Web Site News

Since the Product Notes section of pages has been growing and because it is directly related to locomotives and cars, access to the page has been moved from the "Modeling Notes" page of the "Extra Board" button to "S Product Gallery" button's menu. This provides quicker access and is close to the other content to which it applies.

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).

Thanks to the efforts by the Southeastern Michigan S Gaugers club, the NASG can now offer for sale the Modern-era clearance gauge. This era covers from 1983 to the present. If you model the Classic era, we have a gauge for that as well.

The public version of the May/June 2018 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available (includes the magazine article index on this web site). Also, the members-only issue of the May/June 2019 Dispatch PDF can now be viewed or downloaded via the "Members Only" section.

A large number of "specialty" cars and locomotives were moved to the regular S Product Gallery listings, because people were having a hard time finding them, because they didn't look there. So, now only the ones that are truly unique are listed in the "Specialty Cars & Engines" section.

Up until now, the home page photo that was the oldest was replaced with a new photo each weekend. From now on, the newest photo is added as the first photo, while all the others are pushed further down. The oldest, i.e. the last, photo will be removed when the new one is added. Also, the names of the image files will be changed, so that if your web browser caches the files, it will be forced to get the new one each weekend.

S-scale models of boats and ships were included in the "Structures" section of the S Product Gallery. This was done, initially, because we only had two or three to list. However, over time more have come to our awareness, so it is time to separate that group from building structures, and have their own page. We still only have a handful of them, so a one-page report is sufficient for now.

Looking at the site map of this web site, it now shows exactly 10,000 photos on this web site. Wow! Thank you all for contributing!

Scanned-in instruction sheets for the Kinsman express reefer kit are now available on this web site.

As more and more people contribute to the Products Notes ("Extra Board", "Modeling Notes", "Product Notes"), it has become clear that a more formal link between the S Product Gallery pages and the Product Notes pages (if available for a particular item) is needed.

So, if an item has content in the Product Notes section of the web site, there is now a "Modeling Notes" link shown in the description pages of the item in the S Product Gallery.

We've had an "Online Article" link in the item description for a while, but for some items there are two pages found, so the entry has been renamed to "Model Online Article" and a second one is now possible, too.

Another new link to an external web site has been added to the item description (where applicable), which is called "Prototype Link". As a matter of fact, there are two of them available, where needed. So, if there is a prototype article, video, or web site available matching the model, then a link will be provided.

Note that these are only applicable to the Locomotives and Cars sections of the S Product Gallery.

Since about 8% of male Caucasians suffer from color-blindness, the color of this web site's links has been changed. The previous use of dark green was too close to the regular black text, so colorblind people couldn't readily detect which texts were links to other pages. The new color is red.

When you used to hover over a link, its color changed from green to red. What happens now is only the underline appears. Note that links have always been bold, to help distinguish them from regular text.

Also, going forward, the web site will see minor changes here and there by separating out the links from the regular text. The NASG Dispatch page is a recent example of this, where the links now appear separate from, rather than embedded within, the paragraph of text.

The public version of the March/April 2018 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available (includes the magazine article index on this web site). Also, the members-only issue of the March/April 2019 Dispatch PDF can now be viewed or downloaded via the "Members Only" section.

The web site's main "NASG" button's menu was updated to better group related topics together, and the bottom section was sorted alphabetically.

The pages were re-formatted (behind-the-scenes were set up to be easier to maintain), and added the instruction sheets Ken Garber provided for the Amity Star Models bulkhead flat car kit.

Paul's photos have been on the home page rotation until today, so the photos were placed on a more permanent page on this web site, for all to enjoy.

The "by Manufacturer & ID" report has been re-formatted. The data is the same as before, but the report is more oriented toward the manufacturer's product ID, which is what was intended for this report all along. So, the first page of the report shows the listing of manufacturers, as before. When you click on one of those, a page appears with a listing of all of the manufacturer's product IDs. When you click the "View Entry" link to the right of a particular ID, you will see the product info page (same as before). This makes it very easy to find a particular product ID, if that is what you are looking for. Note that only products for which we have a known product ID are listed in this report. If you want to see all of the entries a manufacturer has produced, look at the "by Manufacturer & Type" report instead.

(The same as the above news item, except for the link on the left takes you to the locomotives report section.)

Ted has been collecting signs, and decided to share photos of them on the NASG web site.

There were a number of cars and engines that were categorized as "Baltimore & Ohio" and "Chesapeak & Ohio", but whose paint schemes were actually part of the Chessie System. The new road names "Chessie System (B&O)" and "Chessie System (C&O)" have been added, and those items that were mislabeled have been so updated. Also "Chessie System (WM)" was added.

Pieter Roos contributes an article and photos of how he built his horizontal-rib Erie hopper.

The public version of the January/February 2018 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the January/February 2019 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section.

Fred Schlegel shares more photos of his current layout.

