[steve74]

I managed to setup static ip on my nems pi3 as follows :-
(1) vi /etc/network/services
(2) add      :-
                     auto eth0
                     iface eth0 inet static
                               address XX.YY.ZZ.AA  ( put your i/p in here to replace XX..... etc)
                               netmask 255.255.255.0
                               gateway XX.YY.ZZ.AA ( put your gw i/p in here)
(3) wq! ( write changes, of course)
(4) sudo systemctl disable dhcpcd
(5) sudo systemctl enable networking