Continuing the discussion from The 8th Grey Arrows Drone Club Birthday Challenge and Treasure Hunt:
This had me doing some reading, and a little head scratching. I think I’m more confused than I ever was about railways and the legality of drone ops.
The Network Rail website used to be very clear about it being ‘illegal’ to fly within 50m of a track. I couldn’t ever find any specific legislation about drones and railways, but this was back before EASA and the 50m was broadly in line with the reduced distances I was allowed from uninvolved people (such as you’d find on a train) with my PfCO so I assumed they were just adding some wordy weight to the general regulations to make them sound railway specific and gave it no more thought.
But the topic still comes up every once in a while, and with the current regulations it’s even less clear.
I notice that they’ve updated their “Drone Safety and the Law” page to remove the language that implied specific legislation around drones/railways, and now links to a document that highlights some generic potential risks, but effectively says “stick to the Drone Code”.
However, they’ve not updated the meta tag for the description, which still reads:
<meta property="og:description" content="It is illegal to fly a drone on or near the railway. Even the cheapest, smallest model poses a risk to the railway, our passengers and staff."/>
Also, they’ve used some fairly clever language here:
Only authorised Network Rail pilots and specialist approved contractors are permitted to fly drones near the railway (when conducting railway related drone surveys) having been granted a qualification from a training organisation approved by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
I say ‘clever’ because this specifically relates to their own staff and internal procedures but they’ve made it sound like it’s generic and applies to us all.
These two caveats lead to a confusing summary in search / AI results:
As far as I can tell, that 50m “exclusion” is just a hangover from their old guidance and doesn’t actually exist in relation to Network Rail Infrastructure.
There’s a recent FOI response from Network Rail (included in the screenshot above) which further clarifies that we’re good as long as we stick to the general rules and regulations.
To be clear, I’m certainly not suggesting we should act like it’s the Wild West out there. The rules are the rules, and they (mostly) exist for good reason. There’s also a very sensible point made in that FOI response about checking in with the Air Operations team to make sure there aren’t planned activities on the railway where you plan to fly.
But am I missing something here? Has my Google-fu failed me? Or is flying near a train track no different, legally, to flying near to a road or anywhere else?
