Guns & jj1,
What you both just told me is that with your own repair skills, your experience with purchasing off fleabay is ok, and that you expect some problems. Sorry but this is not a good situation for the average train purchaser. You guys are really the exception to the rule, because of your repair talents. My advise still stand, I only purchase rolling stock that I believe is pictured truly off e-bay, no engines or DCS or Legacy systems.
PCRR/Dave
I've had as many issues with stuff I bought from the forum as I have with eBay stuff. If you're buying used stuff, you may have to do some tweaking, comes with the territory. However, the issues with most purchases are rarely electronic, probably because those problems know they don't stand a chance here. 
If you don't feel comfortable buying on eBay, I suggest you don't buy there. I'm not sure why you're so hard over against eBay, the variety and availability of out of production stuff there is pretty hard to match.
