This page highlights changes made to this web site.
With the new "Layouts" section of this web site being pretty close to being finished (a few more minor items left to do), work has begun on the new "How-to" section of this web site. The "About Modeling in S" and "American Flyer" sections are "finished". More content can be added at any time, but the basics are there.
Members of the Susquehanna S Gaugers put on an annual event called "Steam Up!". Information about this event was added to this web site's "Events" button.
Dave Heine provided detailed information and photos of his former layout.
Added photos and layout information for Blake Horner's layout. Blake is a college student!
The following layout was updated:
- Bill Winans.
The following layouts were added:
- Trevor Marshall.
- Vic Cherven.
Many layouts were updated with references to magazine articles (more to come, soon). Jim Martin provided information and photos of his layout. Chuck Kemper provides new photos of his layout.
Trevor Marshall provides three photos he just took on his beautiful layout of the B&M "Flying Yankee".
The following layouts were updated:
- Ron Kemp (report on dismantled one; new layout is under construction)
- Ed Sauers
The following layouts were added:
- Chris Elliott
- Pete Silcox
The following layouts were updated:
- Mike Swederska, Sr.
- Bill Lane
- Roger Nulton
- Dick Karnes
The following layouts were added:
- Joe Coen
- Charles Malinowski
- Hugh Sinn
We were experiencing a high rate of failure of getting the submissions of data and/or photos to the webmaster on the "Provide Layout Info" page of the "Layouts" section of this web site. It would work for some, but not for others, so that excludes a webmaster's coding error. There was something that the server operating system itself did not like or allow. So, that page has been completely revised. We now rely on e-mail, as that is an effective way of communicating information. A text-only form is still provided, as that seems to work just fine. Photos can be provided via e-mail. Please do not use any photo-sharing services, as there are too many of those, and they are time-consuming for the webmaster to log in to and download from.
I, as the webmaster, had become aware of several missing files on the NASG web site's server. There are over 53,000 files on our web site, so making sure that each one is there and is the latest version is not a trivial task. Over the past two days, I have re-uploaded every single file, to make sure they are all there (yes, it takes that long!). If you find any broken links now, please let me know, so I can fix them right away. Thank you.
Due to confusion on the webmaster's part, the supplemental files that Randy Griggs references in his May/June 2020 Dispatch article were not made available when the issue's PDF file was made available. For that I apologize. These files are now available for download by NASG members, via the "Members Only" section (follow the link above). There are a total of 57 files, compressed into one .zip file, which is 34MB. The files consist of many .pdf files that hold the colored images of the containers. These are to be printed on a color printer for best results (see Randy's article). Also included are four photos by Randy of a number of his containers on his layout. Since submitting his article, Randy created some 48-foot containers as well, which are included as part of those 57 files, but were not specifically mentioned in his article.
While adding Randy's file, I took this opportunity to change how to select a file to download. Instead of a drop-down selection list, there are now individual listings shown for each file that can be downloaded. Also, when the file has been retrieved and is made available for downloading, the "back" arrow in the top-right corner of the page took you all the way back to the log-in screen. This has been fixed to now take you back to the logged-in main menu. If you wish to download more than one file, you can just go back to the "Recent Dispatch Issues" section of the "Members Only" page.
The public version of the May/June 2019 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the May/June 2020 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section.
In the "Layouts" section of the web site, previously, if a layout's owner has had more than one layout, they were all shown on one page. The change made today is that each layout owner's individual layout now has a dedicated page. Where multiple layouts by the same owner are applicable, the active one, if there is one, is shown first; after that they are sorted by the layout's name. Several more layouts have been added to the various sub-categories of layouts.
Fred Schlegel shared photos of his layouts on this web site, and those have been moved to the new "Layouts" section of the web site.
The "3D-printing" page has been added to the new "How-to" section, with some of the content that was previously already published on this web site.
The "Scratchbuilding" page in the new "How-to" section has been updated with some of the content that was previously already published on this web site.
From feedback received about the new "Modeling in S" button, we have made the following changes to the NASG web site:
The public version of the March/April 2019 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the March/April 2020 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section.
The final item for completing the revision of the "S Product Gallery" section of this web site was to move the handful of American Flyer-specific entries to the new "How-to" button's "American Flyer" menu option. These cover our listings of the A.F. track, electronics, parts, and accessories. The reason for this move is that we don't cover those same topics for the other sub-divisions of S, but we do want to keep these listings for the A.F. enthusiast.
