Pacific231G

This is slghtly off-topic for a discussion of street running in Britain but perhaps interesting as a comparison. When I first discovered the sheer number of light railways and particularly roadside lines that once ran through particularly rural France I too tended to see any wide verge along a D road as a former railway. Close study of early Michelin and Taride maps showed that they weren't quite that ubiquitous but there were an awful lot ot them. I did though want to get a more definitive figure for public railways using roads in France as the numbers are fairly staggering. The listings in Baddeley's book The Continental Steam Tram are a bit uncertain for lengths as he includes a number of lines that I know had just a little roadside running and ran mainly on their own rights of way. He does though very usefully denote the types of locos used, fully enclosed, motions enclosed or just ordinary tank locos. In general you can assume that a railway using fully or partly enclosed locos was, at least in part, a roadside tramway but not vice versa. A lot of the tramways, especially the later ones, such as the much missed metre gauge Tramways de Correze and the 600mm Pithiviers-Toury never used enclosed motions let alone fully enclosed tram locos. It's a very difficult figure to establish but I have scans of Jean Arrivetz's* monumental post-war work on the subject which lists tramways, and light railways for every French Département, along with their gauge, for 1913 and 1921. Unfortunately he doesn't differentiate between roadside tramways and town trams though it's usually possible to make a fair guess based on the form of propulsion. Horse then electric or shortish electric is usually a pretty good clue to a town tram as is the name of the operating company. Another really useful source are two editions of the Magazine des Tramways a Vapeur et des Secondaires from 1989 giving lists by départements of every local light railway at their peak in the 1920s, and also the mostly metre gauge railways that were part of the national network. It doesn't distinguish tramways from other light railways- the legal distinction between them for local railways was abandoned in 1913- but it does separate out d'Interet Local lines that carried both passenger and freight - a proper railway IMHO- and those that only carried passengers. Most of those were town and city trams though the category does also include systems like the Paris Metro, various funiculars and a few small passenger only steam tramways to hotels and resorts. it's take me a couple of days to put all these numbers into a spreadsheet but cranking the handle gave me a total, excluding town trams etc. of between 20174 and 21668 kms of local light railways of which 9375kms were roadside tramways (defined by more than two thirds of their route using public roads-usually the verge). On top of that were some 2400 kms of not so light d'Interet General metre gauge including the Reseau Breton, Vivarais, Corsica, PO Correze etc. Without comparing each individual railway across every source, which would be a monumental task, I think the totals for tramways derived from Arrivetz may be slightly inflated by a bit of double counting as some tramways were incorporated into wider Départemental systems or city tram networks but the overall total for French light railways are fairly close to those I've calculated, rather sadly, by totting up all the figures for closures. From all this it would be safe to say that France once had over 20 000kms of public light railways of which around 9 000kms or 45% involved significant roadside running. * Jean Arrivetz, who was still with us until the end of 2015, was a senior manager in the Lyon transport authority but better known as one of the founders of the group that preserved the Vivarais and perhaps the father of the railway preservation movement in France.

The seaside landladies must have just loved 31027 !! I'd always udnerstood that it was mostly coal the Dover line carried but it was clearly far more mixed than that so presumably as well as the RN. there were commercial docks at the Eastern end that weren't just shipping out coal from the Tilmanstone bucket conveyor. Interesting that there appears not to be a man with a red flag though that was usually required. Even the Dieppe Maritime branch had that even though most of it ran along a quayside rather than the adjoining street (unlike the Weymouth Harbour Tramway that was on the street) I've just remembered the Campbeltown and Macrihanish, a 27inch gauge railway that crossed the Mull of Kintyre. The line itself was on its own right of way but, though the passenger station was technically on the quay, only a surveyor would know that as it wasn't separated from the street and was built with inset track. https://www.railscot.co.uk/imageenlarge/imagecomplete.php?id=33469 http://www.singscript.plus.com/daviddrewmusic/Images/cmlr.jpg Nigel Macmillan - a great friend of P.D. Hancock- built a very nice model of this line in O 16.5 and I got to see it at a Gauge O Guild show in Telford some years ago. It's a line I'd have loved to have seen in the flesh as the combination of quayside, narrow gauge railway and street mist have been marvellous.

