back in the good ol days '50’s at major terminals a switcher brought the train and backed it into the terminal… Did the same or another switcher pick up and bring in the head end cars or did the road engine?
For a stub-end terminal where the tracks didn’t exit from the other end, like the one you are referring to, a common practice was for the locomotive and head-end cars to be removed and driven onto a siding outside the terminal. A switcher then pushed the passenger cars into the station. Then the switcher retrieved the head-end cars and put them onto the other end of the train as it sat in the terminal, so it would be ready for departure. A different locomotive and crew then connected onto the train and took it out of the terminal to the next destination. There could have been exceptions, of course, as in the case of two stub-end terminals located close to each other, in which case the same locomotive and crew might have continued the journey; however, stub-end terminals were usually only in larger cities such as St. Louis and Chicago.
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Certainly, in the old steam and early diesel days, all of the London termini had “headshunts”, where the road power could uncouple (from the train it had just brought in), run forward, then back out via a cross-over to the adjacent track.
Often there was a service track, in between the pair of platform tracks, for this very purpose.
The road loco would then go to the “shed” for servicing (water, coal etc.) in readiness for its next assignment, while a shunter (switcher) handled the passenger stock.
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I believe that similar track arrangements existed at US termini e.g. Grand Central, Philadelphia, Boston, St.Louis and Chicago.
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In these modern times of EMUs, DMUs and push pull consists, however those tracks were pulled up long ago.
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