I am looking at purchasing an inventory program to track my rolling stock and power. I don’t want to go into web based subscription services I would rather buy a program that I can use. I have N-scale so I like the idea of programs that offer catalogs on them with pricing info from MTL and others. Any recommendations from the gang out there?
I just use Excel.
As noted in the previous post you can make a good inventory list in Excel. If you have very many items, I mean over a hundred, then a database program like Access or Lotus Approach will give you all sorts of options for sorting your collection.
William
I always wondered who bought that stuff. Excel is good enuf for me.
I got one called yard office that dos a good job off of ebay, ran me around twenty and the first copy went south in the mail, I contacted them they sent me a replacement no questions.
Created my own file starting eons ago using an eary db3(?) program and it has updated itself as I used succeeding software programs, currently using Microsoft Excel. Only concern about purchasing a commercial program would be it having “space” for information I don’t want, i.e., purchasing something I will never use. “Ain’t nothin’ good as home made!” Recommend trying to create your own first before purchasing anything.
I use Excel. I have seperate pages for Locomotives, Passenger Cars, Freight Cars, and Caboooses. I linked all the totals from these pages to an overview page. I used Access for a while, too. But I found it overly complicated for what I wanted.
Nick
Likewise, I use Excel. If you don’t have the Micro$oft office suite on your computer, a very serviceable open source free-to-download spreadsheet program is available from OpenOffice.org:
http://www.openoffice.org/
For a railroad-specific program, I tried the demo of Shenware’s MiTrains:
http://members.aol.com/Shenware/mitrains.html
MiTrains worked well and has the advantage of linkage to Shenware’s Waybills program (which I use), but I decided there was not quite enough benefit to abandon my in-progress Excel inventory. MiTrains does include MicroTrains information, so it’s handy for N scalers.
Regards,
Byron
Hi pastornick,
I wrote a piece of shareware software called yard office. You can download it and learn more about it by clicking my web below.
I too use a spreadsheet. Excel is what I currently have, but have used others equally well. This time round, I also created a linked Word document that will generate car cards for me.
Andrew
I use Windows Access.
It’s a database program that you can set up to keep track of what ever information you require.
It can also send info to Word or Excel if you need to do so.
When set up properly, it’s a lot easier & faster to find information on a certain item than Excel, at least that how I find it.
If you want, I can send you a copy of my database, the only thing you need is Access.
Gordon
I’m too cheap to buy a program and too lazy to design anything in Access or Excel. I downloaded Ready To Run Trains 2000 for free. It is not as exotic as some, doesn’t contain catalogs or anything fancy, but it does keep the inventory and you can sort it many different ways. There is even a simple way to input photos. Great at half the price!
Here’s a link: [url=“http://gregorybraun.com/”]
If you want to be cheap, you could try the database in Works. It usually comes with your computer. Version 8.0 is the latest. You may also find a 2005 suite version that includes some other goodies. They have many templates set up that you can modify for model train use.