I’m Pretty Sure I Already Have This One – The Train Show Problem That Inspired My Model Railroad

When I was running Merrimack Valley Models and selling at train shows, I kept hearing the same sentence from collectors.

“I might already have this one.”

If you’ve spent any time around model railroaders, you know the moment.

Someone picks up a box, flips it over, checks the road number… and then pauses.

Sometimes they pull out a printed spreadsheet.
Sometimes a notebook.
Sometimes they just stare at the box and try to remember.

One moment stuck with me.

A repeat customer came back to my table three different times during the same show. Each time he picked up the same car — a Bowser ballast hopper.

Finally he laughed and said:

“No wonder I keep coming back to this one… I’m pretty sure I already have it.”

And honestly, he probably did.

Why This Happens

Locomotives tend to get the attention in the hobby, but most collections are dominated by rolling stock.

It’s not unusual for collectors to have five to ten times more freight cars than locomotives.

And the difference between two identical cars might only be a road number.

A manufacturer might release the same hopper four times:

• same paint
• same model
• same manufacturer

But different road numbers.

Serious collectors want variety in their fleet. What they definitely don’t want is accidentally buying the exact same road number twice.

Unless they’re planning to renumber the model — which is possible, but also a bit of a pain.

So the cycle repeats at every train show:

Pick up the box.
Flip it over.
Check the road number.
Try to remember.

The Idea

Watching this happen over and over made me realize something.

Collectors didn’t have a good way to answer a very simple question:

Do I already own this?

Spreadsheets exist.
Notebooks exist.
Printed inventory lists exist.

But none of those are very helpful when you’re standing in a crowded train show aisle.

That’s where My Model Railroad started.

Not as a startup idea.

As a train show problem.

Version One

The first version of the app was actually pretty simple.

It had three core tools:

• Collection tracking – a way to catalog what you already own
• Wish lists / shopping lists – things you’re looking for at shows
• Scale model calculator – converting real-world dimensions into scale measurements

The wish list feature actually started from a Swift + Firebase tutorial for building a simple to-do app. It turned out to be a perfect foundation for a shopping list of models you were hunting for.

The idea was straightforward.

When you’re walking through a train show, your phone should be able to answer three questions instantly:

• Do I already own this?
• Am I looking for this?
• Does it fit my layout?

The Evolution

The original version launched in 2022 as an iOS app.

Since then, the concept has evolved quite a bit.

The new version I’m working on now is being rebuilt in Flutter, which means it will run on:

• iOS
• Android
• and the web

But the core idea hasn’t changed.

It still starts with that same moment at a train show table.

Someone holding a box, flipping it over, checking the road number, and thinking:

“I’m pretty sure I already have this one.”

You can find the app at mymodelrailroad.app