That's fascinating Phil. I sort of wondered whether the horse would be in danger of nudging the car off the rail if it strayed from side to side but maybe they came up with a harness to avoid that. Most passenger monorails seem to have confirmed the old adage of being " the transport system of the future, always have been, always will be". They always seem to be trying to do things that railways do better and get very confused by junctions and level crossings but they've clearly been far more successful in various forms of material handling. The one at Amberley is well worth seeing.

It finally closed in 1945 so far too early to be dieselised but I don't think anyone has yet mentioned the Wantage tramway in Oxfordshire. It opened in 1875 so very early for a roadside steam tramway in Britain. There was also of course the 3ft 6in gauge Wolverton and Stony Stratford tramway and the Swansea and Mumbles Railway - opened in 1804 as the world's first passenger railway. I think in that case it was more a question of a railside road than a roadside railway as the adjoining turnpike road didn't open until 1826. The Mumbles wasn't steam hauled until 1877 and eventually in 1929 became an electric tramway in all but name though I think almost all of it was on its own formation rather than being on the road.

Most monorails appear to be trying to to get round some non-existent patent for a conventional railway but the Ewing system used on the Patiala State Monorail one was quite interesting, particularly for a railway specifically designed to run along a public road. Most of the weight, about 95%, is on the double flanged rail wheels with just enough on the road borne outrigger to keep locomotive and trailing vehicles upright . As can be seen here, the surface the road wheel runs on needs to be firm and flat but it doesn't have to carry much of a loading while the single rail can run on the the side of the road out of the way of other traffic so doesn't need to be expensively inset. So far as I know the only use of the Ewing system with locomotives was on the 50 mile long Patiala system from 1907 to 1927 but it was also used on the bullock hauled Kundala Valley Railway carrying tea from 1902-1908 before that was replaced by a conventional 2ft gauge steam railway. I don't know if it was used on any other industrial railways but it could have assumed far greater importance in a different situation. I'm not sure if canal towpaths count as roadside but In 1898 Siemens came up with this design for an electric canal haulage tractor that was tried out experiemntally on the Finow canal In 1900 they exhibited this developed version intended for the St. Dennis canal at the Paris exhibition . In this case about 85% of the weight was carried by the flanged rail wheels and about 15% by the "road" wheel. which either ran on a light rail with no flange gap or simply on the flat towpath. This left the towpath clear for towing horses and other traffic. In the end the St. Dennis Canal scheme wasn't pursued and in Germany only the Teltow canal near Berlin used electric rail haulage over its 37km length. That lasted from 1905-1945 but the local authorities rejected the monorail so electric tractors ran on a conventional metre gauge railway. In France, canal haulage by electric rail locos was developed from the 1900s on a far greater scale and by the 1920s equipped well over a thousand kilometres of canals across North and East France from Dunkirk in the north to Mulhouse in the east. The towing service was maintained until the end of the 1960s, by when most barges were self propelled, but a few section associated with the longer canal tunnels were still operating into the 1980s. This network also used conventional railway track laid on sleepers mostly metre gauge but 600mm where towpaths were narrower in the formerly German regions of Alsace. However, unless the trak was inlaid (as it was around wharves and in some towns and villages) the railway track effectively replaced the towpath and other forms of canalside haulage, mostly horses, were banned. If the Ewing system had been developed for this purpose it might have been both cheaper in track costs and more flexible. In terms of energy use hauling a barge along a canal using an electric rail tractor is the most efficient form of inland freight transport ever invented but rather less so in terms of the number of people needed to operate it. .

