Model Railroader

Model Railroader is an American magazine specializing in the hobby of model railroading. It was founded in 1934 by Al C. Kalmbach and is based in Waukesha, Wisconsin. It is published monthly by Kalmbach Publishing. It promotes itself as the oldest magazine of its type in the United States, and is commonly found on newsstands and in libraries. It is the long-standing competitor to Railroad Model Craftsman, which predates MR by one year.

MR is considered to be a general-interest hobby magazine, appealing to a wide range of hobbyists, rather than specializing in a particular scale, or facet of the hobby (such as prototype operations or scratch building and kitbashing). Model Railroader covers a variety of scales and modeling techniques for engines, rolling stock, right-of-way, structures, and scenery. It reviews products including ready-to-run models as well as kits, tools and supplies. The magazine presents blueprints and photographs of prototype equipment, as well as photographs of models and layouts.

A long-standing philosophy of modeling is manifest in its editorial features of layout design and operation, in which the model is viewed as a three-dimensional and temporal compression of the real world, so that, for example, the motive power, freight, trackage and scenery of a real-world railroad are formed into a layout which captures the spirit of not only the equipment and region of the railroad but also its purpose and how it operates.