Keep My Trains

Terms of service

Version 2026-10-16e, last updated October 16, 2026

Keep My Trains is run by Timothy J. Dolan ("Tim Dolan"), Wisconsin, USA ("we", "us"). These terms are an agreement between you and us. By creating an account or using Keep My Trains, you agree to them, to the acceptable use rules, and to our privacy notice. If you don't agree, please don't use Keep My Trains.

What Keep My Trains is

A place to catalog a model-train collection: items, photos, receipts and appraisals, values, recorded stories, reports and slideshow movies. You can invite other people to see or help with your collection. Some features use artificial intelligence (AI); AI features below lists every one.

Your account

Your content is yours

You keep all rights to what you put in (text, photos, recordings, receipts and other papers, values). So that we can run Keep My Trains, you give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free permission to store, copy, process and show it, for as long as it's on Keep My Trains and in backup copies until they expire: for example, to make smaller versions of photos, build movies, type up a recorded story, read a photo's label when you ask, and show it to the people you choose.

We also learn from what members add and how they use Keep My Trains, to improve it for you and for everyone. That can include items, descriptions, values and photos (for example, to read more kinds of box labels, to answer questions better, or to make the shared price reference more accurate). When we do, it stays inside Keep My Trains and the services that run it for us, none of which may use it to train their own AI, and anything we share or publish about it is general and can't identify you or your collection. We never sell your content, and we never share your private information except as the privacy notice explains.

Only upload photos and other material you took, made, or have the right to use.

Privacy and security

Your collection is private to you and the people you invite. We use standard security (encrypted connections, scrambled passwords, limited admin access, and daily backups kept offsite) and keep your information private to the best of our ability. Our admins may look at information on the site, including helper chats, to troubleshoot problems and improve the site. The privacy notice has the details.

Price and billing

If a subscription lapses

  1. If a payment fails, everything keeps working for 7 days while PayPal retries.
  2. Then the collection becomes read-only: you can look and download everything, but not change anything.
  3. After 30 days read-only it closes: only the owner can open it (to download it or subscribe again), and share links stop working.
  4. 90 days after closing it may be deleted for good. We email the owner before each step, and the family contact (if you named one and the collection was paid for) before it closes and before it can be deleted. A person reviews each of these deletions.

Subscribing again at any point before deletion brings the collection back exactly as it was.

When a free trial ends

  1. If you haven't subscribed by the end of the trial, the collection becomes read-only: you can look and download everything, but not change anything. Subscribing brings it all back.
  2. After 30 days read-only it closes: only the owner can open it, to download it or subscribe.
  3. A trial that was never subscribed to is deleted for good 30 days after it closes, photos and recordings included. We email the owner when the trial ends, before it closes, and 14 days, 7 days and 1 day before it is deleted.
  4. If you need more time to decide, you can add 30 days to the trial once, on the collection's Subscription page, from the trial's last week until it is deleted.
  5. A promo code can make a free trial longer. It doesn't change the price.
  6. Some codes and links come from our partners (clubs, shops, shows and newsletters). Partners earn a share of what we're paid; it never changes your price. The partner agreement covers partners themselves.

Your own copy: download everything

Your collection is yours, and the owner can take a full copy of it at any time, including while it's read-only or closed. The Download everything page (in the collection's Settings) gives a spreadsheet and a complete data file of every item, every original photo, the receipts and appraisals, recorded stories with their words, and the insurance report, in files any computer can open. Each movie downloads from the Movies page; older movies make room for new ones, so download any you want to keep. We encourage you to download a copy now and then and keep it somewhere safe.

Backups, and things beyond our control

We take several steps, on a regular schedule, to keep your data safe: the database and photos are backed up every day, and copies are kept offsite with more than one provider, including a monthly archive copy.

Even so, no one can promise that a website will always be available or that data can never be lost. Events beyond our reasonable control, such as natural disasters and other acts of God, fire, flood, power or internet outages, failures of our hosting or other providers, cyberattacks, war or government action, could interrupt Keep My Trains or cause data to be lost, and we aren't responsible for delays or losses they cause. That's one more reason to keep your own download of anything you can't replace.

Changes to Keep My Trains

We keep improving Keep My Trains, so features may be added, changed or retired. If we take away something you rely on, we'll give notice where we can, and you can always download your collection.

Ending your account

You can stop using Keep My Trains at any time, and ask us to delete your account (see the privacy notice). We may suspend or close an account that breaks the acceptable use rules or these terms, or that we're required to close by law; where we can, we'll tell you first and let you download your collection.