Geoffrey Baddeley's book IS called "The Continental Steam Tram" (ISBN 0 900433 78 7) and was published by the LRTA in 1980. He lists 169 steam tramways in France. Most of these were fairly short but some Départements- notably Correze, Ille & Vilaine, Vendee and Sarthe had fairly extensive networks. I've been interested in French "Secondaires" for decades so have a fairly comprehensive library of books and other material on them and can probably dig up something about any particular line. The best known metre gauge lines - mostly because they survived longer- notably the PO Correze, Vivarais and the Reseau Breton as well as the half dozen or so "traditional" (i.e not modern city trams) metre gauge railways still in public service weren't actually "Departmental" railways "d'Interet Local" (I.L.). Instead these were "d'Interet General" (I.G.)which means they were considered to be part of the national rail network. Legally that meant they were the responsibility of the state rather than the local departments. The I.L.s were effectively the equivalent of our public light railways and usually more lightly constructed with simpler signalling regimes and fewer barriered/staffed level crossings - (crossing keepers cottages are a useful sign of old railways in France but for departmental railways you need to look for the station buildings) The I.G. metre gauge lines totalled just over 2 000kms but this total was dwarfed by over 16 000 kms of metre gauge I.L. railways. There were also about 3 000kms of standard gauge I.L. but only 442kms of sub-metric public light railway, all but one 600mm gauge mostly sponsored by Paul Decauville* . The sub-metric lines, all but one 600mm, were all roadside tramways, the most extensive being in Calvados. The final line of that was abruptly closed on June 6th 1944 after too many allied tanks ran over its tracks but you can see it in several of the film clips of British troops advancing inland on D-Day. That day the regular early morning train already had steam up but for obvious reasons it never ran. For the metre gauge lines it's quite hard to separate the roadside lines from the rest and even the I.G. lines indulged in some roadside running- The CF de Provence line from Nice to Digne still does in a few places! I'd estimate though that something less than half the total was roadside. It tended to be the poorer departements like the Vendee or Correze that went for roadside lines, mainly because they were cheap, but they were also very slow and succumbed very quickly to road competition from the early 1930s. The last example, the truncated metre gauge Twys. de Correze line from Tulle to Neuvic d'Ussel closed at the end of 1959. The 600mm Pithiviers tramway had already closed to passengers in 1952 but lasted as a seasonal sugar beet line until 1964- late enough for its first 3kms to be preserved. Most of what is now preserved of the metre gauge is from the I.G. lines but the one notable survivor of the I.L. lines is the CF du Baie de Somme. That's easily within day trip range of southern England and is a wonderful system but, despite a few hundred metres of quayside running, isn't a roadside tramway The preserved 3kms of the Pithiviers tramway does offer roadside running along amost its entire length and there is also some of that on the upper section of the preserved Haute Somme near Albert though that 600mm ex WW1 military then sugar beet line was never a public railway. There is one rather remarkable roadside tramway in France and that's the 600mm Tramway Forestier du Cap Ferret. That was built in the early 1950s by a light railway enthusiast who made it his life's work and runs across the Cap Ferret peninsula connecting boats arriving from Arcachon with the Atlantic beaches. It's only about a mile long and the most remarkable thing about it is that it was mainly built along the side of roads that had been planned but not yet built. By getting in before the roads and houses the line was safe from the NIMBYs who had prevented him from building it on the more direct route of an earlier 800mm horse tramway . *There were several fairly extensive but short lived networks of 600mm gauge public railways operated by the "Ministry for the Liberated Regions" immediately after the First World War. These were the ex military trench supply railways pressed into civilian service to help rebuild the shattered areas along the Western Front. The lines often ran along the middle of roads as well as the side. They closed in the early 1920s but a number were then taken over by the sugar mills to handle the intense seasonal traffic in beets.

Hi Kevin I think street running railways were always far less common in Britain, where railways were always regarded as nasty dangerous things that needed to be fenced off like a field of bulls, than almost anywhere else. The distinction between a tramway and a railway has always been a rather vague one and at one time rural France and particularly Belgium were littered with railway lines running along the side of roads and sometimes down the middle of them. In France, the local railways were the responsibility of local authorities (Départements - counties more or less) and since they also owned the local "D" roads very little land had to be bought if they decided to save costs that way. The downside of that was very slow trains (typically not more than 15km/h or between nine and ten MPH) These lines certainly did carry goods and in general were probably more important for that than for passengers. I can't remember what proporton of France's fifteen thousand miles of mostly metre gauge "départemental" railways were tramways (defined as a railway with more than 2/3 its length running along public roads) It wasn't a majority but it was a fairly high proportion.

