I just have been back in the hobby a year or so and did a quick inventory and realized I have already spent thousands of dollars. Should I take out extra insurance? I know some companies limit the payout for one type of collection such as artwork or CD collections. How would this work with trains? Has anyone had to make a claim or taken out extra insurance to cover the railroad investment?
Check with your insurance agent. I don’t know how things work in Canada but you can get a rider on your homeowner’s policy in the US that will cover collections, including trains. I suggest you take both a video and photographs of the entire layout, anything more expesive than an Athearn BB box car, and all the completed and uncompleted structure kits. It’s not easy to convince an insurance company that a $30 kit is really worth $100 in replacement value because of the time and details you added building the kit. Brass and expensve plastic engines aren’t a problem since there’s apretty weel estabish market for thses items. It’s all the other things. like the $350 of WS trees, that will take some persistence to get replaced without depreciation.
Photo’s. A great idea! I’ve done this before. Thanks for the reminder.
We over-insured our home and will start over if it is lost. The trains would be the very last. If they dont survive the disaster, out to the dumpster they go and I’ll get started working on a new trainset with a engine purchase. In fact we were reviewing our coverage recently and learned that real estate values have caught up to our coverage level and increasing each quarter. We may have to write a new policy on the home soon. By then I’ll present the collection to the insurer and declare a replacement value for them. That money will seed a new railroad.
We think of our home as 10 dumptruck loads of trash that will need to go if it should get flattened by a tornado. There is no sentimental value or any other encumberance attached to the building. It is strictly a place where one can have food, water and shelter in a good part of town.
There is a old saying, whereever you are, there you are… are you happy here?
You can get an insurance rider through the NMRA. It is pretty flexible and gives discounts if you have a house alarm system and/or a written inventory. You can find it at http://www.nmra.org/model_collection_insurance.html.
Regards,
Greg
No matter where you go, there you are. Are you happy there? If not, go somewhere else to see yourself yet again.
Happy here, happy there, happy, happy everywhere! I feel very sorry for the folks that can’t make that claim about themselves. (Alfred E. Neumann got it right - “What, me worry?”)
As for the subject at hand, happiness is a competent insurance agent. Consult yours, and don’t try to cut corners. (also, unless you live on a mountaintop in the Dessicated Desert, don’t forget flood coverage, which isn’t provided by the typical homeowner’s or renter’s policy.)
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - fully insured)
Read your policy. Most cover replacement cost of contents up to some maximum. Frequent exclusions are jewelry and cash, but no other exclusions (read the exclusions, if its not excluded, its covered). So trains should be covered. Taking some pictures and putting them in the safety deposit box is not a bad idea, that goes for all your possesions really.
This might be a good time to suggest to folks that they keep a “dash kit” somewhere in the bedroom. It should have a couple of disks, a DVD of your rooms to show your stuff, plus pans of any collections that are valuable, and a CD with a reasonably current inventory. It should also have important documents such as insurance policies and passports, social security cards, maybe some cash to get you past the first 72 hours in a major event…those type of things. It, your kids, your wallet, and you’re out the door. You’ll hopefully have the pet with you…
It would be nice to get the car out of the driveway, too, but first things first.
Your collection of trains is more then likely NOT covered unless your insurance company is aware of your collection. I collect diecast cars and my basic home owners insurance only would cover 1000 dollars if something happened. My collection is worth around 20000 dollars so I had to buy collector insurance for them. My trains have been added on to this collector insurance. It is very cheap to buy but it must be appraised and inventoried. Same thing goes with guys with collector cars, if its not appraised you might be in for a very rude surprise if something happened to it.
I had a house fire in 2001. The house wasn’t completely destroyed, but there was extensive smoke and water damage and the house was almost completely demolished and rebuilt.
The flames didn’t get into the layout room but the heat did. I had a two-level layout and, on the uppper level, all of my plastic cars, engines and buildings melted. Even the plastic ties on some track melted. On the lower level, the damage wasn’t as complete. Some cars, engines and buildings melted, some didn’t, some details or thinner sections melted.
I have always been kind of anal about maintaining an inventory of what I own and what I paid for it. So, after the fire, I packed up all my RR stuff and went through it all, piece by piece, deciding whether or not to keep it. That led to a list of RR items that were ruined and the sum total of their value.
My insurance adjuster explained that my home owner’s policy had three ‘buckets’ of money. One bucket paid for our living arrangements while the house was being rebuilt. There was no limit on that bucket and our insurance company put us up in a luxury, furnished condo for 11 months at $3200 per month. Another bucket of money paid for the reconstruction of our house. The depth of that bucket is determined by the policy you’ve been paying for, ours was ‘replacement cost’, and the insurance company’s assessment of your house’s size and value. This is where it does not pay to conceal that nice finished basement. If you haven’t been paying for the coverage, this bucket may run out before your house is rebuilt the way it was, pre-fire. The third bucket of money pays for ‘contents’, this includes a multitude of things like linens, food, silverware, clothing, medicin
jco, are you saying that your insurance agent led you to believe that if there was enough money in the “contents” portion of your coverage, you would be paid out for the full value of your model railroad losses?
That is definately not what I have been led to understand by my insurance company (Wawanesa). For anyone reading this, I have been advised that I would have to have the collection appraised and then a “schedule” for additonal coverage put on if I wanted to be sure that I was insured. This, of course, is impractical as we are not speaking of something like a piece of jewellry or artwork.
Otherwise almost all insurance companies will have a limit on the dollar amount they will allot specific groups of possessions such as computer equipment, cameras, jewellery, and yes, trains. You can have all the general coverage you want, but you won’t be paid more than the limits in the policy. If you have more money left in the coverage pot after all the contents have been reimbursed, you will never get more for collections of camera equipment, computers, computer software or model trains than that policy limit on those items.
Those limits are like the double 00 on a roulette table. They give the company the edge in odds.
After beginning a large layout and prompted by knowing jcopilot and the tragedy of his house fire, I decided to explore additional coverage for my layout and rolling stock. If you are an NMRA member, you can take advantage of a property insurance program sponsored by them. Check the NMRA info here. They have various plans - some require an inventory, some do not.
Greg
Ask your agent!
Most cover personel collections up to a point. Mine doesn’t cover my 25K in LEGO so I don’t expect the trains are any safer. Also the policy may only cover a single collection. So your wives collection of Dolls maybe covered but forget the trians.
Collections aren’t part of your household goods under most policies. Your bedroom set, China, Dishes, plasma TV, etc.
Some companies will write a seperate policy on a collection so your homeowners policy stays the same and the policy will cover your wives precious moments collection but your layout and train collection are on their own policy.
Again talk to your agent.
Cheers