This page highlights changes made to this web site.
Neil Froese continues to make good progress on his sectional, point-to-point modernday layout. He sent in some updated photos, as well as some additional details about his layout.
Neil Froese provided photos of several of his finished Kaslo cylindrical hoppers.
The Clubs page has been reformatted to group the listing of clubs by both their region and their club name. This should make it easy to find a club in which you are interested in joining, or visiting if you are going to be in the area.
Note that since the re-design of the web site in early December, you can now send club photos and detailed layout descriptions of your club's layout(s) to the NASG webmaster for inclusion in your club's page on this site.
Bill Lane provides photos of Train Stuff passenger cars.
Since it looks like the lockdowns are continuing, a new "Live Events" section has been added to the main Events page of this web site, to offer a listing of events that you can join remotely and still be able to talk to fellow S enthusiasts live. If you know of another live chat or Zoom meeting that occurs routinely and involves S, please contact the webmaster so that we can add your event, too.
Jim Kindraka contributes photos of his Train Stuff box cars.
Early in 2020 Paul Washburn finished two Pacific Electric box cars and a caboose that he built from scratch. A couple of photos have been added of those models.
The listing has been updated based on the final listing that Don Thompson provided.
Marvin Harger sent in an idea for his lamppost installation. This led to the creation of a new page in the "How-to" section of this web site where modelers can share concepts, thoughts, and ideas they have, to solve a particular modeling problem. Hopefully these will be useful to other modelers as well, regardless of preferred modeling scale.
Paul's latest scratchbuilding project has been the SP 4-8-0 #2914, which he has finished. The completed-model photos have been added to his page that shows some of the construction photos he took.
Two more photos of Bob's custom-decorated equipment were provided by Tom Lennon and Dave Branum.
Brooks provided some photos of models that he scratchbuilt and kitbashed.
Several new and missing photos added to the Product Gallery.
A while back (sorry, Paul!) Paul Washburn sent in some photos of an SP flat car he scratchbuilt. Two photos have been added to his scratchbuilding page.
Dick Karnes shows three AF-based kitbashes he has done.
Photos of Bob Nicholson's layout were contributed by Jim Kindraka, and several additional model photos provided by Alan Williams.
The home page photo descriptions have been moved to the Welcome page.
Bill Winans sent a couple of photos of Tommy's layout.
We have added a new page to the web site covering photos of kit-bashed pieces of rolling stock that people have done. Bill Winans starts us off with a photo of his shortened American Models bay-window caboose.
Charles Malinowski shares with us a couple of photo he had taken of the original version of the NASG switching layout.
Charles Malinowski provided information about the parts he uses to build his S-scale T-TRAK modules.
James Akerson provides information and some photos of his under-construction layout.
We have added a new page to the web site covering photos of structure kit-bashes that people have done. Mark Charles starts us of with the first two. More contributions are definitely welcome, as they are a great way to show off your creativity.
Mark Charles provided two photos of Barry Pazan's "Old Motor Trucks" company's models. If you have one of his models, we would love to have more photos. Barry is no longer actively producing these models commercially, but he is still around.
"Meter gauge" is a narrow-gauge where the rails are one meter apart.
This past summer, Paul built an ATSF 2-8-0. He shared a few construction photos (mostly of the tender), so enjoy!
Rich Abraham provides photos of two B&O box cars that John Huster had S-Helper Service produce back in 2000.
Over the years that I have maintained this web site, I have had a couple of people ask me about how to search for text within this web site. I offered some suggestions on the how-to-search page I put on this web site. However, thanks to Michael McConnell's leads and tips, we now have an embedded search field within the web site on that same page. You can click on "Site", then "How to Search This Site", or click the link below.
Greg Hurd has been researching the product line that Cleveland Model & Supply (Cleveland Designs/C-D) produced when they were active in S-scale. He shared his research so far with us and our web site has been updated with what we now know.
We have added to the Product Gallery some more of Roy Meissner's previously-produced trailer models. Information and photos come courtesy of Roy Meissner and Mark Charles.
John has been researching S-scale (or very close thereto) model airplanes. He learned that both Yat Ming and Model Power made some 1:64 and 1:63 models. Neither company still exists, but their airplane models can be readily found on the Web with a bit of searching.
See some in-progress construction photos of this new locomotive. Updated with information about the wheels and the latest photo of the model.
