Talk:Headshunt

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Although I have no references for this, aren't there more practical reasons for heritage railways using run-round loops? I thought there were special requirements to be met if trains were to be operated in a push-pull manner. One method of avoiding these is to top-and-tail, but of course this requires two locomotives -- hence a run-round loop means that only one loco and crew is required, and therefore there are also financial incentives.

EdJogg (talk) 10:26, 14 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of stations with run-around tracks doesn't include any from the US. I'm assuming that's not because there aren't any remaining in the US, but rather because they simply aren't listed? It's also interesting that the article is called "headshunt", but at least half of it actually deals with run-around loops. AnnaGoFast (talk) 23:29, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is an imprecise and insufficiently rigorous use of terminology in the article as it stands at present. As the previous comment mentions, a good half of the article deals with run-around loops and other arrangements allowing whole trains to reverse direction, and whilst the installation of a run-around loop at a terminus necessarily requires the provision of a headshunt (US: escape track) – other than in the tiny number of cases where a turntable, sector table, or traverser is used instead – the run-around loop itself is not a headshunt.

Furthermore, most headshunts (U.S. switching, or yard, leads) are of the kind that are actually used for shunting (U.S. switching) – i.e. for more than just the simple release of a locomotive for run-around purposes. Such a headshunt (which is a track separate from and normally parallel to the main running-lines) of this kind – allowing wagons (U.S. cars) to be moved into / withdrawn from sidings while leaving the running-lines clear – is equally often known as a shunting neck or shunt spur, especially when single-ended, as most of them are. Although dealt with (in two lines) in the third paragraph of the article as it stands, this is the definition which should be the "meat" of an article entitled "Headshunt". I believe that all the other stuff about run-around loops (and other train-reversing arrangements), and the examples of passenger stations which feature them, should be in a separate article dedicated to that subject alone. -- Picapica (talk) 22:31, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Agreed. This should be split (or the article on station layouts resurrected - shame the talk: page notes for that were zealously blanked too). Sticking run-round loops under "headshunts" is just wrong. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:10, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't Reversing Headshunts just turnback sidings so should we remove it from here and move the informational over to the turnback sidings page and have link to them under the title of Reversing Headsshunt. For more info go to turnback sidings webpage. I Like The british Rail Class 483 (talk) 15:23, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]