A few questions for everyone:
Do you use a computer based inventory system for rolling stock, locos, etc?
If you tried a computer based inventory system and didn’t like it, why didnt you like it?
Do you use a computer based waybill generator?
If you tried a computer based waybill generator and didnt like it, why didnt you like it?
Dave, can I add two more questions?
5)if you have used a computer based inventory/waybill etc, where did you get it and which have you found to be the best
claymore1977 asks:
A few questions for everyone:
Yes I have a CD with every model I own on it and I update it as needed.
See below
No…I prefer to manually sort and add waybills so I can have “overflow” cars.
Never tried one nor do I think I would like it. Again for better car flow control.
Brakie, do you use a vanilla spreadsheet or is it a customized app? Either way, whats the name of the software?
Also, what do you mean by ‘flow control’ ?
There was a good recent thread on this topic, I’m sure that searching on “inventory” will bring it up.
Having used a simple database program called Dataperfect since 1990 for inventory, I finally decided earlier this year that I had to migrate to a Windows-based program before the hard drive on my oldest computer (only one that can run the program properly) inevitably died. I’ve looked at, either in demo form or by web, all of the inventory programs that I’m aware of. I personally wasn’t impressed by any of them. Why didn’t I like them? In many cases I thought the data entry approach was clumsy, also the organization of the views was not to my liking, but most importantly, none of them matched to the information that I do and do not want to maintain.
If you have the Microsoft Office suite with the Access database, my recommendation would be that you build your own; this is what I did. Access has many flaws as a program (like all of Bill Gates’ creations), but is just fine for a simple project like a model railroad inventory.
You can also use the mail merge features of Access and Word to create paper waybills although it shouldn’t take more than an evening or two to do it manually.
Personally, I can’t understand why anybody would want to computerize switch lists, waybills, etc., although if I had or operated on a really complex layout perhaps I would understand. I have a wabill for each potential shipment to and from each online industry and community. I know the maximum number of cars the layout can handle in a “day” so I shuffle the waybills and deal out that number (after subtracting the number that are sitting on the layout waiting for their next move). Then I use the same process to match them to cars - i.e. randomly select car cards of the appropriate type. Simple, effective and far easier than messing around with any computer program. What’s not to like about the programs? Setting them up is tedious and time-consum
Steamnut:
I am asking because I consider myself Access savvy and am trying to make a application that is functional AND friendly enough that people here would use them. I just need to know what features people want! 
Thanks for the heads up, I will search for that thread!
Inventory system:
I use RRTrains2000, a free shareware Model Railroad inventory application. The great thing about it is you can export your data to Excel CSV files and then that can be uploaded into Access database too.
Waybill Generator system:
I have also used the Mad River Way Bill Generator and it is useful, requires some set-up. But I really like to write my own by hand. Might work on it some more to fine tune later. Also a FREE download.
Did I mention that they are both Free!
I like that price!
Sort of. What I’ve done for my home layout is create 3x5" index cars in Word, then print them. Since I saved the whole file, I guess you could say that it’s an inventory system. But it’s really a 250-plus page Word document.
At my club, we used MS Access and found out it was a lousy program. Very confusing, very unforgiving of errors, and difficult to work with. Now, we’re using FileMaker Pro 6, and so far I’m very impressed. I’ve only been fooling around with it for a few weeks, and already I can do more than I ever could with Access. Just last night, I figured out how to get the car card to read “When empty, return to (road name) via (staging yard)”. Since we have multiple staging yards in different directions, where the car returns to when empty is important to us. Now, instead of writing a waybill for every car movement, the car card itself can be used.
N/A, as I’ve tried and liked them. But I don’t see the need for my home layout to have an inventory system. At my club, yes, as we have 60 members and we need to keep track. But for home use? Unless it’s for insurance purposes, what’s the point?
I have used SwitchIt!, and the Mad River Waybill generator. Currently, at home, I play business agent and create all my waybills in my customized Excel file that prints 2x2" waybills that I cut out on my paper cutter.
SwitchIt! is incredibly complex. I could not make even the simplest of layouts get cars. And I’ve heard it’s worse and worse a
Here’s what I am after:
I received the game “Trains” on CD that had an inventory system built into it. Once everything is inventoried, you have the info on hand for your switchlist. My layout has around 10 industries so I just keep up with everything myself. For a large home or club layout, some type of program would be welcomed. i’ve got 50 locos and 300+ cars so it took a while to log everything. On the club mentuioned earlier with 60 members, man, that would really take some time and I suspect would be unmanageable without the aid of a PC
Its a custom system my son made…It uses Excell.
Flow control is how cars are cars head to or at industries…If I want to have “overflow” cars for a given industry all I need to do is pull some extra inbound load waybills for that industry thus I have more cars then that industry can handle and must find a track to hold these cars till they can be delivered.This happens on the prototype for several reasons…
Gotcha, thanks for the info
tweet,
With our 60 members, you have no idea the time involved. [banghead] Heh.
On our old layout, we had 1000 locos and 2000 cars registered. And our layout back then was only 2500 sq. ft. with about 50 members. Our new layout is just over 6300 sq. ft. with 60 members.
