krtaylor wrote:Saskia wrote:And another one: backward-driving trains with steering cars [Steuerwagen, I've read the correct English word around here] or cabin tenders for backward-driving locos. Some sort of the German BR 50 freight engine had such tenders. Maybe an option like "No train reversing anywhere, It's your fault if the train has no reversable engine or steering car at a terminus station"

No, you wouldn't want a setting like that, because freight trains never have a reversing mechanism like that. And in a terminus station, what would happen in the real world is another set of engines (or a switcher) would attach to the rear of the train and fish it back out, then the original engines would back out alone and go off for service.
What you would want I think would be a flag on the engine, saying "don't turn around, just back up." That would be interesting and graphically useful for certain passenger operations, as you say.
By the way, something like this is in the Patch to-do list.
Cabin tenders

Do you mean tank engines, where the engine and tender is build together?
If a steam engine ends up somewhere without a turntable (maybe another idea for a feature) they can drive "tender forward", which means that the tender is on the front of the train. Because the tender is not build for driving at high speed like this, they go at reduced speed, like 60 km/h.
About reversing a whole train, it have been done many times, and was a daily activity in the age of steam. They didn't miss steering cars, since they was not invented at that time
Still happens, but not daily anymore. The usual way to do this is to reverse into the nearby switching yard and then either drive forward (this is like turning a car. I needs tracks in T shape), or the more common way, disconnect the engine to move it to the other end of the train.
You can also reverse the train to the next station, if it is not too long. This has happened in real life, but it is not something, that is allowed to be planned that way, it's just a solution to unexpected problems.
I don't know how to make this in OTTD, though. maybe it takes longer, if the engine have to go to the other end