Pacific231G

John Charman housed it (the two boards - each 5ft 5ins- stored upright behind a curtain) and brought it out to operate, in a large (27 ft long) residential caravan, probably not the sort you'd be stuck behind on the A303 but still cramped. Whether he actually built it in the caravan is less certain though in his first article he did mention his wife putting up with a lot of sawing and drilling over a year. That was in 1955 and, by 1959 the caravan had been sold and he'd moved into more spacious accomodation(RAF Married quarters?) with Charford extended as an L.

It's not a problem. At Ally Pally a few years ago there were three Minories, in 4mm/3mm and 2mm scale respectively. They all used CJF's track plan and they were all different. Ashburton is an odd one as it was a lovely station (I visited it when the DVR was still planning to have it as their terminus before the Vogons decided to demolish the track to make way for a bypass) but it's a very limited one and very difficult to work - in reality and in model form. I thought Peter Denny had the right idea with Buckinham mk 2 which was based on Ashburton - Great Centralised of course- but with the mill move to the other side and the kickback mill siding turned into a goods loop. Though he never seems to have acknowledged it, Derek Naylor's 00n3 Aire Valley was effectively a close copy of the 00 Madder Valley. The original version of Saltaire was Madderport less one siding and, in the final version (RM July 1972), most of the scenic features are drectly lifted from the final version of the MVR - though without John Ahern's artistic flair. Even the sawmill in the corner with the watermill on the other side of the railway and the branch on the near side of the river. I seen nothing wrong with that but I do think that if you base your layout on someone else's you should acknowledge it. I can't imagine building a Minories and describing it with no reference to CJF or using the Inglenook name without acknowledging Alan Wright.

The new train was being tested again today. I watched, and heard, it passing on the embankment just south of South Greenford and, though not "eerily quiet" it was quieter than normal Distric Line stock. I then walked down to Castle Bar Park to get the train to W. Ealing (I was enroute to Ealing Broadway) . I'd hoped to see and photograph it coming back towards Greenford before my train arrived but found it still at W. Ealing on the charging rails. The Lizzie line train arrived as the Greenford train was pulling in, so I only had time to get a couple of snaps.

I bought one by mistake on eBay once thinking it was H0. It found a good home. It wasn't one of SNCF's "Unifiée" (standard) locos but, as in Britain, the majority of its steam locos were inherited from the former main line companies on nationalisation. The difference was that there had already been quite a lot of commonailty between the major companies before SNCF was created, far more than there ever was from the RCH. That was mainly on coaches and wagons through OCEM but applied to some extent to locos as well. The real problem is that, though there were quite a lot of ex German, "reparation", locos in France from the end of the First World War and to a lesser extent from the Second, there were never enough, except perhaps in Alsace. to make them typical and German steam locos did have a distinctly different "look" when compared with French. This probably won't change so far as steam is concerned as enthusiasm for it is far less marked than it is in Britain and the most popular epoch seems to be IV/V (when steam no longer reigned but "tradtional" railway operation was still the norm with wagonload goods and making and breaking of long distance passenger trains still very much a feature. Judging from exhibitors and attendees at shows, the average age of modellers is also a lot younger than it is in Britain

It depends of course on where in London Bridge and Victoria your end points are. From the main concourse at LB it's a fair walk to the Jubilee platforms which are fairly deep. The District/Circle Line platforms at Victoria are of course cut and cover so closer to the surface than the tube lines. All this rather reminds me of the old gag about telling a visitor to London that you can get around on foot faster than the tube and demonstrating it with a journey from Queensway to Bayswater. They look well separated on the Beck plan and involve a one stop journey on the Central and District lines with a change at Notting Hill Gate but are in reality a 3-5 minute walk.

four MPH is a pretty fast walking pace and, according to Google maps, the distance from Ealing Broadway to Shepherd's Bush station is 3.9 miles. You'd probably also need to add ten minutes for the four major and umpteen other road junctions. I used to cycle most of that route to work along the Uxbridge Road from Ealing Common to Television Centre and it took about 25-30 minutes - I gave up because I fancied staying alive! The "Super Loop 7" express bus (previously known as the 607) that stops at about every four bus stops does Ealing Broadway to Shepherd's Bush railway station in 30 minutes.

