Hi Austin, The newsletter is edited by our Chairman, the website is operated by a committee member.
We have 8 committee members and have a committee meeting every month.

I find out what members are doing and get them to talk about their projects.

I am also the 'greeter' for club evenings and I have an assistant from the new membership. We see new members settled with someone of similar interests.
Where needed our Secretary gets the mentoring system going.
We also teach competent driving of locomotives on our track.

You have to look after your members not just plonk them at the back of the room and see what they do! It was a bit like that 40 years ago.

All of the new members comment on how friendly their reception has been and this is down to the members as a whole having 'bought' into the idea.

We have a 3 hour evening with 20+ minutes about halfway for a chat etc. This means some speakers take the whole period and with other evenings we have 2 speakers.

If it is someone not used to speaking I will join them at the front as support and prompt them when necessary.

It is always a friendly atmosphere and a speaker is never left on their own or embarrassed etc. There may be 3 up front, speaker, camera person and possibly someone to help with the presentation.

I was trained in presentations at work and it has all been very useful applying it in the club.

On one occasion I had talked a very nervous chap into giving a talk, at the last minute I said to him "Forget your notes, just say you are the crane driver and this is a working model of my crane". "Any questions"?

It all went very well. He had a large drag-line crane with a 5 foot jib and the controls were built into a chair so it was like the real thing. Questions and chat went on all evening.

regards
Roy

Roy
Very interesting and great to see such a vast amount of involvement.
You must have many volunteers to keep this up. How many are involved with newsletter and website.
Regards
Austin

Hi try our website. www.stalbansmes.com
Look under latest news and you will see a report on all of our recent club nights.

We do have excellent facilities with a full IT suite and one of our model boat builders is a retired commercial film director. So when a demo is going on a camera is used to put small models up on the large screen.
We can also retire outside when we had a demo of powering up a jet engine and also on safely steaming up a Gauge 1 loco.

When you get chatting it is surprising what you turn up.
regards
Roy

Roy
Care to share a few ideas of getting interesting speakers. Our local club closed down due to lack of interest.

Austing

Hi ed on the contrary we have had some excellent talks from our members.
We usually have 35 or so members for each evening and they are a fund of ability and information, I just prey on them!

Roy

Roy no problem, I’m always open to new ideas

The club I belong to struggles to find speakers for the monthly meetings as well.

Hi ed not trying to teach you to suck eggs! Just thought the non steam guys would be interested to know how things work out.
I too love the model engineering, I was Secretary of the St. Albans model engineering society for 29 years. Although I did try my hand at construction, it did not amount to much. I am really a sailing yacht man!

My job now is to make sure we have an interesting subject for our monthly club evenings. I get almost all of the speakers from our own club members which seems to work out. I already have a full list for 2024 so fingers crossed!
regards
Roy

Hi Roy,
Thanks for the insight but knowing the consumption of this engine is and would require a boiler with a volume of at least .5 ltr. To run for about 5 minutes. To extend this you would need a boiler feed pump and water tank. On top of this you would need a gas tank. This is the smallest g engine I have at the moment, so this is why I say that it was a moment of madness 🤣🤣🤣

There are relatively simple calculations to work out the size of a boiler and rate of evaporation to give the required rpm for the engine.
Nothing difficult all based on volume of steam the engine needs.
However weight of materials can be a problem.
There is a French class called Minivap which limits the boat length to 50 cms, 20 inches, which works very well.

My friend Malcolm designed an engine to run at a certain speed and when the maths was done and engine and boiler built, I made a tachometer and the speed was was almost dead on!
I was very impressed.
Roy

A moment of madness with another one of my engines.
Common sense must prevail, this boat is just too small for a boiler as well. Perhaps some time in the future I will build a steam powered boat.

Steam turbine to spin a dynamo to make the juice for an electric motor? That sounds like fun.

I always dreamed of making a steam turbine to put into my model but was discouraged when somebody experienced in this field told me they are steam 'gluttons' and not efficient. Besides I don't have neither the experience nor the tools for fine metal work. Yours look quite accomplished.

These two were actually built by my late father, I have several more that I have built. At the moment I am building small traction engine as well as my tug.
The only reason these came out was that I was getting out all my radio control gear for the tug build. When I unpack the others, I will post some pictures of them

I presume you have made these yourself, nice work