Top and tail

A top-and-tail railway train has locomotives at both ends, for ease of changing direction, especially where the terminal station has no run-round loop.

Trains going up zig zags of the Khyber Pass are top-and-tailed, although Pakistan Railways calls this by a different term.

In Japan, the term "push-pull" is confusingly used to describe trains top-and-tailed with a locomotive at either end.

[citation needed]) In New South Wales the XPT is a train with a light weight locomotive at either end.

[2] Top and tail operation is also used for ballast trains which have to move up and down a line undergoing track maintenance.