This topic s probably one of if not the most over looked thing when it comes to model railroading at least it was for me. A post a few weeks ago reminded me of a really bad series of events that took place for me in Oct. of 2006. What had happened was a complete bizarre turn of events. Not long after she had turned the furnace on we had experienced a power spike throughout the neighborhood that took out the electronic control box on my oil burner causing it to overheat and crack the firebox filling my house with a oily black soot. The damage on the main floor of the house was relatively mild smoke damage wise but my brand new TV took a hit along with just about everything else that was plugged into an outlet.
Well the bulk of the damage was in the basement and yes you guessed it of course thats where the train layout was located. Well if any of you have ever had to deal with insurance companies as a result of fire damage or theft or anything else of that nature you know what a complete nightmare it can be but when it comes to model railroading lets just say at least my insurance company didn’t have a clue.
I got oh well they are just toys comment from the adjuster we’ll give you a couple of hundred dollars for the damage. I wanted to grab this idiot by the neck and choke the life out of him. Now understand I didn’t have a layout of the magnitude of Howard Zane’s or any other notable large home layout but it was plenty big for me and plenty of expensive. So I opened the top draw of my filing cabinet and pulled out my trusty Walthers catalog and started pointing to those “just toys” in the pages. $500 plus dollars for sound equipped BLI locomotives an other assorted high dollar items that I didn’t want to be reminded of how much I spent, a few hundred more like 600 plus pieces of rolling stock and on and on you get the picture. Just take an overview look of your layout and start adding up stuff in your head. So on top of all the other stuff in the house I have to show receipts for I have
I feel your pain although the incident wasn’t MRR related. Some adjusters seem to have a dollar amount already in their heads before they analyze the entire damage.
You are right about one thing, though, insurance is something we definitely take for granted until something happens and then we’re glad we have it.
I hope you were able to repair/replace most of your collection.
I pay a little extra each month for a “collectibles” rider. I store all of my inventory in a program called RRTrains. You can even file pictures with it. When I make an addition to my inventory, I burn the data file onto a CD. Make sure you include the folder(s) where the pictures are stored.
Many people have great inventory habits but a lousy data loss profile. If something happens to your “space” (house, garage, whatever) where you keep your CD, you’re screwed. In addition to making a CD, you should also make at least one spare copy and keep it located somewhere else, most preferably off-site. And this is where “online storage” can come in handy. If you don’t have a ready place located “elsewhere”, you can use “free web space” or else one of those online storage places-- many of them are also free-- I think google gives out space too-- to put the files from your CD. Zip them up and encrypt them if you think its necessary.
My wife and I have a proactive data recovery profile-- we have a package of scanned materials that we include on CD’s (DVD’s really) along with family photos and we send them out to the rest of the family. The data is stored on a set of hidden tracks that aren’t normally read by the DVD player, though if someone does spot it, its bundled and encrypted. So in the event of a catastrophic event all we need to do is retrieve one of the photo disks and we can recover our important documents. Meanwhile the family gets regular photo updates and they’re happy about that part-- so its win-win [:)]
I took a rider on my home owners several years ago to cover the railroad. The agent has access to my computer files through my website and every six months he gets an updated memory stick with photos, data bases, price lists, etc. Have had one claim so far for some water damage, no problems with recovery.
Its easy to do. In fact it just takes a few hours-- we set it up over a weekend. We pulled out all our important papers and various documents and things that would be useful to know if lost (you can fill-in w/ stuff that might be important to you) and ran them through the scanner (ours has a document feeder so its easy to just stick the whole thing in and walk away for awhile). The scanned documents accumulated in our ‘scanned’ folder. After we finished scanning everything we wanted we zipped it up with a password, and then run it through some encryption software we have that does a better job. (Hint, if you want, you can run the secure package through as many times as you want, each time adding an extra layer of encryption). We also include an unencrypted version of the software with the bundle (just not the pass phrases) and put those on the emergency DVD’s (the “photo” disks) and send them out. If we add/change anything, we just include it on the next photo disk release.
What to include in your secure package?
The documents that you select will likely be different from the ones we selected, but here are some ideas to help figure out what you might want to include…
If your house burnt down, flooded-out, hit by a tornado and then had a nuclear bomb dropped on it… and you barely got out alive and now you’re standing there shivering in your underwear and a bedsheet… what would you need to reconstitu
I now use RRTrains software to keep track of my inventory but as stated where is it all kept on my PC of course. That was one issue I had during the Big Mess as we’ve come to call it. I had a spread sheet with most of my rolling stock and all of my locomotives but my computer was friend or at least I thought it was. It seems as though the UPS even with a dead battery did it’s job as far as surge protection and only my monitor took a hit. So I was fortunate enough to be able to access my data. I now make two back up CD’s and keep them located in a fireproof safe one in the house and one in my shop located on my property. I also do the same with household items as well. Now it’s a standard practice that I take a digital pic of the new item I purchase and scan the receipt all kept in the inventory of RRTrains. I believe it was sugested to me by someone here.
I may be overly cautious or proactive may be a better term as I now have a whole house surge protector wired into my electrical panel to prevent anything like that from ever happening again and it was tested a few months after I had it installed. One day we came home and found the house dark. We thought the power went out in the neighborhood but my neighbor said no power was ok but he did notice the lights got really dim and then very bright about an hour or so ago. I went to the service panel and the surge protector was beeping and a red LED was flashing indicating it needed to be reset. Well worth the money I payed. They have other models that don’t require you having to reset them.
After several hours of deliberating over weather or not the original layout was worth saving or not we decided to scrap it and retained as much as we could.But how do you put a price tag on the hours you have building and weather structures and painting and weathering your rolling stock. Yes we saved or restored every piece of equipment on the railroad but every single thing needed to be wiped clean and most of the rolling stock had to be re weathered. What sa
Message received LOUD AD CLEAR. I do not have all of the receipts from 25 years of model railroading. I do have a rider on my model railroad. But, I am going to take some digital photos of the layout, the locomotives (sitting on top of their boxes-especially the few brass ones) my Fine Scale Miniature kits built and otherwise, along with photos of any other model railroad stuff I have. Then, just like for the things inside the other part of the house (that we have already photoed), I am going to put the disc in the bank’s safety deposit box.
Insured it is, nothing new, most used equipment, everything scratchbuilt, have a total replacement value of $46.55 CDN. that should just about cover the value in case of a loss.