I think these gears are from Ultrascale and they seemed OK when first installed. Thinking no more of it I pressed on and added the wheels and rods.
What followed were many hours of fiddling to try and get some decent running. Oil and grease on the various running surfaces seemed to help but only for a short while. I also noticed that the centre of the steel worm gear was discolouring - a strip appeared across it that first looked like rust but on inspection was brass swarf. Initially this was put down to normal bedding in but as you can see from the photo this was worse than I thought.

At first I thought I'd fixed the problem but as the day progressed it became obvious that I hadn't. The gears seemed to be fine when run on their own but put a load on, such as the wheels, and they wouldn't self start. I could get things running by tweaking the wheels with my fingers but as soon as the power was reversed I had to tweak again. That's not what you want on a layout !
So, I need a new set of gears. My impression is that I had a set with duff, soft brass or a poor tooth profile. Time to hit the phone and see how quick I can get something delivered.
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