The NASG web site has been fully revised with a new version, and is now ready for your enjoyment.
Why The Change?
The primary purpose for the change was to make the web site display better on small-screened devices, such as cellphones.
What Was Changed?
1. Every single page (over 32,000 of them!) was revised to better support both small, medium, and large screens.
2. The "Clubs" button has been moved to the left side, and the "Resources" button has been moved to the right side (all the modeling-related topics are now on the right-hand side).
3. The stand-alone letter "S" has been removed from the main buttons' texts that had them before.
4. The pop-up menus that appeared when you clicked on the main buttons are now replaced with a "landing page", which offers you the same links to the various pages that cover that section of the web site.
5. The font is no longer hard-wired to a certain size, so you can use your web browser's font-size setting to adjust it to your liking (defaults to whatever your web browser uses).
6. The "Product Gallery" section has had "Cars" renamed to "Rolling Stock", to avoid confusion with automobiles (technically, the term "rolling stock" also includes locomotives, but we use it to imply freight cars, passenger cars, maintenance-of-way cars, and cabooses).
7. The "Members Only" part of the web site is now referred to as the "Members Only Portal".
8. The home page has less clutter on it, and the photos are fully visible now.
9. Clicking anywhere on the home page will lead to the Welcome page.
10. As you navigate your way around the site, the main button's background color changes to indicate in which section of the site you are.
11. The Clubs pages have been re-formatted to allow for more content to be added, including more club-provided photos.
What Was Removed?
1. Absolutely no content was removed.
2. Typos, grammatical errors, and factual errors were discovered, and so they were fixed.
What Is New?
1. The "How-to" section was not fully flushed-out yet in the previous version, but it is with this new update.
2. The "News" section's pages have had their formatting changed dramatically, because the old way didn't work on cellphones.
3. The "Product Gallery" section's final-report pages (the ones showing the products' details) have been re-formatted, because the old way didn't work on cellphones.
4. Since I effectively stopped maintaining the web site during most of November to focus all my efforts at this new version, there are a lot of News entries added, so be sure to visit that section of the web site.
What May Not Work?
1. Internal paths and file names have been changed in some areas, so previous bookmarks, shortcuts, or links that you may have to pages on this web site, may not work anymore.
What's Next?
1. If you have submitted content for consideration for the web site, that content may not have been added yet due to the large amount of time it took to get this revision done. Your content will be added to the site soon. As a side note, on December 3rd, 2020, I had 255 entries in my "to-do list" for content to add to the NASG web site. Who says nothing is going on in S?
2. Especially in the "Product Gallery", clicking on photos will, over time, show larger versions.
3. Normal, routine updates of the site's content will now resume on a regular daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
Report Problems
If the site doesn't work on your device, please contact the webmaster. It has been tested on Windows PCs, Apple computers and mobile devices, and Android phones. It has not been tested on Linux. It works with the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Safari. It will work "OK" with the older Microsoft Internet Explorer versions, except that it doesn't display grids correctly. Since Microsoft has abandoned maintenance of Internet Explorer in favor of their new Edge browser, we will not add support for the older Internet Explorer browsers to this web site due the large amount of time it takes to maintain support for older browsers. If you are using I.E., please consider switching to, or adding, one of the other web browsers with which to visit this web site.
Upgrade History
Since most people do not maintain web sites, you may not know what it entails. If you are interested, you can read the rest of the report, otherwise just ignore it.
When I last did a major revision of the NASG web site, which was released in September 2016, the ability to properly handle browsing on mobile devices was just starting to be formed into a standard. Most web browsers did not fully support the new standard yet. It has been on my "to-do list" to get a mobile-friendly version of this site done. After initial experiments, it became clear to me that it was going to require a full re-design, having to modify every single page of the site. The main issues then became, creating a design that looks good on all browsers and all devices, and finding the time to do this work. Starting in 2019, I have been converting most of my other clients' web sites to be mobile-friendly. The NASG web site has the most complex user interface. I started experimenting with new designs for the NASG web site in early 2020. However, in around April/May 2020, the ideas of adding three new major sections to the web site, and retiring three other sections came up. Since this meant new pages for the web site, those sections were tackled first, as their completion would give me a good overall idea of all the design elements I would need for this new version of the web site. So, the "Layouts", "How-to", and "Site" main sections were created first. My initial estimate of it taking only three weeks to do those new sections was laughably inaccurate. I have been a computer programmer for 30 years now and I am well aware of feature-creep and unmet deadlines. I finally completed these new sections in late August 2020. In mid-September 2020 I started in earnest working on the NASG web site's new version that you are seeing now. I worked full-time on this project. I estimate I have between 700 and 800 hours invested in just this re-design and upgrade alone (8 to 10 hours per day, 7 days per week, for two and a half months). It has been a monumental effort, but it was needed and it was worth it. I hope you find this site useful for your own modeling purposes, and be sure to recommend this web site to your friends and family members who also show in interest in S.
