Welcome to the NASG Web Site (2024)

Welcome to the National Association of S Gaugers' web site! The NASG is a non-profit organization that supports all 1:64, or S-scale, modelers, manufacturers, and vendors. We have a ton of content, so take your time exploring this web site.

The 2024 NASG Convention, to be held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is now officially open for registration! We invite you to join other S enthusiasts to the "S Event of the Year", where we will have rail- and non-rail tours, vendors bringing their S wares, informative clinics, and contest models to show. Get inspired and enthused about modeling and about S! Bring your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, and your display or contest models. Spend time with old friends and make new ones. Make a vacation out of it! Visit a beautiful part of our country. You can find all of the details on our web site here, or click on the "Events" button.

copyright © Alan Balma; used by permission.

PRR #9175, an NW2, in the fall of 1956, crosses a lake with cars to be interchanged with the NYC in Canandaigua, NY. The NW2 and the freight cars are from S-Helper Service. The house is a B.T.S. "110 Second Street" kit. The girder bridge is a 90-foot Walthers HO-scale kit and sits on Pre-Size Model Specialties abutments. The background trees are all Scenic Express Super-Trees, and the foreground trees are made from Woodland Scenics armatures with Super-Tree material affixed. The water is art resin topped with Woodland Scenics Water Ripples. An interesting side note on the NW2; S-Helper Service is to be commended for their accuracy in producing this model, in that the Pennsylvania Railroad only had one Tuscan-colored NW2 and it was road number 9175. You can see more photos and a description of Alan's layout, the PRR's Elimira Branch, on this page. This photo appears on the inside cover of the June 2024 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman magazine in the NASG promotional ad campaign. For information on how you, too, can have a photo of your layout appear in one of the NASG ads in RMC, see this page.

copyright © Jim Martin; used by permission.

Jim Martin provided this beautiful shot taken on his layout. The "Port Dover Branch" layout is a U-shaped, sectional layout, where the engines run on internal batteries and they are controlled via BlueRail Trains' system. You can see a few more photos of Jim's layout on this page.

copyright © John Henning; used by permission.

John Henning's EMD BL2 has a beautiful Chesapeake & Ohio paint scheme on it. The BL2's look is always polarizing as some people really like its looks and some people think it is ugly. EMD introduced this engine in 1947. "BL" stands for Branch Line, and it was EMD's attempt at creating a road switcher that had good visibility in both directions. EMD wound up only selling 59 of these engines, as the railroads simply weren't interested in them. The S-scale model was produced by B.T.S. in 2005. It consisted of a resin body. The model was available as a body-only kit, or a complete kit that included the American Models drive system. Greenbrier Railroad Models bought several of these kits, built them, and sold them fully painted and decorated. John's model may well be one of those. By the way, Bill Wade, of B.T.S., still has the molds for this body, so if there is enough demand, he could be talked into doing another run of these. His original run's production number were around 50 models. So, if you have one of these, they are rare. You can see a few more photos of John's layout on this page.

copyright © Bill Winans; used by permission.

Bill Winans has been steadily making progress on his layout. This overhead view is of a coal tipple scene on the Coal Creek Central branch line of his Saint Louis Eastern and Pacific layout. The branch line is narrow-gauge (Sn3). Bill's track work is a work of art. In the corner of the layout he built a wye that contains a crossing through one of the legs to serve the larger coal tipple. The track at the bottom of the photo serves as a run-around track that also leads to a spur to a second coal tipple. The open space of the wye cleverly holds the water tower, and another leg of wye connects to the engine servicing facility shown on the far right of the photo. You can see construction photos of Bill's layout, as well as a track plan on this page.

copyright © Roger Nulton; used by permission.

Southward train #5 pounds the diamonds of the NYC and PRR at Ames Junction. The two F3 A-units were produced by S-Helper Service. Roger converted them to Phase 1 versions by installing high fans, removing the grills between the two portholes, and installing a third porthole. The B-units only needed high fans. He used decals sold by Microscale Industries, a product line whose S-scale decals are now owned and available from Des Plaines Hobbies. You can see more photos and details about Roger's layout on this page.

copyright © Bob Hogan; used by permission.

This photo was taken by Bob Hogan on his Sierra Northern Railroad. The SP cab-forward #4294 is a Southwind Models AC-12. It is pulling a long string of Pacific Rail Shops R-40-24 PFE reefer kits which Bob assembled and weathered. The Truckee local on the siding is a Smoky Mountain Model Works resin kit for a GE 70-tonner that Bob modified, detailed, painted, and lettered per Southern Pacific's actual #5119. The caboose behind it is a Gold Coast Railway brass C-30-1 model that he also painted and lettered. This photo appears on the inside cover of the May 2024 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman magazine in the NASG promotional ad campaign. For information on how you, too, can have a photo of your layout appear in one of the NASG ads in RMC, see this page.

copyright © Hugh Sinn; used by permission.

Hugh Sinn built this water tank kit and recently displayed it at the Valley Forge Railroad Prototype Meet (RPM). The kit is by Lehigh Valley Models, a product line created by the late Frank Titman, but now owned by K&P Brick Co., and is available as kit #LVM21. The kit is modeled after the 50,000-gallon water tank found in Gordon, PA (northwest of Harrisburg, PA), serving the Reading railroad. The Lykens Valley web site has a photo showing the real tank.

copyright © Paul Washburn; used by permission.

Paul Washburn recently completed this scratch-built Santa Fe stock car. The model is mostly built up out of Evergreen styrene. The 7/8 corrugated ends are cast-resin. The side ladders are from a Pacific Car Shops kit, the AB brake set and air hoses came from Model Railroad Resource 3D Division, the Dalman Andrews trucks are a Custom Model Depot product, and the wheelsets are from NorthWest Short Line. Paul painted the model using Tru-Color Paint #TCP-251 "Santa Fe 1945+ Freight Car Brown". He applied decals from K4 Decals, using various Santa Fe decal sheets to put together what he needed for this car. Santa Fe converted 1,750 Bx-3 and Bx-6 40-foot box cars, which were built in the 1920s, into class Sk-2 stock cars during WWII, as the box cars were becoming too small, but they still had a useful life to them. If you enjoy scratchbuilding, then feast your eyes on a number of other projects Paul has completed over the years.

copyright © Bill Lane; used by permission.

Bill Lane recently completed his yellow "Year of the Cat" SD40-2. He stated that he must have spent about a hundred hours into getting the model as shown in the photo. These are very early brass models that usually didn't run well (remember, brass models were initially intended primarily for display purposes), had cold-solder joints, arrived unpainted, and these particular engines were gauged to the old NMRA wheel standard of the time. The second engine in this lash-up was Bill's first SD40-2 that he completed in 1990. You can see a video of this consist pulling a very long mixed-freight train in his YouTube video.