Sorted

The first pass at my rolling stock was into three major categories.  This image shows the result of sorting those categories into further divisions.  Some of these tubs and boxes near the top contain structures.  Believe me, people, this is progress!

The categories as of this post, 10/23/2026:

• Turn of the Century
• 1920s (pre-depression)
• 1950s (pre-1959 VGN-N&W merger, "transition" era)
• 1980s (right around the N&W-SOU merger into Norfolk Southern)
• "Heritage" fleet (private road names of varying eras built by the original owner)
• Commemorative cars (childhood nostalgia, commercially produced private road name cars, and tourist railroads)
• Passenger equipment and Maintenance of Way
• HOn3
• Freezers (cars, kits and car sides of varying eras)

I'm still processing the process, so to speak.  That is to say, this journey has raised a few questions and has given me perspective on the state of my collection with some real numbers.  For example, I have one tub each of 80s equipment and Turn-of-the-Century equipment, two tubs of 1920s era rolling stock, but 4 tubs worth of "Transition" era equipment, not counting the heritage equipment or reefers that fit into those eras, and passenger cars or MoW stock.  Based on this division, how would I fill the staging cabinet I'm building for my current '20s era layout?  Would it reflect what I own, what I want to run on that layout, or what interests me most at the time?  The answer may seem simple but the fact I'm raising the question means it is not.  Each option has its pros and cons.

I've also been paying attention to what excites me most as I look through this stuff.  It all brings a smile to my face...well...most of it.  Some cars I wonder why I bought them, and some were gifts I wouldn't have chosen.  Some are "sows ears" that would take great effort and cost as much as a newer kit to build into a fine model.  No doubt I'll cull the collection with the intent of buying a table at a swap meet.  I also realized I want to build (and restore) many of these cars but of course can really only do one at a time.  To that end I've made a 5/25 list* and the results surprised me.  Out of the 25 cars I'd be interested in building sooner than later, the top 5 that stood out most weren't all from one era or group, but spread across multiple groups, including a diversity of car types.

I haven't decided on the next step in this inventory work.  When I originally set out to make an inventory I had visions of spreadsheets which quickly morphed into visions of note cards which I could then sort into categories.  Handling the cars by emptying the tubs and rearranging them into categories has been far faster and easier than creating a card for each car, one by one.  Andrew Mellen is right; making these sorting decisions is simpler when all the items are laid out before you instead of handling each one.  So I suspect the next step in the inventory process will become obvious as I get the staging cabinet built; either that or it will hit me like lighting at 3 AM.  Either is possible.

*Falsely attributed to Warren Buffet, the 5/25 list is a way of selecting which projects mean the most to you at that moment, allowing you to be more productive, supposedly.  Once the list is populated you select the top five, focus all your energy on them, and set aside the remaining 20 until the first group is done.  I'm using it as a way to examine my present interests more than select an actual list of projects to build, though I may use it that way when the current Trail Drive is completed.  We'll see.