Whatever program we use needs to be pretty robust to handle it all.
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven
Ergonomic Questions for all:
A) rolling stock → road name → car type
OR
B) rolling stock → car type → road name
FYI, its a work in progress shot, but heres what I have after about 30 Mins:
Still some work to do, but its coming along.
There is a very nice Access application in the Car Cards group on Yahoo by Dave Husman. It functions as an inventory program and car card generator, and is very complete. One of my back-burner projects it so update the data store to MSDE/SQL Server, since it’s far more reliable than Access. But I’ve kept my entire collection in the system for a couple years now and it works great. The only other thing I would do is make a few additional reports. I like to have a single-page list of items I own to carry along to train shows so I don’t purchase duplicates. Also an easy addition.
–Randy
Dave,
FWIW, I like option B better. Do you plan to differentiate the sizes/types of similar cars, i.e. 40’ single door box, 50’ single door box, 50’ evans door box, etc? Or would that be overkill?
I think Access is a good entry-level program, but it is not terribly robust. Are you planning to create Access forms to handle data entry, review, etc.?
Another thing to consider is cost. I don’t have Access now, and don’t really want to go spend any $$ for it, either, I’d rather use my money to buy some rolling stock, locos, or my new DCC system. Are there any open-source db’s that can be obtained for free? That could be kind of cool, from my point of view.
Interested to see where you go with this.
FT
I was considering adding that level of detail to the application as a built in pulldown list, but since there are thousands of car types, I was wondering if I just shouldn’t leave that field completely open to the user so they can type whatever they want.
After much debate, I am going to hybrid the two and add as many car types as possible, but also allow the user to add/edit/delete them as they see fit.
Oddly enough, I have the exact opposite view of Access. Having tore the guts out of it, I can say that Access is way more robust than I could ever need it to be. It has a VBA backend that you can write DLLs for, import ANY win32 dll and use, etc,etc. I have used Access as a datatable-less front end for a MySQL database on a remote server via OBDC, made a application that stores entire websites and generate them file by file on a hard drive with about 2000 pages per second throughput, etc. I have been unable to find any problem(data storage wise at least [:D]) that I have been unable to solve with access. The only issue is the learning curve is horrid, which is why most people go running to excel. I don’t blame them really, took me about 5 years of casual tinkering to learn enough to make Access useful to me! And yes, I plan to use forms and whatnot to make the interface. The pic i posted above is actually what I designed in a form. This is how i think I am going to present all the data access for my application. Drag and drop inventory re-arrangement, click and view data presentation. If there are any “What I really don’t like is…” or “What I really want out of an inventory program is…” Please post them here. The goal of this software is not to be a hardcore inventory program, since there are already a bunch of those, but more like a Operation Session Assistant. In fact, that is kinf
Access is ok for a simple application that will have one user at a time, but the weakness of Access is the back end database, not the user interface and programming. As soon as you get into more than one user, the weaknesses of Access start becoming obvious. It’s also rather slow with large databases. Luckily, the ‘lite’ version of SQL Server is free and it’s fairly easy to use Access as the front end to MSDE. I just find Access too easy to ‘break’ to be used for serious applications. Again - the back end, not the front end. The Access front end is fairly easy to use and you can create most anything you’d ever want with little code.
–Randy
Not to argue, but Access scales very well as a network app, you just have to code it right. But, for the most part, yes Access is not a good choice to use for enterprise level application. Normally what I use it for is concept development and display and then move it over to a VB6 app. If it needs to be particularly efficient, I will recode to C++.
That being said, since this project is none of the above mentioned, Access 2003 is just fine. [:D]
Dave,
First off, I hope you didn’t interpret my previous post as completely negative. I think what you are doing is a great thing. I would have to agree with Randy, though, that the problem with Access is in using it with multiple users, when locking the database to make a transaction. That being said, I also agree with you that it does provide a very simple way to make an application. I have done a couple myself back with Access v1.
If you can make a run-time module that we can use to tie into another backend db module, that would be excellent. My limited experience with ODBC is that it does give you some flexibility with that.
As to the question of designating the types of cars, etc., can you create an additional table that has the different varieties: box → 40’, 50’, etc.; tank → 30’, 40’, etc. Then make a form that lets the end user create whatever “types” he wants to fill in that table. Then on your inventory form, use the table of car types to create the drop-down box for type of car. The inventory table can just use and index number to relate to a row in the car-type table. If I go in to create another entry in the inventory and don’t see the car type listed, then I would have to go back (via a button or menu) to the car type form, enter the new type, then go back to the inventory sheet. You could also use this same methodology for keeping track of road names. IMO, this would give much more flexibility to your program.
I continue to be very interested in this. I hardly have any rolling stock and/or loco’s right now, as I am just starting out, so this would be good for keeping track of things as the collection grows. I also think operations is pretty cool, but admit to being pretty lost when it comes to making an operating plan. If your program will aid in that learning curve then that will really be a big help.
As for MS and their lack of visibility of free db backends, why would they want to publicize it? They want to pad th