So, my new central station turned up last Saturday. I laid out a short 10ft run of track on the patio, connected everything up, put one of the locos (a Stainz) on the track, and tried to get the loco to move. Not a sausage!
Took the Stainz off the track, put the other loco (black and red DR 99 6001 steam engine) on, set the controller to loco number one, turned the speed up, and it spluttered into life! Hurrah!
Unfortunately work then intervened, and I've not had chance to play around since, but it's almost the weekend now and my four year old and two year old helpers are keen to have a go tomorrow!
One thing that I learnt within about two minutes of my first running session - dirty track really does make it difficult to run trains! I'm going to have to give the track a real good clean-up at some point..
I've tried the Stainz with the power supply that came with the Bachmann Thomas set, the directional headlights work but it doesn't move, so I think there's something fairly badly wrong with it. Might have to take it to a shop at some point to get it looked at.