About Us

Introduction

Federation of Model Engineering Societies was founded in 1970 as ‘Southern Federation of Model Engineering Societies’ by a group of model engineering clubs based mainly in the South of England. These founder members nominated individual members to form a managing committee along the lines of a traditional club. The original brief for the ‘SFMES’ was to co-ordinate a response to activities that would affect all clubs, and this evolved into liaising with insurance brokers and, with other club representative bodies, responding to legislative requirements in pressure vessel design and testing and in particular related to the topic of steam boilers.

In 2014, SFMES converted to a company limited by guarantee. The new company now had a ‘Board of Directors’, all unpaid volunteers, instead of committee members, but still elected annually by the member clubs. The company also seeks volunteers from amongst the membership to act as managers for specific duties as agreed by the Board.
In 2021, the member clubs agreed a resolution to change the name to ‘Federation of Model Engineering Societies’ (FMES) as a response to the now growing membership across the whole of the UK and Northern Ireland.
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There are 218 Affiliated Societies registered on this database.

Apply to Affiliate a Society

This enables you to start the application process for registering a Society as an Affiliate of the Federation of Model Engineering Societies.

Newsletters

See our Newsletters here.

Our Vision and Services

The Vision of FMES is to become the National Federation to represent and grow the hobby of Model Engineering. It does this by becoming the ‘go to’ place to champion and as a result grow the hobby by supporting and informing associations of Model Engineers throughout the UK and liaising with other relevant commercial and amateur organisations in both the UK and overseas.

Current services include consulting with insurance brokers for club insurance, working with other club representative bodies to develop a common response to health and safety and boiler testing and providing a sounding board and comment on best practice for club management and operations. An important and developing service is to provide support for young engineers through awards and publicity.

FMES sets out to have a high profile, on the internet and in supporting events, rallies and exhibitions around the country. We are always seeking to enhance our services and add new ones!

Our Member Societies

We have over 200 member societies or clubs representing around 20,000 individual members. These are spread throughout the UK roughly split evenly between the North including Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Midlands including East Anglia, South West and Wales and London and the South East. Activities engaged in by our member clubs cover all aspects of model engineering including miniature locomotives and rail vehicles and their associated railways, traction engines and other road vehicles, model boats, clocks and the wide field encompassing other aspects such as internal combustion and heat engines and all other miniature machines.
Individual Model Engineers
We endeavour to support individual model engineers through the clubs that they are members of. We are a ‘club of clubs’ and respond to the requests of official member club representatives. We welcome contact with individual members however, with their club approval, especially if they have new and creative ideas to help us deliver our aims. We regularly support exhibitions and rallies either formally with a stand or informally as individuals visiting club events through the season. If you see us, please come and introduce yourself!

Affiliated Societies

Model car

STRATEGY FOR THE FUTURE OF THE FMES

Future Strategy

This synopsis briefly describes the headline results of the strategic review of FMES conducted by the board and informed by comments from affiliated members as a result of structured and unstructured feedback.

First of all though it was appropriate to understand what the FMES recognises as ‘Model Engineering’, and the result of this discussion is the following definition:

Model Engineering is the art and science of creating miniature machinery using some or all relevant professional and artisan skills including design and design for making, parts manufacture, fitting and testing and maintained use.

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