Last Thursday two of us Chuffers had a special treat - honoury member Mike, who I've mentioned before invited us up to his holding in the hills above Llangadog. It would have been three of us, but Colin had previous commitments, so it just left Pat and myself.
This is the view that greets you when you pull up in front of Mike and Judith's house:

Anyway, we didn't go there just for the view.
Mike had mentioned when he issued the invite that he had an ulterior motive - there was work to be done!
He had acquired a second-hand 3mm layout that needed more than one person to assemble... 12 boards, each one at least three foot by two, and hadn't been put together or run for several years.
To quote Mike:

The layout was built & exhibited by Peterborough M.R.C. from some time in the late 80's & I acquired it from an advert on the 3mm web. 

 I'm told they ran 32 different trains on it with 8 coach trains & needed 5 people to run it - more than that I don't know as it was such a rush to collect it.

                   I believe the locos & coaches I bought also ran on it as they came from the late Bob Holman who was a club member.

After coffee and the obligatory cake, we went out into the garage and set to:

 Rather like putting a jigsaw together when you don't have the picture, as Mike had no instructions or plans given to him.

Some of the boards unpacked:

and finally getting assembled (for the second time - wrong way round the first attempt!):

After a couple of hours success crowned our efforts, and we had all the boards put together in the right order, and looking good!

We took a well-earned break at that stage and retired to the house for and excellent lunch, before going back and inspecting the layout in more detail. You can tell how long it had been stored by the cobwebs seen below:

We connected all the wiring up between the boards, and then had a look at the power supply - a PAT testers nightmare!

However we finally found connections for supply to the controllers, and plugged in - a Eureka moment! (or movement...) a loco actually moved on the lines, before any cleaning or other attention.

A lot more work is required, as a lot of plugs are broken, wires loose, and there is still the signalling and point operation to be sorted out - but I can foresee several trips to Llanduesant over the coming winter months!

Many thanks to Mike for letting us Chuffers share his discovery.

Colin will be green with envy...

Shaun.

Monday evening, and we can now relax after an exhausting weekend at the Login Extravaganza...
It proved very successful, for details visit Peters FB page  https://www.facebook.com/AfternoonTeaAtTheStation/  you might have to copy and paste, as I can't get the link to behave properly.
You may see some of the Chuffers photos  posted there, and vise-versa, as we share...

All the layouts ran throughout the two days, although we lost power to Cardigan late on Saturday, but repaired it before starting again on Sunday. Beautiful weather, but much too hot to be inside playing trains!
Lot of people showing interest in the layouts, particularly the actual history of the stations that we portray.
We had one fan in particular who captivated us on Saturday - he liked the layouts so much that he returned on Sunday, and was close to tears when he finally had to go. We have made him an honary member of the Cardi-Bach Society, as he is too young to join the Chuffer-Duffers.

His name is Lewis, and here he is directing Pat on the operations he wants carried out:

Colin came along on Saturday to provide relief support, and Thomas did stirling duty manning the controllers on Sunday.

Also on Sunday this interloper was spotted passing through Boncath Station:

Pulling a rake of composite coaches and a horse box in Southern Livery it turned out to be a Drummond 4F 0-6-0. How it arrived on the Cardi-Bach line remains a mystery...
Couple of other Photos of it:

(We think that Mike from Llandeusant may know something about it.)

Next layout date for us is exhibiting the 'Teifi Gorge' at the Welsh National Woolen Museum in Drefach Velindre on July 26/27 (a Thursday and Friday Carmarthen Modellers Exhibition)

Selamat tinggal,

Shaun.

Tomorrow is the big day at Login!

The Chuffers have been busy this week - Tuesday evening we had a Cardi-Bach meeting at Login, specifically to help Peter out with getting the new building ready for exhibiting the Cardi Bach layouts and memorabilia associated with the old line.

Peter, Roy and Eirwyn lined up the cabinets, screwed them together and fitted plywood tops, whilst Patrick, Thomas and myself put the layouts together and mounted them on the cabinets. This proved rather more difficult than we expected, as all the wiring had to be flush with the connecting boards, and would not be accessible once the baseboards were in place.

All came right in the end though, and the evening was deemed a success!
Thursday Emyr called round with the Kilgerran layout and the display boards together with the photo boards and signs. He and Pete put Kilgerran together and made a start with Crymmych Arms.

Today (Friday) Patrick and I got to Login at 9:30 a.m. and put the finishing touches to the layouts and checked them for operation. With very little fettling all the layouts ran successfully - Kilgerran will be static due to limited space, but we have all the lights working. Not so with Cardigan - movement, but no illumination... As cardigan is attached to Boncath, it is a major task to diagnose the problem, so we will leave it until after the weekend.

Pat setting up Cardigan

Boncath and Crymmych arms









Friday lunchtime, and this was the state of play. Later today or tomorrow morning pictures will be put into the frames, and Roy Harverson's collection of Cardi-Bach stock will go on the side tables.
In the foreground are boxes of railway related books that will be on sale.

On the modelling front, this week I managed to build a couple of static displays showing two more of the stations on the Cardi Bach. Glogue:

And Llanfyrnach (minus the crossing gate):

Both to scale, 2mm to the foot (roughly N gauge)
These are really just three dimensional mock-ups to show people what the stations were like, and to accompany the photographs.

All hands to the pumps tomorrow, kick-off at eleven a.m.

Hope to see you there,
Shaun.