Alas, one of our resources

Now our club is working with his widow to dispose of his holdings, without a lot of guidance.

Please be kind to your spouse and make plans. Don't just expect your spouse to know what you want done!

...

Where would we be without Our spouses?  Thank Linda for attending that Clinic!!  Was the Clinic by chance presented by Arliss Powell?  I know she presents it and pretty often, "So, you inherited a Railroad," at the NMRA conventions in this part of the region; she does a fantastic job and is an invaluable resource to our community, even now a fair decade or so after the passing of her husband.

My favorite story these days comes way of my girlfriend's grandmother who lives in green valley.  one of her neighbors, a Garden Scaler, passed on and left a sizeable collection.  Luckily she had the assistance of a local shop keeper to handle disposing of the assets, and so was free to plan her vacation to the Carribean.  One day the proprietor calls and says, "Guess how much we just sold an engine for!"  Three figures, four figures?  Try FIVE!!  She looked up at the ceiling and shouted "THANKS, FRANK!"  After all those years FINALLY got her a Cruise!

You left out one angle we don't want to imagine, but we probably should.  Every avenue you have placed here presumes a natural disaster of one order or another.  There's also this little social disaster to contend with: Theft, Vandalism, and Accidents.  the latter, well, imagine someone drives their car into your house and the cars lands on the model railroad.  The second is as simple as it sounds: a couple kids - ages 6 to 60 - get into the clubhouse, and instead of playing trains, play Demolition Derby followed by "evil Keneivel" finisheded by "Godzilla."  And the last, someone unbeknowst steals into the club or your house, invited or uninvited, strips it of a couple boxes of key stuff, and hauls it off. 

All three situations will likely require a police report, followed by the question of who's insurance covers what.  My personal insurance policy, for example, only covers $10,000 in your property damages, and after doing the $500 layout challenge, I can easily attest to our average layout being worth that much if not more.  The question then is, what will the home insurance coverage allow for the difference or in the event the perpetrators aren't caught - or if the automobile was driven by an uninsured undocumented worker who just so happened to run off as soon as he found out he was still OK after plunging into your basement.

Anyhow - great article - and you took her on a cruise yet, yes?

We were on an Alaskan cruise

Copy edit mistake

An extra space crept into the spreadsheet link on page 92. The correct link should be http://mrdccu.com/XLS/Inventory.xls

3/10/2013 update: With the needed updates to Mr. DCC's University web site, the inventory spreadsheet document has moved. It can be accessed from:

http://www.mrdccu.com/curriculum/SlowOrders.html

Leave it to MRH...

...to publish an article most of us would have never even thought of seeing in this publication, but yet, very appropriate and informative. The disasters and misfortunes always seem to happen to others, right up until they happen to you. Good food for thought. Thanks for thinking of the rest of us Bruce and Linda. I guess there are a few more priorities to put on the layout "to do" list.

Thanks, Kevin

Plan for a little help from your friends

Lynchburg Area N-Scalers has as part of its bylaws a section devoted to the disposition of member's model railroad assets. Other clubs might consider such.

Article VIII
Estate Planning

Section 1: LANS wishes to assist in the disposition of model railroad assets upon the passing of its members. To this end, members are encouraged to make a provision in their final arrangements requesting the organization for assistance. In the absence of such provision, the Association pledges to assist the survivors or executors of deceased members in the disposition of model railroad assets if, and as, requested.

Section 2: Pursuant to Section 1, the President shall appoint a committee of two or more members to act in a fiduciary capacity for the purpose of liquidating aforesaid assets for maximum return within practical limitations as determined by the committee.

Section 3: Disposition may be made to the Members provided such disposition reasonably conforms to Section 2.

Section 4: Neither the Association nor the committee members shall receive compensation for this service. Reasonable and documented expenses may be deducted from proceeds or charged to the estate.

Section 5: In all cases, the terms of the will of the deceased member shall supersede the provisions of this Article.

Thanks Linda and Bruce

I really never thought about this insurance issue on a model railroad.  I have collectors insurance on my 67 Cougar, but it never dawned on me to figure out the insurance on my model railroad collection or its disposition if something happened to me.  I know my wife wouldn't know what to do with it.  She is from China and I am the one who introduced this hobby to her.  Unfortunately, I just don't feel I could trust the local hobby shop owners to assist her.  That is all I will say about them.

This is a new project for me now.

Thanks!

Den

Valuation of stock

Thanks Linda and Bruce for a most informative and thought provoking article. As a bit of a list freak, I started a spreadsheet a fair while ago listing details of all my locos and rollingstock, including replacement value. Now the replacement value of a r-t-r item that you use straight out of the box is pretty straightforward, but I was, and still am, uncertain how to value items in the following situations: adding detail to a more or less r-t-r car; building a kit; scratchbuilding an item.

The inclusion of the cost of couplers, bogies, detail items, etc, is obvious but how to value the time, effort and knowledgeability that went into the completed model? I'm a slow builder - if I added the value of my time spent on each model the resulting valuations would be ridiculous.

I'd be interested to hear other people's comments and suggestions on this question.

