Update.
After spending an afternoon going over a rare Texas & Pacific history book in the university research library and happy with the notes I took from my time with that book, I hopped on a bus and headed to the LTS.
Bought two magazines, a piece of code 55 flex track to test my current stuff on, and tried to buy a couple of kits-- but they were out of each of the kids I wanted-- the staff helpful in finding the part numbers and offering to order them for me. I then took a longing look at a couple of locos I have been admiring and thought about how long until my “incentive check” comes (three weeks).
Yep, back to normal.
Thanks for the advice and for letting me grouse.
Crews