Motive Power Monthly, January 1986-December 1991

Some of us, who are of a certain age or above (I'm 39 BTW!), may remember a magazine called "Motive Power Monthly". Published by Ian Allan, it was born out of Modern Railways Pictorial, and the magazine looked at the British scene, with Rolling Stock Newsreel, which is akin to the similar news reports in Rail Express today, giving news on what each class had been up to.

The magazine also provided works reports, stocklist, which listed stock movements, basically reallocations or namings, denaming, renumbering, livery changes, and Stocklist Extra, which was a withdrawn and stored stock update.

There were also looks at wagon scene, one of which looked at the wagons on the Tyne and Wear Metro system, monthly news, and later on, Picture Parade.

Thanks to Ebay, I've managed to get the vast majority of the issues published. At the time of writing, I was missing the September 1988, October - December 1990, and seven of the 1991 editions, though I do have the last edition published. I will be looking out for more, to complete the set.

But, what were your memories of the magazine, especially if you bought it right from the start, to the end.

Could you pm me please

robertclark125 said:

Some of us, who are of a certain age or above (I'm 39 BTW!), may remember a magazine called "Motive Power Monthly". Published by Ian Allan, it was born out of Modern Railways Pictorial, and the magazine looked at the British scene, with Rolling Stock Newsreel, which is akin to the similar news reports in Rail Express today, giving news on what each class had been up to.

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Strange you should liken it to Rail Express. Not that long back, I was talking to the editor of RE and he mentioned how he used to like Motive Power Monthly and said he would like to think some aspects of it had continued into Rail Express. Judging by your comment, it appears that he is correct! It's probably not really that surprising - Motive Power Monthly also competed with Rail Enthusiast, but when this became fortnightly in 1989, I guess it became impossible which caused it to fold. Over time, Rail Enthusiast changed to Rail and started to become more industry focussed, and some of the team left in 1996 and set up their own business (Foursight Publications) which produced Rail Express.

MPM wasn't a bad magazine and it was printed on good quality paper which gave good photographic reproduction - Roger Wood seemed to know his stuff on traction matters, although I don't know what became of him. For a while in the mid/late 90s, he used to produce stocklists under the name of 'Andred Publishing'.

MPM came about due to the realisation by Ian Allan that there was in fact a market for a magazine for "spotters" of the current scene, as proved by the success of Rail Enthusiast. IA had long published Modern Railways but seemed reluctant to get too "spotterish" with it as it had always tried to maintain close links with industry insiders which meant it wanted to appear more professionally biased rather than hobbyist. Though IA did of course have hobbyist titles aimed very firmly at the steam/heritage fans. OFC none of them could ever overcome the delays inherent in magazine publishing timescales so information could easily be out of date even before being read by the public. Younger railfans who have grown up with the internet will have no idea what I'm talking about!

Just came across this thread. MPM also had, for most of its time, a series called Photo Guide. This give hints, tips and ideas about taking photos to a professional standard. This series lasted about four and a half years. The original intention was for it to run for just six months. I wonder how many young enthusiasts were enspired to buy, or pester their parents, for a real professional SLR camera?

martian boy said:

Just came across this thread. MPM also had, for most of its time, a series called Photo Guide. This give hints, tips and ideas about taking photos to a professional standard. This series lasted about four and a half years. The original intention was for it to run for just six months. I wonder how many young enthusiasts were enspired to buy, or pester their parents, for a real professional SLR camera?

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it encouraged me to take better photos and lead to me getting a SLR i am Still taking pictures but now on DSLR
John