When a train engineer travels cross country how does he get back home?

Is the system organized so that he engineers another train back home immediatly or does he have to wait and catch another train coming back home?

Well Ned, my mother drove them to a hotel for a night, so what happens is Train dricvers have 10 hour shifts right. They take a break in a local motel. When there shift starts back up they go on a train headed the opposite way that they stated. there fore to sum it up they go for 10 hours, take a nap, then turn around in a differant train.

Ok, this is how it works. On railroads, sections of the railway are divided up into divisions and/or subdivisions/districts. There is a "home" terminal and an "away" terminal for those subs and districts. The home terminal is the originating terminal and the away is the terminal is the crews destination. Once the train gets to the away terminal, one crew gets off and another gets on. The crew that gets off, goes to the hotel for rest and gets called for another train after their hours of rest are up or whenever that next train gets there. They then begin their trip back to the home terminal. If time permits, they can turn back on the same day and get paid 2 days work in one day. Most subs and districts are divided up into about 100-300+ miles. The longest a crew can be on duty is 11:59 minutes, at 12 hours the train goes "on the law". Anything after that, as in sitting and waiting for a cab to come pick you up if you go on the law is overtime I believe. Once you get back to your home terminal you either have 8 hours of rest or 10 hours..depending on how long you were on duty for the return trip. I didn't explain this very well, but it can get confusing to those who don't know a great deal about railroads.

Kevin said it mostly right. I'll try to simply it.

Train crews do not really travel cross country anymore. When the crew leaves their home town, they travel to a designated location within twelve hours (see link). When they get to the place, the company usually pays for a motel/hotel room to rest for about eight hours. After that, they return home on the same route they came over on.

the crew driver's whatever, had it sort of right. Some times crews get done with their work and drive by van straight home. Their are many other uses for the crew vans too.

All good answers. Just a bit of clarification here.

When a crew reaches their away from home terminal, after getting whatever rest entitled to, dictated either by law or local agreement, in some cases, or opting for additional rest as locomotive engineers are allowed to do, they return to their home terminal on a train headed that direction.

Sometimes, however, traffic is not equal in both directions. In these instances, it can cause too many crews to be at their away from home terminal. Often times they will be driven home in a crew van (carryall) in a type of service called a "dead head." But, the pendelum swings both ways, and sometimes the away from home terminal is short on crews, so crews will be dead headed to their away from home terminal to work a train home.

Likewise, if a crew expires en route, "dead on the law," they are relieved by a fresh crew, and will either dead head home or to their away from home terminal.