A year ago, on the recommendations of the clerk at Imperial Train Co, I took an MTH PS2 SW1500 that I might have fried by replacing the battery with a pair of regular 1.5V rechargeables soldered to a wire harness. The repair guy, Alan Forrester, came highly recommended. However, it's been a year since I gave him the engine. He's been unable to repair it, and when I talked to him today, he said that the cause was a bad processor board. He said that these boards were unavailable from MTH. But, he could upgrade the engine to PS3 for $300, or I could come pick it up in a few days after he puts the engine back together.
What worries me is that I think he said something to the effect of that the board was either smoking, or that it only ran the smoke unit, but nothing else. This concerns me because MTH's SW1500s don't have smoke units. It's also been a year, and Alan has failed to give me regular updates on his progress; I've always been the one calling him about his progress.
My questions:
Are processor boards for PS2 MTH SW1500s actually unavailable from MTH?
Is it normal for repair jobs to take this long?
Would sending the engine into MTH for repair cost less than what Mr. Forrester says it would to upgrade it to PS3?
Am I being scammed?
I'd send it to someone like GGG here on the forum, he should do it fairly quickly, I happen to know he's not that busy right now. 
