This is related to the thread about not being able to find things. Have you ever bought two of something because you forgot you already had one. I’ve done that many times. Just counting Walthers structure kits, I’ve bought two ice houses, two gas stations, two double track truss bridges, and two of their sawmills. The latter I bought one forgetting I already had one on back order with Trainworld and it arrived shortly after ordering one from another e-tailer. I’ve bought duplicates of books about the Burlington and the NYS&W. On a number of occasions I’ve bought duplicates of magazines such as the annual Planning Guides and Great Model Railroads series. There are others as well.
I guess that’s the price you pay for getting old. But as Bob Hope once observed, old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.
I did that when I was young and it’s worse now that I’m old. Just visiting my bin box storage can be like Christmas when I was very young. I find stuff that I had no idea I bought.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
Well, over the years (about 21 since I started collecting HO equipment), I’ve had a series of stop-start, false starts on layouts. Because of that I really have not had the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of my purchases. Seems like I’ve always been busy building layout infrastructure, only to either change it and totally reconfigure or tear down all together.
I have tried to keep a catalog on a spreadsheet of what I’ve collected (I don’t buy many structure kits, I like to scratchbuild). In spite of it all, however, I’ve duplicated the purchase of some rolling stock. mainly the same model with the same road number.
Yes, I did duplicate the puchase of one open-top hopper w/ same road number. That’s no issue since I replaced it wtih a sticker.
Would it make sense to take a spreadsheet of rolling stock you have or a shopping list of what you need to train shows? I plan on doing that when going to the upcoming huge one in MD.
Not with kits or rolling stock, somehow I keep in touch with what I have that way. Probably because it’s easy to access and I visit it often enough. I have done that with scratch building materials, electronic components, other commodity type stuff.
When I bought the same box car twice, I went the spreadsheet route. Never have duplicated kits but I have done double duty, as it were, with commodity stuff.
I managed to get myself two copies of ‘Basic Model Railroad Benchwork’.
I also acquired an extra Jordan school bus kit and a switcher kit.
More recently I was buying the last few turnouts I needed. One of them I ordered was a Peco long Y. When I went to put them away the first thing I saw when I opened the drawer was a Peco long Y.
The thing I have the most duplicates of is the Athearn 40’ Canadian Pacific boxcar with the ‘Spans The World’ logo. I probably have a half dozen or more with the same road number. Of course they can be re-numbered, but the tricky part about that is that the lettering is quite faint so they look funny if you just slap a bright new road number on them.
I have bought a few items I had but not much. Much more of a problem is remembering what I have but that is going away as I am downsizing my fleet and upgrading at the same time. Got a rule now, for every thing I buy, two must go, be another year or so before I get to the amount of stuff I want to keep.