List of model railways

This is a list of model railways.

The world's first model railway was made for the son of Emperor Napoleon III in 1859 at the Château de Saint-Cloud.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." (Guy R. Williams, "The World of Model Trains," Andre Deutsch, London 1970.

A theme through many of these has been a movement away from the 'mass of moving trains' approach to a more pictorial approach, producing scenes and dioramas that represented the appearance of their original prototype.

Many of these standard gauge railways avoided the compromise of 00 gauge in favour of finescale standards such as EM and P4. Others modelled the narrow gauge. In both cases, a lack of ready to run rolling stock was not a drawback to an approach already based largely on scratchbuilding anyway, for quality reasons.

A two acre outdoor model village with an extensive railway. The sheer size of this was remarkable. The railway continues in operation to this day.

Considered to be the first 'scenic model railway', Madder Valley and John Ahern's series of books was a major influence on railway modelling through the 1950s. As well as its scenic aspects, this also represented an influential shift from compressed representations of main line stations to a smaller branch line, where the model could more closely represent the original.

Ahern was also a naturally pragmatic 00 modeller, despite the compromises of its undersized gauge. He combined prototypes from smaller standard gauge locomotives with those of the 3 foot gauge Isle of Man Railway Beyer Peacocks. 'Most of my buildings are derived from something, but they are not exact copies.'

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