A good friend of mine and I were talking a few days ago. Both his and my interests are in fairly complicated Stationary Steam engines. While I have nothing against the Internal Combustion types of engine, And I've learned a huge ammount reading about how the average HSM person builds and overcomes all the hard parts like cam and crank manufacturing for both single and multi cylinder engines. It's still not where my major interests are. As far as magazines for the average HSM person, The people who build Live steam Locomotives,I.C. Engines, Workshop equipment, ect. That seems to be fairly well covered. Various magazines like Model Engineer, Model Engineers Workshop, Engineering in Miniature, Model Engine Builder Magazine, Live Steam, along with the Village press magazines cover the above topics pretty well. Yet Probably a higher majority of people build stationary steam engines than I.C., Workshop Equipment as a partial or total hobby, Or even Locomotives.
Both my friends points and mine were, Looking at various older Model Engineer magazines. There was a huge ammount of some very nice and really rare engines built over the years. Yet it was spaced out and massive ammounts of this information has been lost for good unless you have access to those back issues. Our thoughts were that a magazine of this type should be done along the lines of how and what Fine Woodworking magazine publishes for the woodworker. Maybe a high end, Glossy, well done and researched magazine. Live Steam and Outdoor Railroading is running a series for a gothic beam engine almost exactly like I'm talking about. I'd like to post this thread on this forum and on the other forums I belong to for say 60 days and given enough interest I'd like to forward these threads to various Model Engineering magazine publishers. If you don't post then your voice won't be heard. For those that agree or even disagree with this thread I'd appreciate your comments. So what is the general interest level for a magazine dealing with Stationary Steam Engines?
Peten