As pointed out in a previous post, I needed one more point motor to motorise all my existing points. And that presented a bit of an issue. Because for some odd reason, I had a really hard time finding another PL-11.
Living in the Antipodes, you kind of get used to things either costing way more than they do in the Northern Hemisphere, having less variety to choose from, and generally waiting for stuff that’s not in stock. Generally you need to be equipped with some patience if you want to get the right parts. So I checked with a local hobby store at walking distance from my office a few times whether they had gotten new stock of point motors. At one of my more recent visits, the guy in the store told me that he couldn’t get those motors at the moment, because his supplier wasn’t bringing them in. He recommended some other stores, none of which are easily reachable for me, and only one of which had (low) stock on these motors.
I started to look around for better stock availability, never ceasing to be astonished at how people on Ebay were trying to sell items for prices that were almost double the already inflated store prices. At some point, a UK website caught my eye, and I saw that the point motors as well as other parts I needed were much cheaper than here.
Imagine my delight when I saw that not only did the UK webstore have plenty of stock on everything – as opposed to a local retailer from whom I’d ordered eight second-radius curves at half price but who wouldn’t have them in stock for another three weeks – but their prices were much more attractive. And when I saw that they were perfectly set up to ship to the other side of the world, I made a snap decision to order from them. I canned the aforementioned order for the track pieces, and ordered them, two Peco points and three point motors from the UK. After VAT was deducted and shipping added, these parts ended up costing me half of what I would have paid locally. Plus, it promised to arrive here sooner than the order I cancelled.
The shipment took almost four weeks to reach me.
Which, at the end of the day, is probably what I should have expected. Also, I ordered during the Easter run-up, at which time you can assume that there’s a bigger influx of parcels to keep customs busy. It seems the main lesson an aspiring railway modeller in the Antipodes has to learn is patience.
The UK option is a good fallback for when I am just not able to find a desired item locally – or if I am unwilling to pay the inflated prices that are charged locally. It’s not an option for when I need something quickly – but then again, most of the time I can’t get things quickly anyway.