Cheers

Tony, Australia

Don't chase replacement value!

Replacement cost is opening a real can of worms, Tony.........

........because Insurance policy language is clear that you are only entitled to it if you replace it with something "of like kind and quality".  Take a scratch built structure you spent a hundred hours building, painting and weathering with a material cost of say $20.00 in material.  It's a one of, so it can't be replaced, but could be duplicated by you.  How much should/would the insurance company owe you to duplicate it?  If they paid you just minimum wage ($7.25/hr) this would make it seem to be worth $740.00.  I doubt you'd get that for it on eBay, do you? 

Instead of fixating on Replacement cost, spend your time looking for comparisons "of like kind and quality" on those items that are not readily replaced with the exact same thing. 

Remember, it's a hobby so we aren't really attaching a value to our time, are we?  If you do, you will be disappointed in your insurance settlement.  Do the best you can with them and bear in mind an old Southern saying..........................   "Pigs are fed, but Hogs are slaughtered!"

All the best,

Peter

Great article, I,m not for

Great article, I,m not for sure my home owners insurance would cover my layout, I have ARRP insurance thru Hartford and no local representive to come and help give me answers. I do have an inventory of all my model railroad items and the cost of such are recorded in Quicken as I purchased them so I can pull up a total cost of every thing spent on my hobby and a list of all items on excel spread sheet along with date of purchase on most.

Just not for sure how to proceed to get coverage at an honest rate?

Mr. Boney, all you need to do..............

........is increase the amount of your contents (aka personal property) insurance to cover your best guess as to the value of your layout, rolling stock and related items PLUS everything else in your house.  Homeowners Insurance policies generally provide a default value for contents as 50% of the value of the dwelling.  You can increase this to whatever you want and I think you will be surprised at how inexpensive it is.  Call Hartford directly to get a quote.  The other thing you can do is purchase a personal property rider on specific items (i.e. an expensive brass locomotive) with a stated amount of the item.  These riders are generally used for jewelry, art, cameras etc.  If you have a loss you will get the stated amount-no arguing or depreciation applied.  These riders are more money per $ of insurance than increasing your contents coverage but are a a sure thing if you have a loss as you've pre-determined the item's values.  Be aware the insurance company will need documentation up front so you'll need bills of sale or in some instances appraisals to establish the value. 

I hope this info will be of some help to you and others,

Peter

Valuation

So Bruce, in the event of having to make an insurance claim, are you saying in effect with those five columns you suggested: "this is the extent of the work I've done and how much time it's taken, can we come to an agreement on the insured value"?

Cheers

Tony

No guarantees, Tony

The English language

Writers need to get this straight: myriad is an adjective, not a noun!

You should have written: "The press presents myriad articles..." NOT "The press presents a myriad of articles..." - as it appeared in the second sentence of your article.

That's funny...............

...............but the Miriam-Webster web site says it's a noun.  Now what, some modeling, perhaps??

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/myriad

Peter

Thank you "Glyndwr", whomever

Thank you "Glyndwr", whomever you are, for taking the time to comment.

However, I quote from Miriam Webster's web site, Usage Discussion of MYRIAD:

"Recent criticism of the use of myriad as a noun, both in the plural form myriads and in the phrase a myriad of, seems to reflect a mistaken belief that the word was originally and is still properly only an adjective. As the entries here show, however, the noun is in fact the older form, dating to the 16th century. The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads) and Thoreau (a myriad of), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English. There is no reason to avoid it."

Not that we are comparing our meager effort to Thoreau or Milton.

I see Peter and I had similar ideas at the same time, as his comment was not on the thread when I started mine.

I just got longer winded than he.

I grew up with my mother constantly criticizing the Winston cigarette ad: ". . . tastes good, like a cigarette should!"

Now back to myriads of models.

Tony where is Aus are you?

There's an app for that?

Bruce,

In the article you mention that there are apps for inventorying a model railroad out there - I just searched through Google Play and didn't find any.

Do you know of any Android apps for doing this, and where they can be found?

Thanks!

I've got one...

Jeff,

I have a database for rolling stock.  If you would like to try my database I can set that up for you.  It runs in a free android app.  It will be made available to all, once I submit my article and it is accepted.  If the article is not accepted, I'll make the database available anyway.

It could easily be customized to inventory everything, not just rolling stock.  If you want to have a look let me know and I'll email you the info.

Kevin

Years ago I kept an Excel spreadsheet...

The real reason I did that is when going to model train shows I would see a car I like and would buy it only to get home to rediscover I already had several in my collection. So, I started taking a small print report of what I had to the train show to avoid buying duplicates.  That report helped a lot. It also let me compare prices I paid for similar cars.  I wonder where that spreadsheet is now???

Den

...

An app that carries your inventory on your smart phone is just about the smartest use for it yet, and I've now seen more than one person pull their smart phone out to make sure they don't have more of what they're looking at already at home!

Kevin - AndroidDB

Kevin,

Yes, I'd be interested in taking a look at it. I've got some ideas about what I'd like to see such a program do, and it'll be interesting to see how far ahead of me you are - or how idiotic my ideas are.