Transactional Replication snapshot locking Publisher db from beginning
To get this to work I scheduled switching off the 'immediate sync' to very low traffic period

EXEC sp_changepublication  
@publication = 'statics',
@property = 'Immediate_sync',
@value = 'false'
GO 


I then ran a snapshot which only took a fraction of the time at 6 mins.

I then had to drop the current subscription for that article only  

    EXEC sp_dropsubscription
    @publication = 'statics',
    @article = 'dbo.SupplierCorporatePayAccountLink_tbl',
    @subscriber = 'SURVIVOR'


and rerun the snapshot. Then i could add the subscription back into the publication

    EXEC sp_addsubscription
    @publication = 'statics',
    @article = 'dbo.SupplierCorporatePayAccountLink_tbl',
    @subscriber = 'SURVIVOR',
    @destination_db = 'MLT-Replicated',
    @reserved='Internal'


but it would not allow this without the fairly obscure setting  

@reserved ='Internal' 


or I got an error message saying I needed to subscribe to all articles.... replication then automatically sync'd the new table. I'm a happy man as this has been causing me some long nights!