I travelled on the Greenford Branch on Friday (For me it's a handy way to get to the Waitrose in W. Ealing on the site of the old goods yard) and they were testing the new train then. It was running in counterpoint to the service train but I think they were doing other tests enroute as well as on the battery banks at West Ealing. There was pobably test equipment aboard that would have made it impossible to carry passengers and there will also have been a load of testing of doors, emergency functions and so on as well as driver training before they can be brought into service. I understand the way it works is that the battery banks at the charging station are gradually charged from the ordinary public supply but deliver charging power to the train at a far higher amperage within the five minutes or so that the Greenford Train turns around in. This system will obviously make sense for GWR's other branches such as Marlow, Henley and Looe (to name just three) that are fairly short. The Greenford Branch makes sense as a test site as there are alternative public transport services covering all five stations it so a failure would only leave prospective passengers inconvenienced not stranded. some pictures of the installation at W. Ealing one of the two charging rails with the battery banks behind fast charge battery bank no 1 optical ? train detector 2nd charging rail (closer to buffers) On Friday, I only saw the train in motion from a service train going the other way but others who've seen it say that it's eerily quiet- far more so than even a normal electric train. I assume this is because of the distributed power.

My pleasure Robin Hammersmith (H&C) was essentally a GWR station and even now there are still GWR benches on the non Island platform. It's therefore a reasonable assumption that, had the GW built their Shepherd's Bush terminus of the Ealing and Shepherds Bush rather than agreeing with the Central London Railway for them to operate it as an extension from Wood Lane/White City, that might well have been a rather similar three-platform affair but one operated by conventional trains, steam then diesel, into modern times. This is more of an "almost was" than a "might have been" and, if the CLR's original plan to extend itself by looping south to Hammersmith then back into the City via Kensington, Hyde Park and Fleet Street had come to fruition, might well have been built. The GWR wanted the line to provide a more direct link to the City and, in the end, it made more sense to make that connection at Ealing Broadway rather than establishing a new suburban terminus at Shepherd's Bush. At yeserday's Wealden Show, someone had a layout based on how that terminus might be now rationalised and cut back and there was a 3mm scale Minories based ( but single track) layout based on it. OT but, while looking for more about the proposed Shepherds Bus terminus, I was highly amused by this from TrainLine Travel from Shepherd's Bush to Ealing Broadway by train in 1 hour 20 minutes If you want to know more about the journey from Shepherd's Bush to Ealing Broadway by train, look no further! The average journey time from Shepherd's Bush to Ealing Broadway by train is 1 hour 39 minutes, although on the fastest services it can take just 1 hour 20 minutes. You'll usually find 6 trains per day travelling the 4 miles (6 km) between these two destinations. You'll need to make 2 changes along the way to Ealing Broadway. You'll be travelling with Thameslink, London Overground or Southern on your way to Ealing Broadway, as these are the main rail operators on this route. Or 15 minutes by tube! The perils of automated journey planning. I also found this piece of nonsense. Thinking about taking the train from London Bridge to London Victoria? We've got you covered. It usually takes around 34 minutes to travel the 3 miles (4 km) from London Bridge to London Victoria by train, although you can get there in as little as 56 minutes on the fastest services Their 34 minute route is Thameslink to Blackfriars then the Underground, but the Underground alone via Westminster (Jubilee + District/Circle) takes just 11-16 minutes. The 54 minute "fastest" route is the "direct train" that offers an unguided tour of South London. This is all a useful reminder that computers and AI systems don't do common sense.

I'm not sure that any fulfil all those parameters. Birmingham Moor St. was the obvious example of a three-platform terminus with a busy service. Windsor (Riverside) also had three platforms off a double track and would be quite an interesting prototype though not so intense. Of the other London termini, Marylebone had four platforms and wasn't just a suburban service but I think Fenchurch Street,. also with four platforms, was about the most compact of them. Although the terrminal road at Liverpool Street (Met) and certain other aspects of the station were Cyril Freezer's direct inspiration for Minories, he said that the idea in Minories of a suburban route worked entirely by tank engines came from the LT&S line out of Fenchurch Street. There were three terminal roads at Blackfriars with loco layovers but also two through platforms for High Holborn and the Widened lines. The suburban section of Kings Cross with its overall roof and a solid wall between it and the main line station had three platforms and the air of being a separate station. Ealing Broadway's District Railway terminus was (and still is) a three platform terminus and, with its short overall roof and original station building (now shops and offices) at street level with stairs down to the platforms is worth looking at as a model if not as a prototype. It must have had some turnover pattern of operation between its opening 1879 and electrification (still partly loco hauled) in 1905. It was originally a two platform station and I don't know if the third platform road was added with its electrification but the 25 inch OS map (National Library of Scotland) definitely shows a loco layover road with what looks like a coaling stage. The same thing must have also been true of the Hammersmith and City terminus at Hammersmith which is also a three platform station (and even now quite Minories like in its appearance) though there was a loco depot there in steam days rather than just a layover track and it too may have been a two platform station before electrification.

