I use (and like) Yard Office as well. One of the joys of doing an inventory for me, especially since I have just moved into a new home, is finding the one-offs and oddities of the collection…for example:
A flatcar with an SS Minnow load!
Much like gmpullman I seem to have about 30+ Pacemakers, and hope that soon the MoPac version of the car gets someone to make a similar number!
A dearth of Stock cars (my era is late 60’s/70’s but still)
My 1955 Wake Forest NCAA Baseball championship car (and I didn’t go there…)
Keep track of loco’s on one sheet, including maintainance, decoder and settings, and any issues and repairs.
Freight cars are grouped by type, then manufacturer, then roadname. Make notes of metal wheels, Kadee’s, and any modifications/repairs, as well as any special painting/decalling done.
Other items, such as buildings, tools, road vehicles, accessories are on a third sheet.
I have a spreadsheet that should have all of my locomotives, freight and passenger cars. You have convinced me that I need to recheck and update the inventory list I have. My locomotives have micro trains couplers and the cars have microtrains couplers and wheels before they become railroad ready.
It will make me feel like a hoarder. I have lots of rolling stock – exactly how much more than I need hasn’t been precisely calculated. I do have about 170 cars that are needed to execute the Ops plan on my layout. While I have tons of other cars, ironically there are still about 40 cars needed to complete the Ops plan that I don’t have built yet. The staging yard is full of extra cars, I have bins, drawers and boxes of finished cars not including a couple of file boxes full of kits.
I did start an inventory list once, but I lost interest before it was complete….
Fortunately the only cars I ever had to renumber are tropicana juice cars and they are white so I just created tiny white stickers to put over the old number. Af a spray of dullcote and some weathering you can’t tell.
I keep all my freight cars in clear plastic cases that hold about 10 or 12 cars depending on size. it’s easy to see if I have duplicate numbers. I also use the cases for my passenger cars. All of my sets are 7 70’ cars so they fit great.
The cases also stack very well. I know what I have at a glance.
I store excess power in a glass case that I have that can hold about 300 engines if I had that many. Makes for a nice display also.
I, just this week, have moved. although most of my equipment was already boxed up well before the move, in the final count, I had 21 boxes (averaging 2’x 2’x21/2’) of motive power and rolling stock. About 10 years ago, I set up an Excel workbook for my inventory and inventoried what I had at the time, and have inventoried very little since. I would estimate that, at the present time, I have less than 1/3 of it all inventoried. That much stuff was a real eye-opener for me. I’ll likely purge much of it (either selling or giving it away), as it is WAY more than I’ll use on my small switching layout. I do have to be careful, however, as I may change my plans and build a bigger layout later, I do have more room in my new digs. My guess is that I have well over 300 revenue cars, about 10 or so cabooses and about 40 locomotives. Suffice it to say, when I get my layout up and running again, I’ll have plenty of cars, as well as locomotives, to swap in and out on it.