To my friends in the UK, have any of you visited the physical locations of Rails of Sheffield, The Model Centre, and Kernow Model Centre? I regularly purchase from all three online, but was curious how they are in person to deal with and what their physical store locations are like. So far my experience has been that Rails of Sheffield has been the friendliest to communicate with, and Model Centre has had some of the better prices of the three. Kernow has some really great exclusives. Has anyone had any dealings with Olivia's Trains? They seem to have a good selection of rare and out of production items but their pricing seems a bit high, even with the premium fetched from rare items.
Rails is a few miles from where I used to live. Used to get all my Model railway, Scalextric and TCR stuff from them as a youngster. That was over 40 years ago. I still pass it to visit Family. Its a fairly large store which expanded over the years. They have done well to move with the times, as many model shops disappeared.
No I haven't been to any of these but the one I go to is about 20-30 mins down the road in Peterborough called trains4u who are very nice and prices are fairly good too. They do have a website and an ebay page as well. When I need any scenery I have learnt how to order it online from Hattons and never had an issue with them.
I've ordered from both Hattons and Rocket Railways through eBay before, both seemed pretty decent. The used Tornado I got from Rocket Railways was practically new.
