In my day, TWR could give a turn based on information on the ATM (Air Traffic Monitor - I'm not sure if that's a commonly used term but it's just a small radar picture).
Nominally this was coordinated with APP because it's an APP responsibility but it was usually done after the event - with single runway ops it didn't normally cause a problem to split two aircraft off the end of the runway. The fact that there may be a string of arrivals was not an issue unless the next one went around too - but that was what the coordination was about.
Last edited by Spitoon; 5th March 2013 at 13:59.