Seems strange theres nothing on their website!

Maybe I’ve got a different March issue ,  but I can’t see any reference in the editorial to it closing .

That very sad news if true.

I have to say though that the content is almost completely irrelevant for me as it seems 100% dominated by steam locomotives.

The Australian equivalent AME went last year. The age of the paper magazine is fading away. Next generation will only have Facebook and Youtube. USA has a couple with the benefit of 5 times the population however there must be some European ones – Germany surely.

I have to say though that the content is almost completely irrelevant for me as it seems 100% dominated by steam locomotives.

Likewise.

EiM is on Readly, like ME & MEW under Mortons, so I skim though it each month & very rarely have found anything of interest due to the overwhelmingly (mainly steam) railway content. Railway Engineering in Miniature would seem to have been a more appropriate title for a long time.

The editor’s comments about ” lack of submitted articles” should be the wake up for Mortons – I feel the current model evident in hobby magazines of being solely reliant upon the readership to supply the content they are expected to pay for, rather than having “house” contributors to generate the content, will lead to the demise of the publications that work that way. Morton & Bauer mainstream motorcycle magzines have  a mix of content, both internally generated & from submissions. Admittedly they can (and do) use content from a pool of contributors across several publications, but these magazines have more content (page count) and attract more advertisers than the “contribute yourself” publications but do not cost appreciable more. ME and MEW are “skinny” – not much content for an increasingly heavy cover price. The basic model needs to change if the publications are going to be sustainable going forward – I don’t hold out much hope of that happening.

Nigel B.

Well this should be regarded as an opportunity!  Print mags are obviously dying unless they cater for a large and/or wealthy market.  My main engineering interest now is horology, I get HJ and Antiquarian Horology as I belong to their parent organisations. Neither has much “technical” content, and HJ seems now to be dominated by expensive and irrelevant watches, but just occasionally it has a nugget of interest.

On the other hand there are a few interesting horology forums, such as the relatively new HSN one, two or three for electric clocks, and these attract much more interest since there is no associated membership.  HSN for one has a few long-running threads including one started by Joe Noci describing his pendulum, which he originally described here.  That thread has had 321 postings since December!  By contrast the feeble forum that the BHI operates is lucky to get one new post a month.  Interestingly the HSN forum, one for Synchronomes, and one for electric clocks, all use groups.io and can be very cheap or even free to run.  They are also MUCH easier to use that this one!  Also there’s a Quorn group there which is pretty active.  There is also a model engineering group that unfortunately is moribund.

Worth looking at the Synchronome1 and Quorn groups as they have files and photo sections that have huge amounts of useful information, some of it associated with projects described in the threads.  The ME forum has similar sections but little content, but one could imagine that it could easily take over from this forum and host constructional series in a much more interactive way.

So I think the answer to this is in our own hands.  If the mags go the publisher won’t want the expense of maintaining this site.

On 15 March 2024 at 10:21 noel shelley Said:

Hopefully Mortons will see the writing on the wall and will revert to a single title before we loose both of them Too. Otherwise it will ALL be butterside down ? Noel.

They’re both the twentieth century equivalent of self-published blogs and websites, and are already zombies.

ME, like EIM, has become so niche that its old fashioned approach of multi part articles spread over months or even years can only appeal to the established readers.

MEW still has some potential, but it needs to revert to its original dense format not the pamphlet it has become. I suggest that the articles chosen for reprinting should be the technical ones, like discussions of how chemical fasteners work, not repeats of well trodden small projects. And those should be rare.

I’ve mentioned this before, but the adoption of the term model engineer for non-industrial engineering done for personal reasons was the first step down a very slippery slope.

I, for one, prefer EIM over ME. So it will be sadly missed. When it goes I will not revert to buying ME as there is nothing of interest in it, especially as some issues seem to show what clubs are doing on their open days which I would have thought are only of interest to that club.

If indeed it is fact then why are they still advertising for subscriptions as any that are done surely would be taking money under false pretence as they do not intent to give what you pay for

Sad about EIM though I may have contributed to this in a tiny way by ending my own subscription last year.

We had a thread about ME a few months ago and I was lamenting the lack of workshop articles and my own lack of interest in the massive multi- part series on stationery engines. Since then there have been some workshop articles in ME and the stationery engine series has not been in every issue – I wonder if the editor looks at the forum?

I agree with Noel that a merger of ME and MEW might be a good idea, better than losing either – though I would miss MEW more than ME.

Rod

EIM started to go down hill when TEE sold it off. No longer formatted. to be bound into a volume with correct page numbering and no longer controled by people with an interest in model engineering. Compare the older isuses with the current ones. All they wanted was another magazine to make a profot from.

Dave

I still buy ME but some of my fellow club-members say they don’t because it seems mainly locomotive construction serials and accounts of club events.

I found the engine history series interesting but it would be far better as a book.

Perhaps it is time to consider merging ME and MEW, and as a fresh new version of what ME&E was: covering a broad spread of interests within the hobby.

As for the title model-engineering[ing] I can see Nick Wheeler’s point – making a tool-&-cutter grinder, a clock or fine piece of ornamental-turning is not model-engineering senso strictu, but the skills overlap and name has been with us since, well, the 1890s?, always encompassing those activities. So I think we are stuck with it.

So what could a combined magazine be called? It can’t be called Model Engineer & Electrician, and what there is now of any amateur electronics is catered for elsewhere, if that hobby even still exists as such. That is, beyond the honourable exception of model-engineers making CNC machine-tools.

The Home or Amateur Engineer? How wide is that? Does it include vehicle restoring or customising,  operating heritage railways, servicing boats or building your home’s very own solar-powered heat-pump?

Really, given how the 100+ year-old name has stuck and developed, I see no sensible alternative to it; but I think the publication has to try to encourage all aspects of the hobby.

Finally, whilst I appreciate not everything published interests all of us, at least it exposes us to the works of our fellows; a valuable panorama that could be lost if publishing anything dwindles into the hermetic worlds of single-interest Internet fora.

CHUCK = Terry Aspin ! Noel.