Value estimates

When you ask for a value estimate, we send a description of that one train (maker, catalog number, title, road name and number, scale and type) to our research provider, which searches the web for prices. We never send your name, your photos, or the values you entered. The estimate and the links it found are saved with the item.

Your collection stays private. To help fellow members, train descriptions and prices are used anonymously to build a shared price reference: when a description includes a maker and a catalog number, the next member who asks about the same train is shown the same estimate, and we may use train descriptions and values, with anything that identifies you or your collection removed, to improve that reference.

An estimate is an educated guess from prices found online on the day it was made. It is not an appraisal, it can be wrong, and a train can sell for much more or much less.

Notes only the owner sees

"Who should have this one day?" notes on items are seen only by the collection's owner (and appear in the family handover pack the owner downloads). Other people in the collection don't see them.

AI features

Some parts of Keep My Trains use artificial intelligence (AI) services run by other companies. So you always know when AI is involved, here is every place it's used:

The music in slide shows and movies, many of the site's illustrations, and the narration in our videos were also made with AI tools.

AI can misread a label, get a fact or a price wrong, or misunderstand a question, so check what it suggests before you rely on it. Nothing it prepares changes your collection until you press its button. AI answers and estimates are not professional advice: not an appraisal, and not insurance, legal or financial advice. What each service receives, and what its terms promise (including that it doesn't train its AI on what we send), is in the privacy notice. If we change which AI services we use, we update that notice first.

We respect copyright and expect members to do the same. If you believe something on Keep My Trains uses your work without permission, you can email help@keepmytrains.com with a link to it, a description of your work and your contact details, and we'll look into it promptly.

Formal notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) go to our designated agent, registered with the U.S. Copyright Office (registration DMCA-1083128, listed under Timothy J. Dolan). The agent's name and contact details are on our copyright agent page and in the Copyright Office's DMCA Designated Agent Directory. A notice must be in writing and include: (1) your physical or electronic signature; (2) the copyrighted work you believe is infringed; (3) the material on Keep My Trains you believe infringes it, with enough detail (such as a link) for us to find it; (4) your name, address, phone number and email; (5) a statement that you believe in good faith that the use isn't authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and (6) a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner.

When we receive a valid notice, we remove or disable the material promptly and tell the member who posted it. If you posted it and believe it was removed by mistake or misidentified, you can send our agent a counter-notice with: your physical or electronic signature; the material that was removed and where it appeared; a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification; your name, address and phone number; and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for your address (or, if you're outside the United States, any judicial district in which we may be found) and will accept service from the person who sent the notice. We then pass the counter-notice to that person and may put the material back in 10 to 14 business days, unless they tell us they've gone to court.

Someone who knowingly makes a false claim in a notice or counter-notice can be liable for damages. We will, in appropriate circumstances, close the accounts of members who repeatedly infringe others' copyrights.

Other companies' services

Payments go through PayPal, and "Continue with Google" through Google, under their own terms and privacy policies as well as ours. We aren't responsible for other companies' services, but we choose them carefully, and the privacy notice says what each one receives.

Ideas and suggestions

If you send us ideas or suggestions for Keep My Trains, we're welcome to use them without owing you anything. Thank you!

Disclaimers and limits of liability

Keep My Trains is provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, and we don't promise that Keep My Trains will be uninterrupted, error-free or always secure. Values and reports are your own figures, and AI value estimates are educated guesses; none of them are appraisals, and we aren't responsible for insurance, sale or purchase decisions based on them.

To the extent the law allows, we aren't liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data or lost goodwill, and our total liability to you for any claim is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim. Some states don't allow some of these limits, so they may not all apply to you; nothing in these terms takes away rights you have that the law says can't be limited.

Your responsibility

If you break these terms or the law while using Keep My Trains, and someone makes a claim against us because of it, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of dealing with it, including reasonable legal fees.

Changes

If we change these terms in a way that matters, we'll email account owners at least 30 days before the change takes effect.

Law, disputes and contact

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wisconsin, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. If something goes wrong, please contact us first so we can try to put it right. Any dispute that does go to court will be heard in the state courts of Winnebago County, Wisconsin, or the federal court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, and you and we agree to those courts' jurisdiction; either of us may use small claims court instead where the claim qualifies.

These terms, the acceptable use rules and the privacy notice are the whole agreement between you and us about Keep My Trains. If any part of them can't be enforced, the rest still applies, and if we don't enforce a part straight away, we haven't given up the right to. You can't transfer your account to someone else (an owner can still hand a collection to a new owner from its Settings); we may transfer these terms if Keep My Trains is ever taken over by someone else, under the same promises. Questions: help@keepmytrains.com.

See also: Terms · Privacy · Acceptable use · Partner agreement · Copyright agent