This is by way of a moan... I'm trying to sort out various bits-and-pieces jobs, and one is to replace the Bachmann/ESU 3 function 21 pin decoder in the 150 , which doesn't support advanced consisting, with a rather expensive TCS 1344 21-pin decoder that does. I have no need whatsoever for 6 functions - it was just that 21 pin decoders are few and far between, and a DMU that won't work in multiple is rather a nuisence on a layout where operational interest is supposed to be boosted by joining and splitting the things

(Memo to Messrs Lovatt and Kohler - consisting is a Useful Thing, and even your cheap decoders should support it. I don't give a stuff about Mars Lights, function mapping and flickering fireboxes, but I do care about Advanced Consisting in DMUs)

Attempt one was an ignominous failure - I couldn't get the body off because the two small screws at the gangway end wouldn't come out , being too small for any of my jewellers' screwdrivers . Having bought a new set of jewellers screwdrivers from a local shop, for a couple of quid - this time with some very small ones in - I managed to get them out with a 1.0mm flat screwdriver . The screws, though crossheaded, were way too small for my smallest crosshead Phillips screwdriver (00 - what else - it seems crosshead screwdrivers are numbered like paintbrushes or model railway gauges...). Thankfully I hadn't mashed the heads fatally in the first attempt

The game plan was to switch the Bachmann decoder into my nice new ROD 04 . The decoder sits in the tender and all you have to do is remove the tender top . Carefully poised upside down , using the packaging as a protecting cradle, out come the back 2 screws withb a 1.0mm flat , cos they are way smaller than 00 crosshead. The front two won't come out.....

The ROD is not going to be up and running this Bank Holiday weekend

A hasty check of the Squires catalogue reveals - in 3 pages of jewellers' screwdrivers - just one set with 0000 screwdriver , at £13.99 . Which I will have to order - tools, Bachmann locos, for the opening of....

Question to Barwell - why are you fixing together parts of your models which lots of people will need to undo , using fastenings that require tools which are very difficult to source in order to shift them???