I'm trying to understand how cattle would have been handled back in the day, particularly irregular shipments of just eg a wagon load or two.   I presume that the process would have been organised so that the animals wouldn't have been kept waiting in the wagons at either the source or destination station for any appreciable length of time.  Even if there was a holding pen at the destination, I imagine the railway would prefer to have the beasts off their hands as soon as possible after arriva