But the 040TX- though built in France- were, like the 150X, a German design (a KDL4 - Kriegsdampflok 4) that had been ordered i 1943 by the occupying Germans from the French builder Schneider in Le Creusot. Apart from the first four (which were sabotaged but later repaired) they were completed by Schneider for SNCF after the liberation. The first time I knowlingly saw a Nez Cassé, it was an ONCF diesel in Morocco!

I've had a slightly odd experience about this. I designed my small French terminus layout to be capable, for casual use , of being shunted with its three road fiddle yard replaced by a blanking piece in which state it fits neatly on the back of my worktable. The idea is that the daily goods train has just arrived and I can spend a pleasant half hour or so shunting it and replacing incoming with departing wagons until the loco is at the other end and the train is ready to depart. It is then only necessary to run the loco round and move the brake van to the other end to repeat the cycle with the formerly outgoing wagons becoming the next day's inbound. This is much the same principle as shunting an Inglenook but with rather more variety in the shunting. This idea worked fine but, rather to my surprise, I found that I still really wanted the train to enter from offstage and exit offstage right as well, The fiddle yard (which adds passenger and other workings) made the layout a bit too long for my table so I built a "fiddle stick" with a single piece of track the length of a train (loco and five wagons) . The departed train still needs to be brought back for the loco to run round the train before propelling it off stage during the "interval" ready for the next cycle. Somehow, this seems far more satisfying , even though I can see the train lurking in the wings, but I'm not sure why. It's possible that exchange sidings would avoid this desire as the trains on your short line railroad complete their journeys and the class 1 fairies come and take the wagons away (or just change their cards) during the night. Though for a very different footprint this may give you some ideas for a complete short line. with two termini, one of them with an exchange siding, rather than a terminus to fiddle yard. I've always rather liked this plan designed by Charles Small in 1951 to fit on a standard 9ft x 5ft table tennis table which, rather to my surprise when I re-drew it, fitted this small area using ordinary Peco track with a minimum 18 inch radius. The track that ends at the G of Gulf is obviously the exchange siding. Nowadays one would build this as a shelf layout which would allow for more gradual curves and avoid the spaghetti bowl appearance and,for a diesel era layout, you wouldn't need the turntables. Nevertheless it creates plenty of work for the train crew as this extract from Small's description of a trip for the daily "peddlar" freight run makes clear. It looks like he was using trains of five cars plus a caboose and they'd probably be 40ft cars. Small also assumed passenger as well as freight working but "mixed train daily" was a thing then and not only the title of Lucius Beebe's famous book on short lines. “Upon arriving at Gulf Siding, the train holds the main track. The brakeman then cuts it one car ahead of the caboose. This car and the caboose are left standing on the main while the engine and the other four cars pull down to clear the far switch of the siding. When this has been set for the siding, the engineer horses over his Johnson bar and pushes the four cars through the siding track and tunnel and on into Jone’s Mill. Here three cars are set out. The engine and one car (the one picked up at Bayou) come back, reverse the previous moves to couple onto the car and caboose left on the main line and the train departs, chugging on to complete its run at Lake Creole” With short trains anf maybe a branch, I think you could get this sort of multi depot approach into a 19 ft x 11ft 6in L

