Buying British N Scale

If you don’t happen to live in the UK the process of acquiring British N scale merchandise can be quite onerous. There don’t seem to be very many people interested in modelling British railways in N for some utterly incomprehensible and mystifying reason, so for the most part you have to deal with UK shops.

The huge American distributor Walthers import a fair bit of European stuff, but almost exclusively German. The only English merchandise they seem to carry is Peco trackwork. I emailed Mr. Walthers about this, and he sent me a nice note back right away saying that, yes, there’s no market for the British prototype models. Well, I’m sure he’s right, but still... there’s really a market for those hundreds of lavish colour pages of Bavarian buildings? Oh, well.

The British Railway Modellers of North America Web page lists some dealers that do carry British models:

http://home.ca.inter.net/~brmna/

Three of these are of note to me, because they’re in the Vancouver BC area, where I happen to live. I’ve put my comments regarding these three dealers onto my list of Vancouver-area railway shops.

The aforementioned three dealers appear to have obtained reasonably good discounts from the UK suppliers, so their pricing is quite competitive with purchasing directly from the UK via mail order. And it’s convenient for me, as I can take a look at the merchandise before buying - something you can’t do from a mail order list or catalogue.

Unfortunately, these three dealers don’t carry all the British N stuff that I might be interested in, and there are obviously a lot of people in the world who aren’t lucky enough to have three dealers nearby. By the sounds of it, then, most people interested in British prototype either manage to take a lot of holidays in the UK (I bought most of my own stuff in the UK nearly 10 years ago) or else mail order directly.

You don’t have to pay British VAT (value-added sales tax) if you buy by mail order and you live in a non-EU (European Union) country. Actually, to be really pedantic, you can get your VAT refunded if you’re on holiday in the UK and you aren’t an EU national, once you wade through the requisite paperwork. But, this cost saving of no UK tax aside, postage costs tend to be rather high. At least with N scale merchandise your orders are likely to be fairly small and lightweight, so consider this another advantage of eschewing the larger scales. You will also likely have to pay import duties as well.

Payment is easiest if you have a credit card, and most shops accept both Visa and Access cards; the latter being on the same network as Mastercard in North America. Unfortunately, this is a problem for those of us trying to avoid the Evil Credit Card. If you don’t have a credit card then you have to muck around with trying to get cheques in sterling. Most UK dealers won’t accept non-sterling payment, because their banks charge extortionate fees to exchange the money. You can purchase postal/money orders in sterling, at least in Canada, but they are expensive and don’t offer particularly favourable exchange rates.

One or two cottage industries that I’ve telephoned for information were happy to take US money as payment ("oh yes, dear, we go on holidays to America all the time...") but note that sending cash through the post is both prohibited and probably not in your best interests. The same goes with sending UK currency as well, though the demise of the pound note in favour of the pound coin means the smallest paper note in sterling you’ll likely find at the bank will be a fiver. If you do feel like taking a gamble with your money it’s probably wise to slip some card or dark paper into the envelope, so that potential miscreants won’t see the outline of the notes or bills when the envelope is held up to the light.

As for finding a mail order dealer, it’s easiest to pick up a copy of Railway Modeller magazine and flip through it. They segregate the adverts from the editorial content (I wish North American magazines would do that!) and the mail order stuff tends to be at the front of the magazine. Railway Modeller have a small Web page at:

http://www.peco-uk.com/rm/rm_home.htm

There’s a form there that, when it works, should allow you to subscribe. Luckily for me, Railway Modeller is readily available at local magazine shops, but that’s probably not the case everywhere in the world. There are other UK publications but I suggest RM because, being the largest and being very mainstream, it attracts the bigger adverts.

Another option might be to join the British N Gauge Society. I’ve never been a member and cannot attest to the quality of their services, but they apparently run a mail order company shop, amongst other things, that supplies members with hard to find items:

http://ngaugesociety.com/

The problem once you’ve found a supplier is finding what you want. A lot of the mail order shops have pretty extensive lists in their ads, in microscopic type, but that’s not always helpful. A listing that reads "Signal Box" doesn’t tell you much about the product. Novices should be particularly aware of this - you might, for instance, read an ad for a Farish "Thomas" engine, order it and be rather disappointed when a diesel shunter arrives in the post. (this hasn’t happened to anyone I know, but I imagine it could.) To avoid this you probably want to get catalogues. In my little writeups on British N scale manufacturers I mention if I know of any catalogues listing their products.

Because we live in an absurdly litigious world, please note the following. First, I have no personal financial interest in any companies mentioned here, one way or the other. Second, all trademarked names are owned by their respective owners and are mentioned here purely for identification purposes. Third, no guarantees, express or implied, are made regarding the accuracy, fitness, whatever the hell about any of the information or opinion presented here. And finally, much of this is opinion of the author; nothing more.

Text copyright © 1997 tela design.