Ztrack has a physical showroom that is open by appointment. We are located in Columbus Ohio. We are the distributor for companies like American Z Line, Rokuhan, Full Throttle, Father Nature, Ztrack, Z-Panzer and others. Plus we have a retail operation, resale shop and publish Ztrack Magazine. I guarantee anyone coming by our showroom will never see more Z scale in any one location. Check out our website www.ztrack.com. From this site, you can link to our other sites to see the wealth of products we offer. Again, all are stored here in our offices and are ready to ship. We love having folks come by the office and see everything in person.

Rob Kluz

There are a lot of shops that might carry HO and Z scale start sets, but fewer that stock reasonable selection of models and accessories. Many of those shops rely on special orders for anything other than they few start sets and items they may have in inventory.
It would be great if more shops would maintain accurate online inventory, so that you could tell whether something was on hand or had to be ordered.

These days, with the US$ on par with the CHF and at about 1.30 to the EUR, it is not a bad time to be ordering from Europe for special items or if you can't find it stateside.
US shops often don't have export or special items (MHI, etc) and some shops specialize more in certain countries than others.
For European orders, the shipping cost is reasonable if you have 3 to 5 items in an order.

The best thing you can do as far as US dealers is to check the marklin.com site for the dealer list and then contact the shops to see if they have the model you are looking for in stock.

Regards

Mike C