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Post by santafedan on Oct 23, 2013 9:38:26 GMT -5
I am a member of Indiana Live Steamers. With a relative I have a GP15 and some rolling stock. Where can I get liability insurance for when we/I have public riders. I know the ILS has coverage for us, but can I get coverage for us? My home owner's policy does not offer coverage for this? My agent could not find coverage within the carriers they have.
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Post by raymbo on Nov 14, 2013 14:45:35 GMT -5
My wife and I are not dues paying members of any of the clubs as we live too far from most to be of much help, so we built our own railroad on our property. It is a modest run of about 1/2 mile but it is enough for us as we can ride when ever we want and it is most pleasant in the evenings to go out, turn on the switch, and go around a few times.
We talked at length with our insurance agent and like you we found that our agent cannot find specific coverage for our railroad in any of the carriers they have access to. We then talked with some other modelers and we found a quite a few differences of opinion as to whether we pose an attractive nuisance or whether we are asking for trouble by not having insurance specific to riding on our railroad. It was not possible to make an informed decision based on the opinions we heard.
I spoke with an attorney friend who came right out and said to me that generally insurance policies are lawyer magnets. I knew that but I really had not heard it from a lawyer. He told us to have a sign printed and posted near where we would normally have people come to first if they wanted to ride or let their children ride. "RIDE AT YOUR OWN RISK" was what he told me to have printed. We also have "Do not reach for the ballast", "Do not reach down" and "Keep hands and feet in or on the car".
Will this keep us from getting sued? Obviously not but according to this attorney the one suing would be hard pressed to make a case that we did not warn the riders. We always have a little chat before we start giving people rides, we read the sign to them and we tell them that while we have not had any serious wrecks, but derailments can happen and we ask the riders to not "Wiggle" side to side or "Turn around" as it could cause a derailment.
We have had a lot of visitors, especially grandparents with grandchildren coming to ride the train, and we have had absolutely no problems other than a few children who had to be spoken to directly. Once they were shocked to learn that I would put them off the train and they would have to walk back, they straightened up.
We live in a litigious society and there are many who are not responsible for either themselves or their offspring and I suppose there is the possibility that one day we may be called to give an answer as to why we let someone who obviously did not accept responsibility for themselves, but in the mean time we are not going to live as though we have to be afraid of every shadow. I am tired of the voices warning out there who are afraid to actually have some pleasure out of life, and we take kids and grown ups around our layout and try to make it fun for them. We use care and we don't run as fast as some kids want us to go, but in the end we have a great deal of pleasure in our visitors and we enjoy people coming out to ride and visit our railroads. We have actually had more problems showing kids our O scale layout than we do when we ride the large scale. For what ever reason, we have to watch little hands that just cannot seem to understand DON'T TOUCH to keep our O scale stuff from being potentially damaged. Some of the most trying have been children with their parents, rather than grandchildren with their grandparents. Grandparents seem to keep the little ones in check with little or no back talk.
We no longer invite schools for a day trip. Way too many potential problems with misbehaving. We have had children from the local church during vacation Bible school, and they have been marvelous, but again they are with grown up people of great integrity. Schools are powerless to keep some inquiring minds from engaging their mouths and fingers where they should not tread.
We refuse to live a life of being afraid of possible consequences. We may regret living this way someday but for now we have great liberty and we enjoy others coming to visit and ride.
That's my 25 cents worth--inflation. It used to be worth about 2 cents but given the potential for lawyer intervention I have had to increase the value of my opinion to cover the possible liabilities.
RG
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