I worked in South Western House next to the old Southampton Terminus station from about 1979 and I can remember in the first few months I was there seeing short goods workings behind 0-4-0 diesel shunters using the link. I wish now I'd paid more attention to it at the time but my recollection is that most of the inset track was where it crossed the various entrances to Town Quay and Royal Pier. For some of its length the line was on its own ballasted formation separated from the road by a low single rail fence. II don't know if it was technically a tramway or on private land owned by the docks board. I think the track onto Royal Pier was still in place but disused. There are some photos of it about five or six years earlier here http://railthing.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/southampton-docks-1973.html There used to be a railway that was completely street running along the promenade at Dover between the Western railway docks and what was then the Admiralty Harbour but now the site of the main Eastern RoRo docks. It mostly carried coal and it must have really offended the terribly respectable guest house owners to have steam locos chuffing along the prom and spoiling their gentility. It's very clear in this photo from the 1920s https://doverhistorian.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/th-western-docks-1920s-before-promanade-pier-was-dismantled-courtesy-of-dover-library.jpg The line finally closed in 1964 by which time it was at least partly operated by diesels but by then traffic had declined. There's a lengthy note about it and the nearby military railways here https://www.flickr.com/photos/jelltecks/15224231033

It's not a recently introduced Americanism. I've traced it back in PW engineering to well before WW2 but haven't found it any earlier than that. I have also foind the word frog in British usage equally earlier. I assume the adoption of switch rail rather than point blade was precisely to avoid any confusion between the normal common usage of points to mean the whole turnout and the more specific use of it as a component of them. The GWR was referring to points and crossings before the First World War but by the 1920s was rather confusingly referring to "cutting in switches" implying the whole switch and crossing and seemed to be using "points" rather more generically. . I'm very happy to use the word turnout when discussing the specifics of permanent way as it has a precise meaning but not to tell people they're wrong when they call them points. I've certainly seen the term set of points used in RAIB (or BofT) reports to include the crossing or frog when the failure of that has been the cause of a derailment.

Hi Jack According to Portsmouth Model Shop, the only UK retailer listed on the Redutex website http://co.uk.redutex.com/ there's been a holdup on orders since last Christmas apparently because of an illness in the small Spanish firm that makes it. They do have some in stock so it might be worth giving them a call (Portsmouth Model Shop tel 023 926 53100 www.modelshop-portsmouth.co.uk) I'd normally suggest Loco-Revue, who have a large range in their current catalogue, as their online ordering is usually pretty efficient but looking at their website they're currently only showing six surfaces and none of them brickwork http://trains.lrpresse.com/search.aspx?q=redutex Sorry not to be able to help more.

points or set of points is the normally accepted British English word for a junction between two railway lines (OED definition). Turnout can be seen as the technical term, originally an Americanism, used by PW engineers to describe the same thing. They are synonyms so neither is "correct" nor "incorrect". It's a bit like kneecap and patella, a doctor might use the latter in her medical notes but would certainly use kneecap when talking to a patient. The idea that a thing can only have one word to describe it is very strange and rather smacks of Orwellian Newspeak What I can't understand is why PW engineers have come to insist on the incredibly clumsy "switch and crossing work " or "switches and crossings" when pointwork has been perfectly well understood for generations as a generic terrm. If you watch Network Rail's otherwise very informative introduction here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuR5QTlfOzk it just sounds awkward. It's also interesting in the same film to see a certain ambiguity about crossings, whether they mean just the fabricated or cast combination of nose and wing rails commonly known as the "frog" or the whole thing including the check rails. So far as I can tell the term "common crossing" seems to no longer be in current use outside modelling circles. While going through my collection of MRJs over the weekend I was also rather amused to see the term "turnout control" or "turnout motor " appearing more than once presumably by modellers who thought that was somehow more "correct" than the vulgar "point motor"

As usual I really enjoyed the show today. Since I model French H0, EXpoEM ought to be totally irrelevant to me but it's actually one of my favourite exhibitons and I always come home feeling inspired and with my wallet not too strained. An extremely good talk in the afternoon by t-b-g on the Buckingham Branch and it was also good to see some of Peter Denny's rolling stock. Thanks Tony and I hope Leighton Buzzard does come back to Bracknell. In the morning Richard Davies gave a very informative talk on the basic principles of signalling. It covered a lot of stuff that we may think we know but probably don't. Both Richard and Tony are giving the same talks tomorrow so If you can get there just go! If you don't mind walking a couple of hundred metres, the parking by the running track is always as empty as the main car park is full. It never fails to amuse me that people visiting leisure centre, presumably most of them to get some good healthy exercise, try to park as close to the main entrance as possible.