I think that approach may have reflected a world (which I'm just old enough to remember) where, if you wanted to watch steam hauled expresses on one hand or the shunting of a marshalling yard on the other you could just go out and do so but what you couldn't do was to experience the actual operation of a railway. Modelling the operation of a railway is just as valid an area of modelling as recreating a railway scene. They're not of course mutually exclusive and many of us at least try to do both but the degree of each will inevitably reflect our own interests. I do find that the layouts that most appeal to me at exhibitions are those that present me with a credible railway scene in which trains do more than just run through it. Good examples of this for me have been the late Geoff Ashdown's Tower Pier (with its Widened Lines atmosphere and operation effectively from a lever frame and block instrument equipped signal box), Bradfield Gloucester Square, Peter Denny's Leighton Buzzard (as exhibited by Tony Gee and also operated with block instruments), Borchester Market, and a number of others. Though I'm not sure if I'd describe it as a layout, one of the exhibits I found most attractive at Abingdon was Peter Boyce's GW Broad Gauge "Parlour Railway" with its mahogany panels, velvet curtains and green shaded brass lamps. Though trains (all beautifully modelled in 7mm scale) just shuttled back and forth .It rather reminded me of the fully signalled training railways (usually Gauge 1 or even 3 ) used by railway companies mainly to teach signalling staff LNWR training railway 1910 (on a table 20' long in two sections of "sound mahogany, French polished") but also the display railways presented at major exhibitions by several pre -grouping railway companies. LMS display 1925 I think such approaches could well still have their place. I also find it interesting that, of the model railways, that seemed most influential in the 1950s and 1960s, only the Craig and Mertonford didn't have a heavy dose of operation. The many articles from the builders of Buckingham, Charford and Berrow (to name just three) all included detailed accounts of their operation and timetabling.

Versions of German locos that ended up in France, mostly as reparations after the First World War, have long been fairly common in H0 as well. So have coaches such as "Bastilles" and thunderboxes and standard European wagons in SNCF markings. All have been fairly simple for manufacturers to add to their ranges requiting little more than relettering. However, while these are useful additions to models of native French stock they are no substitute for it in creating a French themed layout.

No, it was an originally CF de l'Ouest loco from a class built between 1867-1885 that remarkably remained in service until 1965 . I suppose it was rather the Ouest's equivalent of a Dean goods. I think the old loco used to create havoc in La Bataille du Rail was also an 030C The last of the Est 230Bs remained in service until 1967 but I assume the six (not five ) used in The Train* were being withdrawn. They were part of a class of 390 built between 1901 and 1912 and, according to Wiki, the largest class of "ten wheelers" in France. I've always thought it must have been someone in SNCF who came up with the idea of moving them from Region Est - where the action is supposedly set- to Normandy (Region Ouest), where most of it was filmed. The production did use the "art train" to move their equipment around the French railway system. I agree about the Y shaped viaduct coming out of the tunnel looking very Estish . the left hand leg was the line to Louviers and Acquigny and the right hand leg was a connecting line down to the double-track line from Oissel to Glos Montfort that passes beneath the viaduct (though unseen in the film) The Train is sort of based on a true story. Just before the liberation of Paris in 1944, the Germans tried to ship five final van loads of looted art to Germany, mostly impressionist and modern art that the Nazis despised. The cheminots, warned by Rose Valland, ensured that they never got out of the Paris rail system though by far more subtle means than those shown in the film (which were in part based on scenes in La Battaille du Rail) and were finally taken in charge by a unit of the advancing French army. The film implied that "Mlle. Vilard " was making her first contact with the resistance and begging them to stop the art train but she had in reality been working with them through the occupation. Working at the Jeu de Paume museum that the Germans were using as a depot for their looiting of art, Valland had secretly, and at great personal risk, recorded the contents and destinations of looted art shipments keeping the Resistance informed so that they wouldn't be blown up and, after the war enabling some 60 000 item of looted art to be identified with most of it returned to its rightful owners by 1950. The actual story can be found here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Valland * The 230Bs that appeared in the film were nos. 517, 614, 617, 711, 739, 856

I went to the Abingdon show yesterday and it was very good indeed with a good range of layouts from the very large (like Yakima that was attracting a healthy spectatorship) to small simple layouts. Overall it presented a very positive image of our hobby. I've been looking at videos of a couple of recent largish shows in France and this one particularly struck me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtopULJoBQ8&ab_channel=LF_MODELISME In terms of seeing the layouts there are better videos on Youtube of this particular show (St. Mandé 2024 held in the town hall of one of the outer Paris suburbs) but, unusually, the videographer, interviewed the presenters of as many of the layouts as possible. They're probably saying much the same as their British equivalents would if asked and I certainly didn't wade through 2h23m of it but what did strike me , spinning through it , was their age profile which seems to be significantly younger than it would be in Britain. That accords with my own impressions from past exhibitions there. Overall the hobby is smaller in France than in Britain with an estimated (by Loco-revue) total of about 30 000 active modellers (excluding collectors) of which about 7000 are members of the country's 280 or so clubs. My impression has also been that clubs there are rather more successful at attracting younger members and railway modelling seems accepted like any other loisir (hobby) and it's quite common for male exhibitors to be accompanied by their wives who often operate the layout . The hobby also seems to be less engaged in nostalgia than in the inherent pleasures of modelling though layout operation (i.e, shunting) is far more limited and most large club layouts are based on trains running through often quite magnificent scenery. Based on those who used to bring layouts from Europe to British shows like ExpoNG or Eurotrack it looks like the picture is similar in countries like Belgium and the Netherlands but I can't be sure of that.

