Check the National Railway Historical Society website for links to the specific local railroad museum or historical society that you’re looking for. Railroad Historical Societies can provide a huge amount of information about specific prototype railroads that you may wish to model. Buy them as they are or customize by blending scenes together. Railroad Backdrops - Wonderful photographed layout backgrounds for anysize layout in any scale, in any season, at reasonable prices. Ipswich Hobbies - Model Railroad Craftsman Kit Structures - Ipswich Hobbies is a small company that focuses on delivering laser cut craftsman building kits that are based upon prototype structures. a great place to find materials for scratch-building structures is another excellent model train information resource affiliated with Kalmbach Publishing through which you can purchase many of the premier model railroad magazines and how-to books which have been very helpful to me over the years. This site contains lots of informative articles. Spruce Crafts () is a great beginning resource on the web about model trains and model railroading. What a great walk down memory lane it is to hear great musicians play these not-so-old train songs! A great website All About Vinyl Records written by a friend of mine, Danny Sandrik, includes a section about train songs. There is something nostalgic and romantic about trains, sad and happy at the same time - taking lovers away and bringing them home. Airplanes and ships aren't referred to in songs nearly as much as trains. It just goes to show you how much trains and railroads have been part of our lives. Have you ever noticed how many train songs there are out there? There must be hundreds, if not thousands, in all genres of music. Trackside Model Railroading - Offers a monthly magazine, You-Tube videos and lots of DVDs featuring state-of-the-art model railroad layouts. Scale Rails comes automatically with membership to the NMRA. Railroad Model Craftsman - another fine magazine chock-full of interesting articles about modeling trains and railroads. Garden Railways is the bible publication for those who have or are planning a garden layout, which I would like to do myself one day. It’s a great resource for rail fanning as well.Ĭlassic Toy Trains is the one to read if you like Lionel, American Flyer and the classic so-called “toy trains”.Ĭlassic Trains is a separate publication about the Classic trains of the 1920's to the 1970's. Trains is a very interesting magazine about prototype trains and railroading, which is helpful for learning how railroads work in real life – necessary for accurate model railroading, even if your layout is freelanced. The only bad thing is that it only comes out every other month. It always has great, informative articles, many of which are useful for all scales. N-Scale Magazine - For those of you who like N-scale, this is the journal for you. Get all your model railroad news from this very affordable, informative and friendly magazine. Try 3 issues free! The most up-to-date and colorful coverage of the model railroad hobby available anywhere. Model Railroad News - The NewsMonthly for Model Railroaders. The content has improved considerably in recent years and this is another one that I read cover to cover. NMRA Magazine, formerly Scale Rails, is another very informative magazine put out by the National Model Railroad Association. If you’re even remotely interested in model railroading, whether or not you have a layout or are planning one, I would highly recommend this publication. Much of what I know about the hobby came from this one source and its sister publications, like Model Railroad Planning and Great Model Railroads. One of my favorite magazines is Model Railroader by Kalmbach Publishing. I learned a great deal from these books and DVDs, and also from magazines. However, I thought it might be a good service to provide one whole page dedicated to my favorite research and reference material that may be helpful as you are planning and building your train layout or diorama…īooks and DVDs - Lots of books and videos about model railroading are available and new ones are coming out all the time. I have named a few of these within the pages of this website. There are lots of resources available relating to model trains and railroads, many of which are credible, interesting, educational and fun to review. There is definitely no lack of interesting books and magazines to read about model railroading.