Hythe Parkway - Withdrawal of services & Demolition of Station
Entry posted by St. Simon
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Hello guys,
Unfortunatly Hythe Parkway is no more, over the past few days I have been stripping the boards ready for scrap, it was quite upsetting, but it had to be done, for a couple of reasons:
- We had to clear out the garage ready for a refurbishment into a modelling room, so we thought it would be the time to scrap Hythe.
- We didn't have any other shows and Dad & I both thought HP was getting tired and showing it's age
- Currently I don't know for certain what I will be doing after September, so the future of Hythe and other layouts is uncertain.
I have saved all the buildings, trees, details, point motors, chocolate box, wiring, lights, signals, people and turntable (both model and mechanism) to use in future projects, however, all the track and points we wouldn't try to save as it will be difficult to keep them in a good condition.
It has been a joyfull experience building and exhibiting Hythe, so I thought I would share a short version of the Hythe Parkway story:
Hythe Parkway was started in 2007 when Dad and I decided that we wanted an exhibition layout, not much work was done on the layout in 2007 apart from baseboard building, track laying and wiring. It was in 2008 with the very kind invitation by the Exhibition Manager of Wycrail (my clubs exhibition) to the 2008 exhibition, that spurred on work for Hythes Exhibition Debut. The show went well, however it didn't produce any interest in invitations, so Hythe didn't go out during 2009, apart from the 2009 RMweb members Day at the Chasewater Railway in Stafford (I would like to thank Andy Y for the invitation), it was during this that we had a few incidents and amuzing happenings.
After that, we had an explosion of invites and ended up with 3 exhibition in 2010 on 3 almost consequtive weekends (Newbury, Risex & Churchrail), this took it out of us, but produced an extension plan to include a Freight Yard. This yard was Debuted at the Abingdon Show in 2011, which was less than successfull. But after a few mods, it was ready for shows in Reading in September 2011 and Maidenhead in January 2012. Hythe's last show was at the RMweb Taunton Members day in 2012 (Again I wish to extend my thanks to Tim Maddock and Andy Y for supporting our visit), which I believe is quite appropiate as Hythe has been a part of RMweb since the beginning and the sites members have been helpfull in their advice and support for the layout.
Of course, during all this, Hythe Parkway was published twice, first in the September 2010 issue of Railway Modeller (Thank you Steve Flint) and the June 2011 issue of Model Rail, both of which I believe you can still get as back issues.
I have kept Marsh Distributions Hythe Railfreight Yard (the extension to Hythe) for possible future projects or as a stand alone layout, I'm not sure at the moment, so a part of Hythe lives on still!
If you would like to see more the layout and it's development, see past issues of the current blog or the old thread on the RMweb archive and if you want to see some pictures, then have a look at the Hythe Parkway Gallery. You can also see some video of Hythe
I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has invited the layout to exhibitions, commented on it at the shows, on here or else where. I still have a layout of my own, Roads A-C and I will also be helping with my dads Layout, Loughborough Road which will be out on April 20th at a small show in Tring. Plus there are plans for another layout in the near future using exisiting stock and buildings from HP, so look out for that in the layout topics in the next week or so!
Thanks guys, it's been a good one!
Simon
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