Waving goodbye to Rye

A fond farewell this afternoon to the layout that has perched to my right for a good number of years. Built as a fairly quick micro layout project and as a one day exhibition beast, Dury's Gap has been somewhat successful, though perhaps not as intended. The exhibition showings have been few and where it has scored has been as a photo backdrop, not only for various rolling stock portraits, but more recently to drop the odd building project onto for a snap. Here receiving more fame than intended when one of these ended up as a Wills advert to show the slate walling sheet.

The new owner is not new to layouts built hereabouts and (ten years ago I was informed) purchased the Western Region N gauge layout Unnycoombe. Dury's Gap is of course itself a recycled baseboard and under the Peco Code 75 lurks the ghostly underpinnings of a 7mm NG layout in the form of Morton Stanley, parts of which still exist in a shoebox in the loft and may yet see the light of day again.

Remarkably, Unnycoombe is still extant and a phone photo came my way showing some of the subtle upgrades. As I've opined before (and not always been well received) upgrades can go one of two ways in the eye of the original builder, but I'm particularly taken with these, especially the short avenue of trees which has given it a whole different vibe and one which suits it very well. The addition of Dury's Gap appears to be the extension of a collection.

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