Repairing the Tomica 'Charge Play' park-o-mat,

On the subject of 'Park-o-mats' while I'm deciding how to proceed with the repair of the 'Charge Play' type, I figured I should give honourable mention to a TOMY classic that's been around since at least the 1970's....






This design is [in my mind] the quintissential model representation of a 'Park-o-mat' type structure as it captures the typical format of a central lift/elevator component which serves a number of 'rack' levels to pick up and collect cars.

I have been looking for one of these recently, however to find an original is difficult and expensive.

Good news is, this design, or variations of it, is somewhat common in the UK because it's been copied and modified to death by Chinese bootleggers, so it's somewhat possible to find these clones being sold at flea markets and discount stores. This one below sells for about £20 on eBay UK but I'm convinced I can go to a local town which has a plethora of stores selling cheap and often fake merchandise, as well as a large general/flea market and find one for less, so maybe I'd do well to go exploring.



Incidentally, if I were to get hold of one of these, I'd likely make my own stickers and decoration cards to replace the ones included; Depending on the colour of the plastic used, I'd be tempted to decorate it with the logos/designs of a petrol company to make it look more city-authentic for a layout? This one has a lot of blue and red, so in this case I'd lean towards ESSO or similar branding as blue and red are part of their corporate colours. Gotta love their use of the old FIAT logo though which has now been changed to say 'AUTO', as if that'll dodge copyright or something lmao


I also decided to trawl the home of everything legitimate, Alibaba.com, and of course, there's fakes of the Charge Play park-o-mat because why wouldn't there be? 



This appears to be part of a 'range' made up entirely of ripped-off Tomica designs, I'd dare say i'm tempted by the idea of buying a fake one to harvest it's motor parts for my legitimate model, but I really don't suppose the parts are of high quality, or even will work properly when it arrives  Guess there's no shortcut to just buying a decent pullback motor.