Hi all,
Thought I'd post something on here that may or may not interest a few people depending on the size of their collection, and that is recording your collection onto a database. The purpose of this in the beginning for us was to just have a record on file of what we have just in case something happened to the collection and for insurance reasons, however as the collection has grown considerably over time, so has the detail put into the database. What started as just what the item was and it's price has extended to DCC code, whether its been weathered or fitted with sound, expected resale value and so on. A request from our insurer was to have photo evidence of what we have to ensure it was insured for the right price, so that's when I looked into setting up a photo database, where you just click on the item and a picture of it appears. The whole thing is then put on a DVD (About 4GB worth of photos) and given to the insurance company so they can see exactly what we have. So far our database just includes locos and rollingstock, however one day we may add in track, points, point motors, buildings, signals, etc. Rollingstock is separated across a few pages rather than one massive one, and categorised to make it easier to read. First I'll start with a couple of screengrabs of the file structure so you can see how its working behind the scenes.
Inside the initial folder.
Inside the rollingstock folder showing the different sections.
Inside the VR category, showing all the photos with their code and number as the name of the photo.
How it looks in excel. The code/number is hyperlinked to the corresponding photo, and a simple click on one of the blue links brings up a photo of that item.
Each piece of rollingstock is categorised into origin, owner and type of commodity. Other information includes brand, Kit or RTR, livery, loaded (and with what) or unloaded, buy and sale price, weathering and any other relevant comments (eg. fitted with ETM).
Here's our loco page. Extra info here includes type of mech, DCC Code, livery (colour coded) and extra comments such as sound, owned by etc. The list on the right is stuff we have sold over the years for record keeping purposes.
Testing the theory, clicking on 'GM28' brings up this photo of the corresponding model. Also included in our database is a list of products on order including their expected release date and how much has been paid off, which is great to remind you what you're waiting on! There's also a 'wanted' list, which includes anything not ordered but wanted eventually.
Any comments/recommendations are very welcome, it's not perfect but it works for us, however would love to hear how to make it better or how other people have set up their databases.
Till next time!
