'Belfield Quay' - a 16mm NG model railway revived in 'lockdown'.
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Following the end of exhibiting the 0-9 BHER, my interests moved outdoors to 16mm NG on 32mm gauge track . After several years of live steam & battery locomotives in the garden, and at the Guildford Model Engineering Society, a yearning to shunt again brought me back indoors to traditional electric modelling. With 16mm spare parts to use up, a small SM32 layout seemed appropriate and Belfield Quay was soon on the drawing board.
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Progress on Belfield Quay was originally recorded on the Belfield Hall website, but eventually, some setbacks took the wind out of my sails and the project was consigned to the garden shed. When a new workshop was built in 2015, a very small Gn15 layout called Belfield Engineering was started, to fit in the workshop, which satisfied my modelling urges. In 2020, the world was gripped by Coronavirus and everyone was consigned to their homes. Belfield Quay was rediscovered in the garden shed and its revival started...
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The layout is a single 1220 x 610mm (4' x 2') board. The overall design developed from a combination of favourite narrow gauge photographs and notions of an interesting track layout to operate. Quite what its purpose is and what sort of traffic is likely to appear is far from certain. It is far too small to compare with any real-life setup. The curves are too tight, the sidings are too short etc., but it is nice to while-away time making all the things that go into a model railway, on a board that can be set up or put away easily.