The AF articles page has been updated with the previous AF mini articles that were available via the old "American Flyer" main menu button. This new page also contains links to other web sites' articles, and links to how-to videos.
The merged text that Bob Jackson wrote in a series of articles for the NASG's Dispatch was buried in a link in the S-scale History page. However, that made it hard to find, so it has been moved out of that page, and made into a menu option on the "NASG" button called "Our History".
By request, a menu option has been added to the "News" page that shows all of the news entries from the past month.
We now have a dedicated page for the S-scale version of the Free-mo modular system.
We now have a dedicated page for the S-scale version of the T-TRAK modular system. The information was moved from the "NASG" button's "Engineering Standards" menu option to this new location.
We now have a dedicated page for the NASG S-MOD standard. The associated documents have been moved to that server folder, to keep everything together. The documents used to be accessible via the "Downloadable Documents" menu option of the "NASG" button, and also via that button's "Engineering Standards" menu option. The new page is accessible via the "Modeling in S" button's "Modules: S-MOD" menu option.
The NASG's AF Commemorative Car Program page that lists every single car that program generated, has been moved to the "NASG" button's menu. Since this was a program created by the NASG, it should really be associated with that button on the web site.
A number of pages accessed via the new "Site" button, have been moved to the "Site" folder on the server, so if you have bookmarks or favorites to any of those files, they will no longer work. Simply click on the "Site" button, click on the menu option, and then make a bookmark or favorite to the new location of that page.
The "Featured Video" page now also includes videos for Sn3 and Sn2.
The "Contribute" and "Contributors" pages have been merged into the new "Contributions" page, accessed via the "Site" button.
Two of the main navigation buttons have been removed, namely "Scale Modeling" and "American Flyer". In their place are the new "Modeling in S" and "Site" buttons. The content that used to be accessible via the two old buttons is in the process of being migrated and re-introduced via the "Modeling in S" button's menu.
Everything related to the web site itself, has now been moved to the "Site" button. This includes this page (which used to be on the "News" button), and some of the menu options that used to be on the "Extra Board" button.
This is my active project for this web site right now, and I will devote however much time it takes to migrate all the data over, plus add new content. The reason why these temporary changes are being uploaded in the mean time, is because the rest of the web site must continue to be updated with all the near-daily changes. It is too complicated and too error-prone to cherry-pick which changes should be uploaded and which should not.
Please be patient with these intermediate changes. I am confident that you will like them when they are all done. My hope is to have these pages done before mid-February 2020. Be sure to keep checking this page for what changes have been made.
Continuing the revision of the "S Product Gallery" section of this web site to streamline the data, and better group and organize the various topics. The sixth change covers the Figures reports. Not much has changed in these reports, except that the "category" and "pose" have been merged, so that when you view the figures by category, you will see the various poses as part of the category names. As with the other reports, the importable file report has been modified to hopefully make it easier to import the listing into a spreadsheet program you have. Also, well over 30 new figures have been added to the reports.
Continuing the revision of the "S Product Gallery" section of this web site to streamline the data, and better group and organize the various topics. The fifth change includes the old "Boats" section, which has now been renamed to "Water Transport", and a new section called "Air Transport" (see "View web page" link above). The old Boats section was just a single page, but the new Water Transport section has now been updated with more reports, much like all the other sections. The new Air Transport has similar reports (which covers airplanes and helicopters).
Continuing the revision of the "S Product Gallery" section of this web site to streamline the data, and better group and organize the various topics. The fourth change is the "Vehicles" section. The following visible changes have been made:
A change made a few months back caused the wrong file name for the NASG web site's RSS feed file. This was fixed today, and, so if you are using the RSS feed in your web browser, it should now be up-to-date again. Sorry about that!
Continuing the revision of the "S Product Gallery" section of this web site to streamline the data, and better group and organize the various topics. The third change is the "Structures" section. The following visible changes have been made:
The public version of the January/February 2019 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the January/February 2020 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section.
Continuing the revision of the "S Product Gallery" section of this web site to streamline the data, and better group and organize the various topics. The second change is the "Cars" section. The following changes have been made:
The "Extra Board" menu's "Manufacturers' History" option was moved to the "S Product Gallery" menu, to keep it together with the listing of the products themselves.