Bob Werre scanned in a number of Train Stuff instruction sheets and with Don Thompson's blessing, we have posted them on this site.

Randy Griggs provided text and photos of two kitbashes he did to build S-scale trucks that he wanted to have.

The menu of the "S Product Gallery" button has been revised. It now provides menu options that take you directly to different product categories. Where applicable, you will be able to view standard-gauge products, the various narrow-gauge products, as well as A.C. Gilbert American Flyer products, all logically grouped together. As part of this revision, the narrow-gauge reports have been significantly expanded. All areas now have a somewhat similar look-n-feel to them.

Dispatch editor Bill Pyper has made some updates to the guidelines for Dispatch authors document.

The "Featured Video" section has been removed as being one of the main buttons, and it is now a menu item on the "Extra Board" button.

The two Product Galleries were embedded in the "Scale Modeling" button's menu and the "American Flyer" button's menu, respectively. However, they are such a dominant part of the NASG web site, that they really need to have their own dedicated button. (see November 11, 2018 entry above for the subsequent changes made)

The public version of the November/December 2017 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the November/December 2018 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section. There are no extra pages in this issue.

Some of the vehicle listings in the Product Gallery section of this web site are starting to number into the hundreds for the model manufacturers' reports. A page showing hundreds of models becomes unwieldy, so that report has been changed to add a third level that lists the models by their prototype manufacturer, before showing all those models on a single page. So, to sum up, the "Automobiles by Model Manufacturer" report now lists all the model manufacturers on a page, then when you click on an entry, it will list all the prototype manufacturers for which that company has made models, and, finally, when you click on one of those entries, it will show the final page listing all the models in prototype-data sorted order.

A video of the layouts at the 2018 NASG Convention.

Jace Kahn acquired the original Miller Engineering kit, and scanned the instruction sheets to share on the NASG web site. The 1950s kit was quite ingenious with its unique powered-truck system.

All of the publicly-available Dispatch issues have been indexed and documented. As newer issues become available to the public, their articles will continue to be documented.

The public version of the September/October 2017 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the September/October 2018 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section.

The web site statistics have been updated (a "Members Only" feature). I normally don't report this on this page, since it is updated in the first couple of days of every month. However, with the new "secure" version of the NASG web site (https://...), the web server tracks the hits separately for the non-secure and secure version. The software used to generate the monthly report's data was only looking at the non-secure version. The reports for 2018 have been adjusted to now account for both versions.

The listing of who won which award at the 2018 NASG Convention last week has been updated.

As webmaster, I added this new page to say a big "THANK YOU" to those whom have contributed to this web site's content over the years.

The S Resources section of the web site has been reworked. The button's menu has a couple of new entries. The pages no longer show the screen capture thumbnails, and the formatting has been simplified. More details are provided with each listing, but the overall look is a bit cleaner. The top of each page has a quick-jump listing to take you to a section within the page if you are looking for a particular company. Hopefully, this will make things easier to find.

Since elections are held every other year, having a dedicated page that describes the process is worth it. That page will be updated any time something election-related is reported. The page is accessed via the "NASG" button's menu and clicking on the "Elections" option. Please submit your nomination to run by November 30, 2018 for the upcoming election.

Mike Swederska recently created this track-side view of his layout.

Photos of models that Jim recently had 3D-printed.

The public version of the July/August 2017 issue of the NASG's Dispatch is now available. Also, the members-only issue of the July/August 2018 Dispatch PDF can now be downloaded via the "Members Only" section.

We don't handle any credit card or other financial data on this web site. When you purchase something through this web site (membership renewal or hard goods), the information about what you want is added to the shopping cart. When you decide to buy the items, your shopping cart data is copied to PayPal, which is where you complete your financial transactions. PayPal is responsible for keeping your financial data secure (part of the reason why I, as webmaster, have to pay a monthly fee for PayPal's services).

So, does the NASG's web site need to be secure? Not explicitly, but nonetheless there are two reasons for why you might want to browse the NASG web site with encryption active:

1. When you log into the Members Only section of the web site, your personal information can be retrieved and shown on the site.
2. On a secure web site, no one can see what you are doing, or what you are typing into the web site's forms.

So, we strongly recommend that, even while just routinely browsing, that you use the secure version of the NASG web site. You can do so by using this address:

https://www.nasg.org/

Note the "s". With the letter s, you are visiting the secure version; without it, you are visiting the non-secure version. With the secure version, no one can monitor what you are doing on this web site, or what data you are entering.

You may want to update any links you maintain to the site, such as in your web browser's bookmarks or favorites.

The list of the 2019 train shows where the NASG's booth will be present, has been posted on the web site. If you live in the area of any of these shows, please consider volunteering to help with the booth. We need local help to make the booths a reality.

The NASG offers free publications to S-scale clubs. The listing of the available publications has been updated.

Ken had Shapeways print a speeder and Alco C420 body parts. He shares the photos of what he received.