It's always worth watching. There are also some rather modern looking cars in the Vaires car park but I'd not noticed the catenary. The other "goof" was that much of the track, including the section that Lancaster's character saboataged to finally stop the art train was bull head rather than flat bottom and that wasn't used on the Est. That does of course reflect the reality that, apart from the scenes in Paris, it was filmed on the west region with most of the action on an already closed section of the former Rouen-Orleans line with "Rive-Reine" being the real station at Acquigny with Louviers and Heudreville also putting in appearances. What they did get right was to bring in I think five recently withdrawn 230B locos from the eastern region. I'd call the 1964 film The Train rather than Le Train as there's a French film of that title (released in English as The Last Trains) starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Romy Schneider from 1973 based on Georges Simenon's 1963 short novel. It's about two people who meet on a refugee train crossing France ahead of the advancing Germans in 1940 from near Sedan to La Rochelle (before it was electrified). The train itself was hauled by 230G353 but I think a 141R does put in an appearance though in the dusk. It's also well worth seeing.

So far, unfortunately since it's what I model, I've seen no evidence of TT gaining any foothold at all in France. If you want to build a German, Czech or Hungarian etc. layout in TT things are fairly rosy but, apart from the odd wagon- which could of course be found outside France, I've seen no sign of anything being available in TT scale* . The hobby base is smaller there than in Britain or Germany so it's probably too much of a niche. It took a long time for much French material to be available in N scale though the market is pretty well served now. *Even for narrow gauge, relatively few French modelers use 12 mm gauge track for H0m, despite the fact that the country once had some 20 000 kms (12 500 miles) of metre gauge railways. Most narrow gauge modellers there use H0e or 0e, even though the total of 60cm (2ft more or less) public railways was only about 450 km and the 750-760mm gauge that H0e properly represents was confined to just one public railway 12km long.

Was it they who once had a shooting range under the now long lost West Pier? I did doing some 22 rifle shooting there when I was at University but only a couple of times. By the way, looking at alternative histories of Brighton's railways There is a good precedent for a terminus next to the sea with Ramsgate Harbour/Beach which was ideally compact and also emerged from a tunnel. I could well see something like that having appeared at Brighton as, for a seaside town, the station is rather a long way from the sea (though Kemptown was also rather a long way from the main seaside attractions).

Idris is exactly the sort of dragon I had in mind- though a small heraldic dragon might be a bit less than an A4 would need to raise steam at 21 000 ft. You'd also need to lower the boiler pressure by 0.8 bar (though, since the pressure gauge and I think the safety valves work on relative rather than absolute pressure that's not a great problem)

I agree and I'd love to see the layout again, even though, sadly, without Geoff.

Not very high though mallards have been reported to fly as high as 21 000 ft. I don't though think Sir Nigel's version could get much of a fire going at that height so might need the help of dragons.

With Minories, I'd reckon to extend the loco spur to form a departures only bay platform which would still be a good place for the station pilot to lurk. You can still see evidence of a separate arrivals and departure platform at Paddington where the waiting and refreshment rooms, ticket office and toilets were (and to an extent still are) alongside platform 1, used for the most important expresses, while the wide arrivals platform between 8 and 9 has no facilities for passengers but a whole circulation scheme for taxis to enter, pick up arriving passengers and leave.

