After 42 years, owner and mechanic Barry Williams (57) has hung up his spanners and sold the garage.
The potbelly stove, where the town's old men and farmers in need of a bolt or truck repair gathered for smoko at 10am every weekday, stands cold and deserted in the centre of the cleaned-out workshop.
The tools and spare parts - some of which were there longer than Mr Williams - have all gone, sold in a clearance sale on Saturday.
The contact with the public and those who came in for smoko were what he would miss the most, Mr Williams said.
"It was very, very seldom we would have smoko without anyone here."
Mr Williams began his career as a 15-year-old apprentice mechanic in Middlemarch.
When he reached his late 20s, he bought the business with a cousin and has been running it on his own for the past 25 years.
When he first began, there were "six or seven mechanics plus apprentices" working in Middlemarch, but the changing face of the rural community, as small farms were slowly amalgamated into bigger farms, dropped that number to 1.5 mechanics.
Now there are none.
Farmers needing a nut, or a bolt, or a truck repaired, will have to travel to Outram or Ranfurly.
Mr Williams' wife, Lorna, said losing the garage was a sad day for the community.
"People won't come into the town as much, because they will just go straight through to Mosgiel.
"That means they won't go to the shop or the postal service, so all those things will slip away."
For Mr Williams, other than getting two "crook shoulders" repaired, he has no plans for the future and the main thing he was looking forward to was an uninterrupted weekend.
"There has not been one day in a weekend in my time here I haven't been called out, including Christmas Day."
The new owner of the garage, Trail Journeys managing director Neville Grubb, said the petrol pumps would be retained at the garage and a 24-hour card pump installed.
The building would be used as a second base for the Clyde business, which hires bikes and runs tours on the Otago Central Rail Trail.
