Who told you that? Its a massive car park and always seems to have spaces, I know someone who was a trainee there and parked in there because his hotel at Novatel was a tenner a night and not included with his room and meals etc!!
Unless they don't allow it now, they used to not all that long ago. You just have a word with the security guard and he lets you in. Contact your LOM about it, because I think you email in your car details and get it confirmed. The security will get to know you anyway, even if the initial Mondays of the week is a pain to get past the gates.
Its easy to get into a company when you're already in. Having a station job or job on the track would definitely help you over being external. Not least in the sense that you can see the internal job list. They'll also treat you better in the interview if your NR staff, (even if most are fair with you anyway). I was from off the street so know how hard it can be to get in, apply for everything, if you can, then its all about getting interviews. As I've said before on here, most will give up, depends how much you want it. But sure, defnitely having a job with the company will help IMO. And put it this way, once you do get in and onto a signaller course, if you have a room of say, 10 people, most will be Network Rail from other jobs or graduate scheme etc who've already done various bits and pieces with the company anyway. There's no doubt someone on here or who's a signaller who has a decent amount of off the street-ers in their group, but I'd imagine most peoples groups already have railway or company experience.
