Shift patterns - drivers' hours
 

Please excuse the ignorance displayed by this question but assuming a driver had signed for 'the road' would he be able (physically and legally) to take say, the Daventry to Mossend or Felixstowe to Mossend freightliner all the way or would he have to be relieved en-route, say at Crewe or Preston? Are freight loco drivers' hours limted in a similar way to a lorry drivers? Given that freight trains can be stuck in loops for hours, how does that affect a driver's ability to complete his shift?

Simple answer is probably No,

As a DBS driver we are allowed to drive a class 6 train for no more than,I think 4.5 hrs then must have a 45min break we can the drive for another 4.5hrs.

On a shift we can work up to 12hrs but not meant to drive after the 11th hour.

During a long shift the PNB (Personal Needs Break) can be rostered as either
1 X 45min, 2X 30 min or 3 X 20mins these breaks are supposed to be taken away from the driving enviorment i.e the cab.

As for being regulated like lorry drivers I personally think we are regulated more. As a driver I am regulated by a bi annual rolling assesment by several Q Tron downloads cullminatting in a rules assesment every two years. Once a lorry driver passes his/her test thats them for as long as it is till their next HGV medical.

Hope this helps, I am not 100% sure as the hours are a complicated issue but it goes along those lines.

Les

Hi
Thanks for that! It's something you rarely see discussed in stuff like Rail or Modern Railways. I knew that you had to do traction tests and road knowledge but wondered how long you could actually 'zoom' along on a 'Tesco-liner' and how far you could get before you had to hand over to another driver. Bearing in mind the length of time some steam crews must have spent in sidings waiting for expresses and other passenger trains to pass in the 'old-days' I guess things had to change.