Electric Nose on MRM

Steve Jones, quite possible the Amadán of model railways, celebrates the all-too-brief reign of Nigel Burkin as editor of Modern Railway Modelling.

A magazine is very much a reflection of it's editor, someone who has vision of how the finished product should look and where it's supposed to be going. Nigel's editorial direction has been close to what I want from a magazine and, I'd suggest, the excellent sales show it has struck a chord with many other modellers disenfranchised by the increasingly out-of-touch UK press. It's a direction refreshingly different to that historically favoured by UK publishers, closer to overseas magazines that have moved with the times. Nigel isn't, of course, the only person capable of doing this job, but it's vital to attract and keep such new blood, and this is clearly not happening.

I've always thought the market leader, the "Railway Modeller" actually has one thing in common with "Playboy" i.e. nobody reads it for the articles. RM seems to driven by advertising, which means it's product reviews are useless; they don't want to upset their advertisers, so all reviews are about as much use as an NME review of a neo-prog band. And their editor seems to think that history ended in 1968.

I hope MRM doesn't descend into "Toddler" land.