Just wondering what the DB rules are for lights to be displayed while engaged in shunting. They can't really expect a driver to re-arrange them with every direction change, surely?
Varies a bit from place to place. Way back (might have even been as far as back as DRG days), it was defined that a shunting loco should have a single light on, usually the lower right from the driver’s POV. I was told that some places still do this, but I’ve never seen it personally. What I’m familiar with and what is also the usual practice is normal white A-formation on both sides of the loco.
As far as I know, the rule is as follows: "When shunting, have *at least* one white light on at both sides." It doesn't matter which one, although in reality we often use the lower right one from the engineer's position as written by Lamplight. We do this, as an example, to better see ahead in the dark when approaching wagons that need to be coupled. Often, this light is positioned near or above the right buffer which you can easily see from the driver's seat. Thus, you can judge better how far you are away with this light on. Notice I wrote "at least one white light". This means, having three white lights in "A"-shape is allowed.
Incidentally, I just read something interesting- back in the DBB days, road locos were not required to have any lights on during daylight, except in bad visibility. (This did not apply to EMUs/DMUs, and cab cars also had to show at least marker lights - just to indicate which end was the 'front.')
You can see that in a lot of pictures and old videos although even back then, some drivers already always had the lights on. Historically speaking, having the lights on under every circumstance has not been in the rules for all that long. Probably, though it is hard to find reference on the single light for shunting stuff (actual formal name for it is Fz 1 by the way). That’s linked to what you just talked about concerning lights during the day. Officially, to this day as far as I know, Fz 1 means no lights during the day and single light during the night. Fz 1 can still be used for shunting as long as no unprotected level crossing is to be passed. However, as I said, I’ve never actually seen Fz 1 be used at all in person. There’s quite a bit of shunting happening on my local line in two different yards and all of the shunters always display Zg 1 (white A-formation) on both sides.
I wonder if that's because of the move to LEDs. Lightbulbs will eventually fail and then (I guess) the loco has to be taken out of service for replacement, whereas modern multi-LEDs have a much longer lifetime and fail 'gracefully' .
I doubt it. Best as I can tell from researching online, drivers were ordered to always display Zg 1 in the mid-90s and the official rulebook was updated to reflect this in 2007. There were no locos with LED lights in the mid-90s.
More likely, because in the 1990s on the highway side, countries started requiring drivers to keep their lights on during the day and manufacturers started installing daytime running lights. Zeitgeist, really.
And the merger of DBB and DR as well has the preparations for splitting the new DB for privatisation were probably as good a point as any to implement some desired changes.