So is the BBC Concert Hall in Broadcasting House along with all the ground floor and basement studios. The Bakerloo Line is a lot busier than the Aldwych branch ever was and fairly reminiscent of Hades in the rush hour. It's not a daft idea at all. Any excuse for a Pullman train is worth taking*. It would also be good to have a bit of high culture for a change though the more lumpen rucksack brigade at exhibitions might get a bit agitated. For a venue I was also wondering about something open air like Leeds Castle which of course has a castle. The concert area is in a sort of bowl fairly well hidden by trees but that would give lots of scope for crowds of concert goers hauling their picnics to the venue on trolleys etc. I've also just remembered that the Pavilion Theatre Weymouth was alongside the GW Harbour station and until it burnt down in 1954 to be replaced by the present rather nondescript building was a typical Edwardian pile. It's worth a look There are photos of it here http://www.digital-works.co.uk/pavilionpast/photos.html but this rejected design looks more manageable as a model and if you only modelled the front facade it woudn't be too overpowering. *Deauville-Trouville, the terminus serving the fashionable resort of Deauville used to have a daily summer service The Deauville Pullman Express and from 1923 this included sleeping cars. Nothing odd about a service of sleeping cars to a fashionable resort in those days (think of the Train Bleu) except that this was a daytime train that only took about three hours from Paris. CIWL Voiture Lits cabins could of course be configured for day or night and these were in principle run in day mode with the bed converted into a couch. I'll leave it to your imagination as to what sort of traveller would want a small private room for two on a three hour journey with the possiblity of the seating being turned into a bed!!

It probably will be again when Peco actually release their first bullhead points onto the world. Until then there's probably nothing much more to say about it except that in French "bullhead" is properly "double champignon asymétrique". It's normally just referred to as "double champignon" or DC but some of the railway companies there continued to use double headed rail (double champignon symétrique) until fairly late on even though the idea that you could simply turn worn rail over and use the other side died as quickly there as here. Here's a question. how widely was BH rail used on British narrow gauge railways and how common was chaired flat bottom on all railways?

Which was far more associated with the German Black Forest than with Switzerland. Nobody seems to know where the first ones were made but it was probably somewhere in southern Germany, possibly Augsburg, around the 1620s. Their production by Black Forest clockmakers developed during early eighteenth century. and they've always been more strongly associated with that region of Germany than anywhere else. The Swiss contribution seems to have been the "chalet" cuckoo clock though they too were made in far larger numbers in the Black Forest. It was the Hugenots, driven from France and Germany by religious wars, who established clockmaking industries in Switzerland, which had been essentially a poorish rural economy, but more especially in Britain. During the nineteenth century though the British industry failed to reform and clung to outmoded methods of production in spite of falling sales (which sounds horribly familiar) I do wonder though whether it was the development of clock making in Britain that provided the expertise in mechanical linkages and control mechanisms that enabled the steam engine and other contributions to the industrial revolution to first develop here rather than anywhere else.

Never mind. We'll still be able to sit in pubs telling anyone who can be bothered to listen how we won the Battle of Britain and the 1966 World Cup and once ruled half the world. Meanwhile the rest of the world, including the Swiss, will get on with living in this century.

Most good comedy is a slight exageration of observed situations. If you compare the scripts for "Airplane" with that for "Zero Hour" (a deadly serious film based on Arthur Hailey's short novel "Flight into Danger") they're remarkably similar and "Airplane" is technically a remake. . For some reason I've found Warley particularly rich in that sort of exchange. For example, sitting at our stand in front of a sign with SNCF Society in large friendly letters with a tricolour flag and the Swiss Railways Society three stands down equally clearly labelled with a nice big Swiss flag "Can you tell me about Swiss Railways?" "This is the SNCF Society, we're all about French railways, you need the Swiss Society they're just over there" "Well why can't you tell me about Swiss railways, they're continental aren't they?" I promise I remained polite to him I really did. I just reflected that the distribution of human intelligence and many other attributes follows a bell curve and that curve has an end.