Yes I do. It's Geoff Ashdown's own drawing rather so I think it's OK to post it. Can you remember anything of his explanation? I still suspect the sheer bu**eration of building a reliable double slip was the real reason as also for the interlaced points in the goods yard. I think this 'legend' is similar to the one Tom Cunnington came up with for his Minories (GN) also in EM though that was a pure Minories. To see how platform 2 was used, this movements sheet that I captured at ExpoEM in 2014 may help. Geoff Ashdown isn't the only modeller to have used separate lines at different levels. Roy Emery did it with a greater vertical separation with Fenchurch Cutting. With Tower Pier, the idea is that Minories Junction is the next box where the singled branch to St. Katherine's Dock bifurcates. The dock branch swings off to the left just before the overbridge (and is actually hidden under the road) but the cramped nature of the docks necessitated a two road shunting yard running alongside the station platforms being shoehorned in to the cramped station area to sort out wagons going to and coming from the dock (which in reality had no wharf side tracks) . Given Tower Pier station's location between Minories and Vine Street facing onto Tower Hill, the docks branch is actually in the correct orientation. One of my favorite vignettes on Tower Pier is the dummy District and Circle lines passing underneath the station throat with an Undeground train that never actually moves.

Apart from discussing his EM Tower Pier layout with him at various shows, I didn't know Geoff Ashdown personally though others on RMWEB may have known him better. However, those conversations and the layout itself were enough to form an opinion of a very fine modeller who was also generous in sharing his knowledge and experience. Geoff did invite me to come to one of his regular operating sessions near Southend but circumstances meant that I never was able to take him up on that. I only found out about his death, on 24th March 2023, while trying to find out more about Tower Pier and, as is so often the case, discovered far more about him. As Major Geoff Ashdown he was an officer in the Salvation Army associated with the Southend Citadel, where he had been the "commanding officer" and the Hadleigh Citadel from which he retired in 2017. I think he also worked professionally as a surveyor in the Churchs property department. In his spare time he was also a keen motorcyclist and was a member of the EM Gauge Society. His obituary describes him as "a remarkable individual who touched the lives of many. with a legacy of kindness, understanding, and faith. He was a wise counselor and a great family man. His caring ministry touched countless lives, offering help and blessings to those in need. Geoff’s warm presence, his listening ear, and his ability to make people laugh will be remembered fondly." Geoff Ashdown's layout, Tower Pier, was obviously inspired by Cyril Freezer's Minories, though the track plan was somewhat different and he added a separate set of goods sidings. It depicted the terminus in 1955 of the imaginary Metropolitan Widened Lines Extension Railway. Tower Pier was the endpoint of the railway running from Moorgate down to the Thames, just north of the Tower of London with a goods branch to St. Catherine's dock . The layout was fully signalled and operated in strict accordance with the rules. Geoff told me that the layout, with the station slightly hidden between retaining walls, had been built as a home layout. Though portable, he had never intended it for exhibition. It was though exhibited at least eleven times and always drew large crowds. What was remarkable about it was that the entire layout, including a metre long cassette based fiddle yard, was only three metres by fifty centimetres (10ft x 20 inches) but, with clever use of scenic breaks and a short overall roof, you never realised that the longest train was a tank loco with a single "quad-art" set.

Where is it cached by Google ? (I hope nobody is nicking my photos) This is the complete image I cropped it from which I took at Watford Finescale in 2012. I saw Geoff Ashdown's Tower Pier several times including at ExpoEM and at one of the Stoke Mandeville exhibitions. I hope someone has taken it on following his death last year as it's a wonderful layout and amazing for just three metres in total length including the cassette fiddle yard. It's in EM but I did have a crack at reproducing the plan in the same dimensions with Streamline mediums. but note that the pointwork in the goods sidings I've represented with a double slip is actually two interlaced points as shown in the SBD I think the interlaced points are clear in this photo - taken in 2014 ( I think at Stoke Mandeville) which shows all the pointwork apart from the releasing crossover. The separate goods yard aside, it's not quite operationally identical to Minories as the single slip doesn't enable up (inbound) trains to access platform 2. I don't know if this was deliberately to make it a bit more challengint to operate or jsut because a double slip was too hard to build reliable in the space available. The overall steam-era Widened Lines atmosphere aside (The mythical Tower Pier was supposed to be an extension of them) , two things I particularly liked about Tower Pier were the trick of having the two sidings representing St. Catherine's Dock hidden under a hinged roadway and, for DC, making the whole layout live on one controller but installing "brakes" (i.e switched dead sections) everywhere a loco could legitimately be stopped. As shown in the diagram below. If anyone's interested I'll happily post a few more of my images of Tower Pier