Alright I really don't have much compared to other model railroaders, but I am trying once again since it is kind of a foggy and cool night to go through and try to reorganize and inventory items I may have. Usually when I do this I find things I did not know I had. You know how when you start to work on your layout again you open storage bin's, tote's, and such looking for an item and everything get's put out where ever you can find a place to put it, which means all over the place. So I am going though all my pieces of track, rolling stock, wires and wiring, half built kits, etc... and get it straightened out so I have the opportunity to mess it up again in the near future. Strange how that works. While I am at it I hope to break down the main 2' x 4' section and do some wiring, been putting it off, maybe try some cork roadbed, etc... Do you ever organize and straighten your railroad empire mess, no matter the size of the empire? And how does it work out for you?
Some years ago I was inspired to list all of my locomotives and rolling stock in an Excel sheet. It's been quite helpful in identifying things I might want to sell. When I add new items, I add a note about where I bought the car or when my wife bought it for me as a gift. In looking through the notes; it reminds me how quickly the years pass by.
I try to do an annual cleanup and inventory of supplies. Yep, they tend to scatter over the entire area (and then some). I just recently did a complete overhaul of how I am storing and inventorying all my electronics supplies (LEDs, resistors, connectors, etc). I purchased 5 of the Stanley Pro Organizer units, rather than having everything stuffed into drawers, and the new system is really working nicely. Even made a spreadsheet where I entered a lot of the most used parts, with supplier and part number info. This is the storage organizer; the little cubbies seal up to the lid, so the parts stay in their bins For my rolling stock, I have always kept an inventory with full details.
I also have a spread sheet for my engines, and other for rolling stock. I keep one for my supplies, parts and paints. These help greatly for knowing it is time to order replacements.
The other benefit of listing locomotives, rolling stock, timetables or rail books is that we can make a special note of potentially valuable items. In this way, we assure that our loved ones don't sell special items at give-away prices when we pass away. I sometimes wonder what do with my 35mm slides. I'm no master photographer, but it'd be a terrible waste for these to go into the dumpster when I die. I see that White River Productions (publisher of Railfan & Railroad and other prototype magazines and books) openly offers to accept slide collections. There's no compensation, but at least collections will survive and shots will have a chance at publication. I've known guys who've scanned their slides and thrown them in the trash, but this sounds like a terrible idea unless they've used a publication-grade scanner and are skilled in photo editing.
I use Excel to keep track of my engines and rolling stock. I have one sheet that keeps track of the last time I ran a loco, and another that lists the maintenance and repair work that I've done, currently working on or is planned. Excel has a lot of great tools to help calculate the time since the last run, or the last maintenance (useful to see if a loco is a troublemaker - frequent shop layovers).
Maybe I should expand my Excel list to include the miscellany that some of y'all have mentioned, like kits and parts. It's a rainy cold day here, so I began to look through some old boxes and found some great N Scale stuff, including unopened structure kits from the early '80s that I'd completely forgotten about. One of the kits is by Quality Craft who made some wonderful craftsman products back then.
I have used Excel in the past but am not good about backing up, etc. and the files were lost or corrupted. Lately I have been using the personal inventory feature of the Trovestar N Scale database. It's real easy, just look up the item by model # or part # then when it pulls up that item there is a button on the bottom that says "Add to active inventory" The limitation is that it uses the stock information and photo from the database so it won't work for anything you have done custom or renumbered. And of course, it's only for N scale. http://www.trovestar.com/generic/group.php?Collection=4
I have all of my rolling stock on an Excel spreadsheet I keep on Box so I can access it from my phone. I have reduced my inventory 50% in the last two years. Once my layout was fully operational, I realized how little I needed to keep it “full”. I just put a new floor in my office, where my workbench is. That caused me to finally clean and inventory everything in there. I am purging excess projects as we speak. Why hang onto stuff I’ll never use?
I recently moved and acquired a new train room. Yay! One of the first things I did was put EVERYTHING RAILROAD I could find in that room, and nothing else. Then I sat on the floor one day and sorted everything into organized and labeled tubs. As mentioned above, I found lots of "lost" items. I only use clear storage tubs so I can see what's in there. As far as digital records, yeah I keep several Word docs. One is the roster, with a thumbnail photo of each piece and a full description. The second doc is layout specifications, where I have details about technical stuff (screw sizes, wire length, dimensions, etc). The third doc is actually just a daily log of activity. I only write one or two sentences usually, and clearly summarize progress of each day. This really helps me focus on upcoming projects and preparations that need to be made.
Having an accurate inventory list comes in handy for an insurance claim. Hopefully you will never have to use it.
Continuing to organize things, I went in the storage building outside looking for some N scale cows I had bought years ago. haven't found them yet but found a bunch of Woodland Scenics static grass, rocks I had made years ago with the mold, and a bunch of other WS detail things. Nice find as it is already bought and paid for, and didn't know I still had it. Like I said my inventory is small compared to others but this will take awhile. Wonder what else I forgot about and will find
Update to this - it is now possible to put in a custom photo and notes to your collection item. Say for example you have a locomotive that originally came un-numbered and did a custom numbering of it. You can now add your own photo if that particular locomotive by editing that item in your collection and this is the photo that will show when viewing your collection. This does not affect the photo that shows in the regular inventory. The notes part is great for showing the coupler or DCC status of that particular locomotive in your own collection. I just tried this on one and plan to add this information to all my locomotives.
