I paid him a visit on 22 August. As the question about him potentially shutting down already has been answered here, I didn't ask him. Also, he mentioned that he had received his order from Hornby and that we was hoping to make another one. Apparently there's a minimum value that has to be reached for each order.
I spent about half an hour there and had a discussion about my planned Christmas layout and ended up buying three Metcalfe card kits.