Railway Modeller Magazine - March 2026

he March 2026 Railway Modeller is our traditional Scottish-themed issue to coincide with the Model Rail Scotland exhibition – the largest annual independent model railway show in the UK, of which we bring you a full preview. Scottish layouts in this issue include Glen Dochard Distillery in OO, Largoward – also in OO and re-creating part of the East Fife Central Railway in the 1960s – and Gairloch, a new addition to the North West Highland Railway, an N gauge system depicting a proposed but never built branch line. Chris Ford also completes the construction of his OO gauge layout set in the West Highlands of Scotland, which will be on show at Model Rail Scotland.

March 2026 is also the 60th anniversary of the closure of the famous Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway, which we mark by featuring Chilcompton Tunnel – an OO gauge model of one of the line's best-known photographic locations – and the construction of a Somerset & Dorset Sentinel locomotive from a 3D-printed kit. Railway of the Month is Bowater's Paper Mill, a 7mm scale re-creation of the last privately owned narrow gauge industrial steam railway in the UK.

New products reviewed in this issue include the retooled Class 66 diesel from Bachmann, the Great Western Railway '5700' and '8750' pannier tanks from Accurascale, the Great Northern Railway Class J13 0-6-0ST from Rapido Trains UK and the Class 74 electro-diesel from EFE Rail, all in OO gauge, and the Hornby Class 37 diesel for the new TT:120 scale. We also bring you all the latest news and model announcements from the hobby, including the 2026 range from Hornby.