I use a 20 year old version of MS Acess to keep track of my rolling stock. With about 250 pieces of rolling stock, I cannot remember everything. For freight cars I can track AAR class, door size, length, height, weight, rolling ability, and 50 or so more variables. For passenger cars it AAR class, revenue capy, accomodations, livery style, and around 30 other variables. Ditto for the locos. There’s so much info I’m tracking, I need 5-6 tabs in my input forms to hold the info, including a photo. Of course I need to know whether the car is in service, stored servicable, stored not servicable, in the erecting shops, or retired. For freight cars, I track whether the car is empty, being loaded, loaded or being unloaded, and if an industry need cars I have a program that will find the correct AAR class car that is in service, empty, and close-by, and make up a switch list to get the cars to where they are needed. I have a program that will tell me when a car is expected to ready for pick-up, so the local knows what to get via a switch list. Of course all this takes a bit of programming, but with my IT major in collage (not much OJT as I had a dual major and mostly worked the other one) and a good how-to book, it was all doable…challenging, but doable. For me, it worked out pretty good, but for someone without a programming knowledge, not so much.
I use an Excel sheet (Well, numbers on my Mac). I track reporting marks, type, manufacturer and how many of them I have. I put a small grey dot sticker on the botton of the car to show I entered it.
I also use a sheet to track how often I run certain locomotives and the train type, but that’s a different level of geekery.
Brian,
Forget about Base or Database. I use Open Office 4, and the spreadsheet is the one to use. It’s the same as Microsoft Excel, and it’s easy and powerful.
I used Microsoft Excel at work for years, but didn’t want to buy it when I retired. I downloaded Open Office for free, it works almost exactly the same as Excel, and in some cases is easier and more intuitive.
You can use the Database if you want, but it is more complicated and in this case, the spreadsheet is just as good.
I use Google Sheets for my roster. I like it because I can access it on any computer, anywhere, provided there is internet access. It is very simlar to Excel but a bit more basic.
As I’ve said before, I use Excel and have done so for 25 years or more. It works, it can do sorts and you can make it as complicated or as simple as your abilities allow.
But here is my question…how many pieces of rolling stock do you have? Twenty, or hundreds? With a low count of units, are you putting together a spreadsheet(s) to help you manage your roster, or to “build a spreadsheet”.
I started the Excel spreadsheets when I was at about 200 cars and 50 motor units, and eventually got up to over 650 cars and 70 units. That certainly made the spreadsheets worthwhile to track all the variables (i.e. road, type, year, color, repairs needed, etc., etc.).
But here is the bugaboo about all this…no matter what format you use, how simple or detailed it is, it just doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t keep it maintained. I learned that the hard way when I downsized to 250 cars and 40 motor units.
I’ve listed every locomotive and piece of rolling stock in my Excel inventory, but when I backdated my layout, selling-off most of my too-modern stuff, I kept those items lettered for my free-lanced roads on the list, noting them as “Sold”. This was to avoid duplicating any car numbers, as more may eventually be sold.
The “too modern” stuff lettered for real railroads was removed from the imventory, as will be any now on the list if they’re sold.
Wayne
For those keeping an inventory for insurance purposes: I’m not an insurance expert by any stretch, but in my experience, any “extra stuff” in your home requires a rider. Be it jewelry (thankfully my wife hates the stuff), original artwork, a $10k bubinga drumkit, or a model railroad. From what I understand, a bunch of pictures or an excel sheet of stuff won’t get you a dime beyond your Home Contents coverage, unless you have a rider to cover it. As always, correct me if I’m wrong, just dont want anyone to have an unpleasant surprise if the crap hits the radial blade thingy.
I believe that you’re correct. I made my inventory list to simplify disposal of my trains after I take that last train ride. Insurance was not even thought of, as pretty-well none of it can be replaced anyways, making it difficult to value insurance-wise.
Wayne
I never got the hang of Numbers since I "”grew up” in a Windows environmental. I have excel for Mac.
1st timer, 1st post. I expect my particulars of getting back into the hobby between childhood and adult, railroad dreams and so on are fairly typical of many in the broad strokes, so won’t detail here other than to say: children + toys = :`(
Model trains have never left my mind in 40+yrs and cleaning my mother’s home out a few years ago, I found that young self did have some prescience to box the remnants of my collection; a smattering of track, a dozen freight cars from shattered to mint and a couple probably broken, untested as of now, locos. Obviously, this is not worth databasing. However for this christmas, my wife allotted me initial funds to rebuild my railroad dream.
