"The job's not finished until the paperwork is done". While many of us have heard this consistently in our day jobs, I get the impression that in the volunteer railway museum this is not always the attitiude. At OERM we spend lots of time working on equiment, and a fair amount of time documenting things through various means, but not in a uniform method across all of the different interest areas within Collections (i.e. Steam, Diesel, Electric, etc.) I'm wondering how other railway museums are documenting ongoing maintenance and restoration work on rail vehicles?I'm specifically interested in the concept of entering data into a central database so that records could be cross referenced and searched. Does anyone have something like this up and running? Wouldn't need to be a commercial program necessarily (but it could be), a simple Access database could also do the trick. Obviously it would have to be very easy to use, or I don't think we'll be able to get people to do it routinely. Log in, punch up the vehicle number, make your entry, log out. Would rather learn from others on this topic first before buying / creating something new.Thanks as always!http://www.oerm.org/

Branford has something kind of like this. Volunteers enter the project (car# in most cases), description of the work accomplished and the number of hours spent into a logbook in the shop. The volunteers' identities and the number of hours are entered into a database. I don't believe the descriptions of what was accomplished are entered into a database, but as far as I know the logbooks themselves are retained, preserving this information.

Well, there are a lot of reasons to document work on any of our cars and locomotives. For the Freight Cars at IRM we do not operate them in train service without at least an annual inspection. For this I put together a simple generic checklist of about 65 items that includes inspections and testing. This is in paper form now, and includes space for maintenance and repair items, notes and comments, replacing gaskets, brakeshoes, adjusting brakes, etc. This is initialed and dated for each inspection.Hopefully this will never be needed to prove 'due diligence' in case questions ever need to be asked. But I think a minimum level of recordkeeping is mandatory for cars operating over museum lines in today's blame laying society and court system.A similar 2-3 page checklist and inspection report is done on every electric car we operate, and in some cases, this may be done additional times during the season, depending on mileage.IMO simply logging hours and who volunteers hours may be useful in grant writing and fundraising, but again that would have a different purpose.I like the idea of a shared database but can see some logistical problems and access issues for that to work at IRM. Besides not everyone having a home computer or good on line connection, there can be well over 100 volunteers engaged in some type activity on summer seasonal days. I suspect that someone would have to see that entries are made, they are appropriate, and that everyone uniformly reports their work.We have considered ways to try to at least log and total hours volunteered and potentially that could be coupled to the magnetic gate cards used for access to the working areas of our campus. But what about a car carrying three or four guys, carpooling, or those that come out to visit but may not get much accomplished? So does everyone get a key card for their wallet and pass it by a time clock going in and out?Bob Kutella

This is an important aspect of historic preservation that I suspect is sometimes overlooked or ignored totally. I didn't even think of the "due dillegence" purpose of good record keeping.We have the same situation here at MSM. Lots being done with only some of it memorialized. The problem I see is that the information is paper based and usually kept in a file folder or binder holding 10 or 15 years (or more) worth of notes and drawings. When you want to see what was done when, you get a piles of papers and you spend hours wading thru them.A simple database would help with this problem immensely. Surely there's someone out there who can create a simple program that can be shared? This would be a good project for ARM to sponsor and perhaps to take on.Thanks!

Museum Software from Pastime Software Co. has a tab for maintenance records and schedule for items that have been cataloged in your collection.We hae started to use it for our collection at Pomona. Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, Southern California Chapter.