Bulleid's attempt at a double deck coach seemed to fulfil that idea but people take up less room if they stand so apparently that's what the Elizabeth Line* will do with a bench seat on either side. *(That name really doesn't work. I think it's because it starts wih a vowel unlike the Victoria Line or the Jubilee line, I'm not being ant- monarchist as I think the Queen Elizabeth line would sound much better)

Train'in Box was launched as a purchasable product at Loco-Revue's Trainsmania exhibition in Lille over the the May weekend (28-30th April) This show, marking 80 years since the magazine was founded, was a tremendous success and a whole area was devoted to the new product with a number of modellers trying to complete the layout from opening the box within the show's three days. The price is set at €330 without stock or €360 if a fairly basic loco and a couple of wagons are included. The box does seem to include absolutely everything needed to build the complete layout and would I think provide anyone building it with all the basic skills, apart from carpentry, needed to pursue the hobby. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out. They seem to be aiming the product mainly at families or as a grandparent grandchildren thing but are also suggesting clubs, presumably as a project for their junior members. It was conceived as filling the missing link between the trainset and the "proper" model railway. The crowdfunding was successful enough to enable them to launch with all four regional versions though they've had subscribers to the project "Beta testing" it since about Devember. The buildings seem to be based on those made available as card inserts into their beginnners' magazine "Clés pour le train miniature" rather than the fairly expensive Regions et Compagnies range but they are proper models. the track is Peco Setrack. Though the stated aim of the show itself was to make railway modelling accessible to as many people as possible my impression was that the visitors were mainly people already engaged with the hobby so this particular show may not have generated as much interest in the product as hoped.

That doesn't seem to have been Peco's strategy in the past and they have other track products which probably have smaller unit sales like the bi-bloc track and the H0n3 range. From what they told me at Lille, the bullhead points do require a lot more hand assembly and that would push up the production costs considerably.

Very nice work Ben. From a normal viewing distance I'd have no problem accepting that as BH. That is so John but they assured me that this was very close to the production version. It will be at a premium price because of the amount of manual assembly required; the rail can't be simply pressed into the base

Thanks for all the interesting responses to my original query. Ferry terminals can justify some prestigious trains in very compact locations but the catch is that in the days of "railway ferries" you might only get a flurry of activity maybe four times a day and little else the rest of the time. Adding local and non ferry-traffic to that would obviously make for more interesting operations hence my desire to find a few to justify it.

Peco had a stand at the Trainsmania show in Lille over the weekend and were showing their bullhead (or should that be double champignon asymétrique?) track including the prototype turnout. I assume this is the same one they've been showing so far but I'm not sure and they assured me that the production version will use proper rail for the switch blades which will not be hinged and metal check rails. the plain track is already being sold in France which, apart from people modelling British 00, is probably the one significant non British Isles market for it despite the sleepers being a bit wide for H0. The show, which was excellent, was to mark the 80th anniversary of Loco-Revue and the Peco stand (as always not a sales stand) was directly opposite Loco-Revue's large sales stand. I believe that the two family owned companies have had a long standing personal relationship. Loco-Revue are one of Peco's retailers in France (though I didn't notice any bullhead track on their stand) and their interesting new Train'in Box -complete layout kit in a box- product which was launched at the show uses Peco Setrack. Most of the layouts at this show did seem to be using Peco track, mostly code 75 for standard gauge, but I did notice at least one plain track module that had used C&L or SMP bullhead.

Hi John The phrase they used was "For the Average Enthusiast" meaning mainstream rather than mediocre and I agree with you about it forming a running history. I think though that as well as being a record of the hobby RM strongly influenced its development. It always encouraged layout building over the building of individual models and I think that's been one reason for the hobby's great popularity here. It's other great strength has been the way that it's allowed the personality of layout builders and layouts to be expressed in their articles; we felt we knew people like Denny, Hancock, Pyrke, Charman and many many others. That is of course down to the skill and wisdom of the editors and Cyril Freezer in particular made a huge and often underacknowledged contribution to the development of the hobby. Apart from those by John Ahern, articles in contemporary editions of MRN and MRC just seem much drier than those in RM.

Hi Peter It was good to see you and of course Mers les Bains (which did look great) on Friday and Saturday. I don't know how much time you both had (was it just the two of you?) to see the rest of the show but it was about the best I've been to in France and Loco-Revue clearly pulled out all the stops for their 80th anniversary. Operation has always seemed less of a priority at French shows and I think their approach tends to be more a landscape (or village or townscape) with trains running through it than trains operating in a landscape. From what I saw on Friday, on most layouts trains did simply run through the various scenes and it was only on Mers les Bains, Pempoul, Olivier and Gaelle Taniou's latest industrial layout and one of the N gauge layouts in the AFAN are that I saw much actual shunting going on. I've operated various layouts at French shows over the years where visitors have been rather intrigued by this strange British habit though I think that may be starting to change.