>>2037027
>Are drivers supposed to back up their trains into sidings?
The snappy, over-simplified answer is, no more than loco-hauled passenger trains have to back into terminal stations. For industrial deliveries & collections, the driver arrives in the arrival sidings, makes himself known, and then either a shunter appears to drag the deliveries elsewhere on site (eg supply-chain items to be used elsewhere, think engine parts) or he's allowed onto site right where he's needed (eg bulk cargo, think steel that'll be lifted out at the warehouse). Once done he gets turned around on site and either picks up empties or simply heads off elsewhere.

It'd be similar in the days of local freight, albeit on a smaller scale: a train turns up with crates of fruit and veg and tanks of milk, a weedy little station pilot drags away the empties, then everyone does a complicated three-point-turn dance to get the engine turned around again. Mail, parcels and newspapers were of course handled overnight ... in fact I found this fantastic article about the overnight news trains, https://www.railwaymagazine.co.uk/6311/newspaper-trains-read-all-about-it/, painting a vivid picture of vans screeching into stations in the small hours, carrying still-damp stacks of newspapers ready to be loaded straight into waiting wagons.

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This thread is for talking about railways, and things related to railways, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - that means…