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.