For pretty much any safety-critical railway staff it is 12 hours.
However, a Duty Control Manager (or other senior service delivery managers) can authorise breaches of hidden (i.e 12+ hours) in severe service disruption (e.g. stranded trains for multiple hours at the end of the day), if agreed with the crew. This normally is agreed, especially if the crew are on the way to their home depot anyway. The maximum I've seen this tick over to is 14h30.
You won't have a 12 hour diagram for train crew anyway, and most are somewhere between 8-10 hours, so there is some slack built in in case of disruption on-route.
You can opt out of the working time regulations (as many do). Because the hours on a roster are variant, you will do less and more in certain weeks. In most cases, it will average out to 37 hours/week over X weeks. This of course doesn't include overtime - which is of course completely voluntary.
However, a Duty Control Manager (or other senior service delivery managers) can authorise breaches of hidden (i.e 12+ hours) in severe service disruption (e.g. stranded trains for multiple hours at the end of the day), if agreed with the crew. This normally is agreed, especially if the crew are on the way to their home depot anyway. The maximum I've seen this tick over to is 14h30.
You won't have a 12 hour diagram for train crew anyway, and most are somewhere between 8-10 hours, so there is some slack built in in case of disruption on-route.
Is the railway bothered about fatigue? As far as I'm aware they are the only industry still allowed to work a 72 hour week when all others are working 48 hours average
You can opt out of the working time regulations (as many do). Because the hours on a roster are variant, you will do less and more in certain weeks. In most cases, it will average out to 37 hours/week over X weeks. This of course doesn't include overtime - which is of course completely voluntary.