Terry O'Kelly has scanned in the instruction manual that accompanied the S-Helper Service/American Models RS-3 locomotive.
Rich Abraham provides several missing product photos.
The listing of new farming-related models announcements has been extracted out of the vehicles report and made into its own report.
The public version of the November/December 2019 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the November/December 2020 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section.
Dale Minard provided photos of several missing Downs tank cars:
Ed Kirstatter provides photos of a recently-completed kit, decorated for the MILW.
Tom Detmer provides photos of the missing Shaker Heights trolleys by Putt Trains.
Dick Karnes has provided us with a set of photos of models he has created using the Union Station passenger car sides. These sides are mounted to an American Models passenger car core, to yield the final prototype model that you want on your layout.
Greg Hurd provided information about the full listing of Super Scale models (as of 1950).
Ted Larson provided information about Shinsei Corporation 18-wheelers. This California-based company has closed, but they produced a number of 1:64 vehicles.
Greg Hurd sent us a number of photos and detailed information about his two layouts.
Roger Nulton spearheaded getting the info and some photos together of Russ Segner's beautiful Sn3 layout.
Ed Kirstatter provided photos of his recently completed Northeastern Scale Models stock car.
Wayne Kennerley shares with us the early stages of his new Sn42 layout.
Greg Hurd has been an S-scale modeler since 1949, and his layout has been featured in the S Gaugian magazine a few times.
Ted Larson provided pages from a catalog that "The Monon Shop" produced of their S-scale product line.
Gaylord Gill provides a photo of the kit parts that make up Bar Mills' "The 1-Kit".
Paul Washburn completed his kit of the Smoky Mountain Model Works B&O M-15K box car, and sent us some photos of it.
If you added an item to the shopping cart of this web site, and then removed it (either individually, or by emptying the shopping cart entirely on the "View Cart" page), you could no longer add that exact same item back to the shopping cart again later on. This issue is now fixed.
Bill Busacca and Dale Kreutzer provide some additional photos of Bill's layout. These nicely complement the ones shown on the web page linked to at the bottom of our page.
Andy Malette sent in some more photos of his re-work of the Overland Models SD40-2W, and some more details about what he did to make the model more prototypically-correct.
Ted Larson has been scouring eBay for photos of Winross vehicles. The photos he has provided have all received permission from the eBay seller to be used on the NASG web site.
Steve Terni provided a couple of photos of his fantastically-detailed AF layout. Be sure to catch the feature article on his layout in the December issue of Classic Toy Trains magazine.
Bill Winans provides missing photo of the Precision Scale Co bulkhead flat car.
Don Mills provides missing photos of the S-Helper Service undecorated model of their SW1 locomotive.
Bill Lane provides photos of the American Models hopper that was part of the 2012 Spring S Spree.
Ed Kirstatter provided a photo of his completed Perma-Bilt CNW box car.
The public version of the September/October 2019 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the September/October 2020 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section.
Dick Karnes provided two photos of Bob Christopherson's layout before it was demolished due to a move.
Dick Karnes provided one more photo of his layout, showing a very interesting scene.
David McBrayer provides missing photo of the American Models streamlined combine passenger car painted for the Northern Pacific.
Ted Larson provides missing photo of the Pacific Rail Shops WFEX reefer.
Dick Karnes provides the text and photos for the new "How-to" section's "Heavy Electric" page.
Woody Mitchell shares with us how he built his model paint shaker. Includes photos and a video.
Jim Brown provided updated information about his Sn3 layout under construction.
Bob Graves provided updated information about John Constans' Sn3 layout that the San Diego S Gaugers received following John's passing.
Dick Karnes actually found some photos of his very first "permanent" layout!