In six days I will be unboxing ~100 freight, ~20 passenger and a dozen locos scoured across dozens of ebay sales over 2 months. The focus was New Haven, Amtrak and Soo. Auction lots being what they are, I wound up with a consist of BN, NS/W, some UP, SF and a single Chessie in the form of a caboose. Living in an apartment, I bought no track or landscaping of any kind until we have a home to set up in. Call this a downpayment on the dream.
Now all of a sudden, that’s ~150 cars in one fell swoop in all sorts of conditions from NIB to scrap. Missing couplers, broken trucks, shattered rails and ladders, the works.
When I left the hobby DC was it. The last few months of research on my part has done nothing but shock me as to the potential micro technology and databasing afford. And databasing is the key, isn’t it?
Therefore starting fresh as I am with a huge stockpile, if I’m going to database, now is the time and excel seems to be the program. As my wife’s career is built around databasing, I’m in luck on setting up the basics.
All this leads me to the categories one ‘‘needs’ to keep track of. I’'ve come up with:
Class: utility, short, med, long range
Era: Years of rai
I was going to edit my previous post, but dont see an edit button…
Another databse category…
Disposition: Salvage, Yard, Siding, Rails
Salvage is so bad as to be useless other than parting-out. Yard queens sit around looking pretty, but otherwise non-functional. Sidings are great homes for rusted-out hulks. And of course riding the Rails is every cars dream.
Gears:
I feel that you are overthinking this. I suggest a data base of “not ready for layout”, and one for on the layout.
This means that some of your catagories become unnecessary. Unless you plan to model more than one scale, why include the scale. If your standard for on the layout means recommended weight and steel wheels, why mention it in database, etc.
Dave
WOW! THAT is alot of stuff to keep record of!
You won’t have any time for running trains! [(-D]
Good luck with that,
Oh, and welcome to the forums!
Mike.
The CarCard database by Dave Husman that I always mention in these threads has pretty much all of that info already in there. It’s not that big a deal or very time consuming to enter an individual car or loco. And, since all that info is already in there, all you need to do is add your industries and it will generate car cards and/or switch lists for you to operate once the layout is built.
I didn’t have quite so much to enter in the first time, but once caught up it’s a quick job to enter a new purchase into the database.
–Randy
Thanks for the welcome. I’ve no doubt I’m overthinking, too! 
In the interest of being thorough, that seemed about as comprehensive a list as I could come up with based on the little of modern RR I’ve taken in these past months. I didn’t even think to add a DCC spread in there til just now…
On the other hand and as the saying sort of goes, if you’re going to do it, do it right the 1st time. Adding a category down the road then backlogging an even bigger stockpile is typically much more a pain than the up front cost. Luckily, my wife would slather her chops at all the info to input. Carcard, will keep in mind!
As to time, I have plenty now as I have little more than a loop of track and the kitchen floor to lay it on. And cats. While the volume of work seems large now, once done, new entries would take ‘moments’.
At this time, my modeler skills come into play with repairs, re-paints, graffitti, age, weathering, assembly-disassembly, glue, plastic and general maintenance; practice some diorama work learning static grass and other relevant landscaping techniques.
On the electronics side, I get to combine my nascent arduino abilities learned from droid building and apply them to track operations. The little I know of arduino and digitrax, NCE and the like, I wonder if my particular situation allows or even encourages a ground-up, DIY approach.
I’ll save my particulars for an introduction thread, but yes mutl-gauge, run-them-even-if-theyre-wonky-out-of-spec just for sake and fun of running trains is my general vision. Only salvage would be ‘offline’ and even then, integrated back into the mis-en-scene for atmosphere.
I use a program called RRTrains2000.exe You can download it from:
http://www.gregorybraun.com/RRTrains.html
The Gregory Braun site is gone.
but download.cnet.com and a couple of other (perhaps dodgier) sites still claim to allow or mirror download of version 2.8 of this program - I believe it was last updated sometime in 2013, for nominal compatibility with Windows 8.
Maybe not a consideration for some - we recently had discussions at my club about that last train ride. About half of us at one point or another have had to help with disposing of a collection for somebody (usually a widow). In my case, my dad had me dispose of his model trains while he was still alive.
Regardless of the situation, if you use an inventory program that is not in common use - one of the spreadsheet programs - another person is going to spend more than a few minutes figuring out how your database is set up, and how to get the necessary reports out of it. I was taught early on to NEVER EVER use a spreadsheet for a database, but in this particular case that advice is wrong. Most computer literate folks can conduct searches, sorts, and view all the fields used in a spreadsheet. But doing that with a poorly or undocumented database is another story (is there such a thing as a well-documented database?)
For that reason, and that reason alone, I will do any inventory of my train stuff - which I really should do to help out my wife - in Excel or the Libre (Open) Office spreadsheet.
Fred W
I just found that out this evening.