Yes you are correct. The conductor use to walk through the train flipping the seats so the passenger would face forward at each terminal.

Then the passengers would flip the seats so that they could talk to someone in the next seat.

Sometimes singles would do this. Then the 3rd and/or 4th person had to sit the wrong way. Those flipping people would never think of returning the seat when they departed.

Then there came the liability in a sudden stop and the latching mechanism relasing and crushing the passenger, of course it was the railroads fault.

Now it is much easer making half the seats face in the opposite direction.