So, how the hell could a dispatcher, or anybody else, arrange a head-on collision?
I have heard of a situation where a train was supposed to wait for another one to pass on a side track before entering a single track section, but didn’t, resulting in the two colliding.
But if it was all double tracked? Don’t know, unless one of the sides had been temporarily shut down, requiring one train to enter a siding to permit the other to pass.