If I get time tomorrow I will try the AsteriskNow approach, however, crude as it might be a hack to run 2.5 with asterisk 1.8 would be the best approach.
I guess there are many people out there like myself who have hung on to the wounded Trixbox on the principle that if it works don’t bother it, but now FPBX is forging ahead and asterisk 1.8 is stable we have to move on to something that is well supported and will not be a great pain to upgrade in the future.
thanks for your help Scott.