About

Model Railroad Reference is an independent, hobbyist-built site of calculators, reference pages, troubleshooting guides and buyer's guides for model railroading. It exists because the information modelers need — turnout geometry, DCC wiring math, scenery coverage, recommended car weights and the rest — is genuinely out there, but scattered across old forum threads, out-of-print manuals and PDFs buried on standards-organization websites. This site's job is to pull that information together, show the actual math and sources behind it, and turn it into working tools instead of another article you have to re-derive yourself.

How this site is built

Every calculator here is built on a real, citable formula or published standard — NMRA Technical Notes and Standards, MOROP/NEM recommendations, AREA trackwork specifications, and plain, sourced engineering references for anything that isn't modeling-specific (basic physics, standard material tables, and so on). We don't invent or guess formulas. Where this site adds its own math on top of a source — an interpolation, a unit conversion, a convenience multiplier — that's always called out on the page itself, kept clearly separate from the cited standard, and covered by its own automated tests.

Each calculator page shows its formula, states its assumptions, and lists its sources, so you can verify it yourself rather than take it on faith. If you find an error or a source that needs correcting, let us know — we'd rather fix it than leave it.

Who runs it

Model Railroad Reference is a small, independent project, not a staff publication of any manufacturer, retailer or standards organization (NMRA, MOROP, AREA, etc.). It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by any of them; it simply cites their published work. You can reach the person behind the site at [email protected].

How the site is funded

Model Railroad Reference is supported by affiliate links and, eventually, display advertising — not by paid placements or sponsored "reviews." See the Affiliate Disclosure for how that works and what it does and doesn't affect, and the Privacy Policy for what data is collected while you're here.