Gregg Mummert provided a link to his page showing the progressions of his annual Christmas layout, including the one from December 2019.
Bob Graves provided a link to his web site, as well as information about his American Flyer layout.
Gregg Wujcik provided a track plan and a photo of his under-construction layout.
Bill Lane provides photos of the Greenbrier GP30 for the Reading (includes a video of the engine running) and the PRR.
Bill Winans provided an in-progress photo of a Locomotive Workshop box car for which we did not have a photo yet.
Ed Kirstatter completed another Perma-Bilt box car model for which we did not have a photo yet.
The new "Battery Power" page in the "How-to" section has been added and completed.
Both photos and a track plan have been added for Bill Young's layout.
Bob Hogan helped make sense of the various configurations of Bob McCarthy's "The Supply Car" box car kits. Bob also provided some more photos of models he has recently completed, specifically the NP reefer car (which was a rare kit).
Bill Lane shared photos and a video of his P-B-L standard-gauge Shay.
Woody Mitchell provided photos of his scratchbuilt bridge.
Brooks Stover offered a link to his web site where he has a page where he covered some of his scratchbuilt models. Brooks also made available to us a PowerPoint presentation on how he scratchbuilds wood-frame structures without spending a lot of money. You can download it from the page linked to above.
Paul Washburn completed the construction of two ATSF Caswell gondolas. He sent us some photos, and so a page was added to this web site to document that project.
Both photos and a track plan have been added for Ron Schlicht's home layout.
Both a track plan and one extra photo have been added for Steve Monson's layout.
Jamie Bothwell provides a photo of the B.T.S. PRR XA box car kit built and decorated.
The content related to scratchbuilding that used to be on this web site has been re-formatted and brought into the new "How-to" section's "Scratchbuilding" menu option. Check it out, as there are a couple of new items added as well.
A new page was added for Gregg Miller's layout, with photos and a track plan.
Shane Lambert provided info and a link to his web site showing his new layout under construction.
Both photos and a track plan have been added to Brian Nicholson's layout page.
Gary Carmichael provides us with a brief introduction to his current project, which is a triple-gauge diorama based on Pittsburgh's West End.
John Agnew sent a number of photos and some information about his fantastic Sn42 (Sn3-1/2) layout on the other side of the world.
Both photos and a track plan have been added to Bob Johnson's layout page.
Both photos and a track plan have been added to Jim Mallone's layout page.
Darby Marriott shares with us additional photos and a video of William Flatt's layout.
A track plan of Jeff Madden's layout has been added to Jeff's layout page.
A track plan of Neil Froese's layout has been added to his layout's page.
A track plan for Dave Heine's previous layout has been added to his page.
We did not have an entry for this locomotive in the Product Gallery section of the web site.
We had no Seltzer's freight cars listed, but George shares a few photos of models he has.
Ed Cooper's layout page has had a track plan and several more photos added to it.
Marvin Harger's layout page has had a track plan added to it, and two updated photos added.
Mike Fyten's layout page has had two photos added, as well as a track plan by Joe Kimber.
William Flatt's layout has more information about the layout, and a track plan and photos were also added.
A page has been added to capture information and photos of the NASG Switching Layout. You can access this page via the "NASG" button on the left, and then clicking on the "NASG Switching Layout" menu option. If you have any correction, extra information, and especially photos, please contact the NASG webmaster.
The public version of the July/August 2019 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the July/August 2020 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section.
The track plan and photos of Bob Hadlow's layout have been added.
New photos and a track plan were added to Norm Delucchi's (now-previous) layout.
Photos and a track plan have been added of Jim Bezek's Christmas layout.
Layout details and photos of Bruce Hanley's Sn3 layout have been added.
Ron Kemp shares information and photos of his new, under construction, layout.
Ed Kirstatter completed a CB&Q box car, and shared the final photos with us.
Bill Winans provides photos of Arden Goehring's, Nelson Steinmetz', Ron Tilton's, and Norm Delucchi's (Sn3) layouts.
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
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.
Information and/or photos added about Frank Criswell's, Rich Gjanak's, Michael Fox', Brooks Stover's (previous and current), and Steve Monson's layouts. Photo added to Steve Doyle's layout. Videos added to Bob Werre's, Michael Fox', Steve Doyle's, and Ken Zieska's 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.
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 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.
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.