BrockleyAndrew wrote:but a terminus layout where an 0-6-0 sorts out coaching stock doesn't really exist does it?
Not now, but in the past it would have done, certainly until the end of steam on BR and a bit later. The parcel or mail vans that needed to be removed for unloading elsewhere. The horse box and/or carriage truck or vans carrying motor vehicles that needed to be treated in a similar way. The dining car that needed to be extracted for servicing or use on another train. When milk was carried by rail, some tankers would have run in passenger formations and would have needed to be shunted elsewhere. The order of course would depend on where in the train the vehicles were but it might be that passenger vehicles would need to be removed from the train first so the shunting engine could then couple up to the other stock.
In an earlier age when trains were formed up for special purposes much of the shunting would have been done in carriage sidings which would have been away for the station but a bit of modeller's licence might see some coaches brought into a platform in a terminus and then later some non-passenger carrying coaching stock added to the train. Some larger passenger stations would have had a siding or two between the platform roads to assist with these tasks.
Bob Essery's books on railway operation show numerous examples of these types of movements
Terry Bendall