Over the next several weeks, the "S Product Gallery" section of this web site will undergo some changes. This is primarily done to streamline the data, and better group and organize the various topics. The first change is the "Locomotives" section. The following changes have been made:
The figures portion of the "S Product Gallery" had the categories to which some figures were assigned updated. Also changed the way the "by category" report looks, in that the second page lists all the figures belonging to a particular category, individually and sorted by name. That will provide a complete overview of the figure by thumbnail photo. If you are interested in a particular figure, click on that thumbnail to see its larger photo, and further details.
Bill Winans provides missing Plasticville Tower photos.
Over the years, the Structures division of the S Product Gallery section of this web site has grown steadily. We now have well over 1,400 entries. Some of the by-category pages were getting to be quite long, so they have been split up over many more-detailed categories. This should help you to find the particular structures you are interested in.
The public version of the November/December 2018 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available (includes the magazine article index on this web site). Also, the November/December 2019 Dispatch PDF can now be viewed or downloaded via the "Members Only" section.
The currently available inventory of the 2017 NASG Convention cars are now listed on the recently created "Small Manufacturers" page.
If you are a small manufacturer (or you happen to know of one) who provides products directly aiding the S-scale modeler (whether AF, scale, or narrow-gauge), please contact the NASG webmaster to have your products listed in this new section of the NASG web site.
The NASG is about connecting manufacturers and modelers. If you have the funds, or are a larger or more established company, you will likely already have a dedicated web site for your products. However, for the small manufacturer the costs of advertising and/or creating your own web site may be greater than any profits realized. Let's face it, a vast majority of manufacturers of model railroad products, regardless of scale, are mom-and-pop type of operations. So, this new section of the NASG web site is now available to help bridge the gap.
When you click on one of the buttons on the left or right side of this web site, a menu of options appears. As of today, when you hover your computer's cursor over any of those menu options for about one second, a small pop-up window appears that indicates the date of when that section of the web site was last updated.
The menu options when you press the "News" button have been changed. This was because some of those pages have become too long. The following have been changed:
1. "New S Products" and "Ongoing S Projects" have been merged.
2. The above two were then split up into product category pages (see the "S-scale..." menu options of the "News" button).
3. "General News" and "Saying our Farewell" have been merged into the new "Our Community".
4. The format of the individual pages has been altered slightly:
a) instead of many smaller photos, an entry now has larger photos.
b) descriptive text flows around the image, where applicable.
c) entries are sorted by date and title (as before) and then by descriptive name (this is new).
The objective of this redesign was to make the pages smaller, and to help you more quickly find the new products in which you are interested. The old design was implemented thinking that there weren't going to be too many updates, but we actually have quite a bit of S-scale news.
We have a new "News" section on the NASG web site, called "For Sale!". Click on the "News" button, and then click on "For Sale!". It is still a work-in-progress, but we have a few items listed there to begin with.
The public version of the September/October 2018 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available (includes the magazine article index on this web site). Also, the September/October 2019 Dispatch PDF can now be viewed or downloaded via the "Members Only" section.
Don Thompson sent the definitive listing of all the passenger cars that S-Helper Service released during their collaboration with American Models. These have now been corrected and updated in this web site's S Product Gallery.
With the publication of the August issue of the S Scale Resource, in which the webmaster wrote a review of currently-available S-scale figures, a new section has been added to the S Product Gallery. We now have a complete listing of all S-scale figures ever produced. Follow the link, or click on "S Product Gallery" and then click on the "Figures" menu options. A couple of manufacturers were discovered since the writing of that article, and several new figures are available from manufacturers listed in the article. These will be added in the near future.
In 1998 banta modelworks bought Buildings & Structure's product line. Then in 2014 they sold it to Commercial Scale Models, who revived the "Buildings & Structures" name again. However, in 2019 that company disappeared, so banta modelworks once again took over the Building & Structures product line. Because of this confusion, and just in case it gets sold again, the duplicate structures entries between these two company names have been removed from the banta modelworks company listing.
The public version of the July/August 2018 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available (includes the magazine article index on this web site). Also, the July/August 2019 Dispatch PDF can now be viewed or downloaded via the "Members Only" section.
The Product Gallery's "Vehicles by Prototype Manufacturer" section has been improved. Some brands, such as Ford, Chevrolet, etc. now have so many entries that their previous reports showed hundreds of entries on a single page. This made the pages overwhelming. So, an extra intermediate level has been added to the report, which is where you select the model that you want to see. So, if you select Ford, for example, you can now select F-150, F-250, etc. The final pages will have the models listed in the order of their prototype year (if that info is known).
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