, a lack of ready to run rolling stock was not a drawback to an approach already based largely on

scratchbuilding Scratch building is the process of building a scale model "from scratch", i.e. from raw materials, rather than building it from a commercial kit, kitbashing or buying it pre-assembled. Scratch building is easiest if original plans of the subj ...

List

UK and Ireland

Germany

India

Switzerland

United States

Canada

See also

References