Hey, I'm also looking at a Jan start in Perth. Not had any details confirmed for hotels though, would you mind sharing which hotel you are booked in for. Cheers.
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A career as a signaller
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DMckduck97
Member
It's easy for a lot to say, but like you say fair enough you back yourself and gamble on finishing IST which is fair enough, but not actually having a specific post once finishing IST brings a certain level of uncertainty to the role.
Then to get its in their best interest to find everyone a role, so why even bother with this no box after training system. At this point it's been proven that interviews can be arbitrary
For those on here that are starting IST in January at Perth, have you been told the start times for the day? Ive been told I’ll be there for 2 week induction from 3rd of January and assumed it would be a 9am start, but my line manager think it might be 10am. He emailed training to confirm but training have not replied to me and I assume they will be off now for Christmas break.
Fast2London
Member
I have been given a start date of 18th March but the recruitment team said that I probably wouldn’t start IST until a couple of weeks after that. Is 18th your start date with NR or definitely the date you start IST?
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I received email other day from LOM and to be at Perth for 10am on 3rd January if that helps.
Hi, new to the site and apologies if this has already been asked somewhere in the very long in thread. I would be grateful for an insight into the attrition rate for signallers in passing the probationary period. Would it be fair to assume that most pass the necessary competencies to make the grade? Thanks in advance 
Thats great thankyou, will see you there then
It’s just a start date not confirmed I received a email saying it will be 18th march but I believe its either induction or the 2 weeks pre learning IST.
Fast2London
Member
I wonder if we will end up on the same IST then as that’s the same as me. I have got a role in Ashford.
Kraken
Member
Hi, new to the site and apologies if this has already been asked somewhere in the very long in thread. I would be grateful for an insight into the attrition rate for signallers in passing the probationary period. Would it be fair to assume that most pass the necessary competencies to make the grade? Thanks in advance
I was on an IST of 10 people. 9 passed on first attempt, 1 passed on second attempt after illness. 5 were on a contract where they had to apply for jobs during the course. All 10 of us had permanent jobs within 3 months of finishing IST.
The Puddock
Member
Just for a bit of balance, from 2020 to today I have personally known nine new start signallers. All were hired for permanent jobs in specific signalboxes and all were external candidates of various ages and backgrounds. Of those nine, five passed IST first time and are fully passed out and productive (one of them has since been promoted to a higher graded relief job). Three of them failed both attempts at IST and left the company. The remaining person passed IST first time but resigned during the signalbox training phase after being charged with gross misconduct for doing something very silly.
GMTUK
Member
- Joined
- 12 Jan 2018
- Messages
- 41
REVISE REVISE REVISE
Be prepared to put pretty much everything on hold outside of IST. Spend your evenings going over everything you can in whatever way works for you. Mine was flash cards and the Bruce quizzes(you’ll find out what these are in due course). But do what works best for you. Use the group, try and bring people together as I’m led to believe that some groups can be less cohesive than others. Spend as much time on the SIM as you are finding productive and also try to be sympathetic when running the back desk. Challenge each other but don’t be an arse.
If you bounce off a certain individual or two approach them about revising together. I found sitting in the hotel lobby/bar with a soft drink chatting through stuff far more productive than in my room. Although for certain things (17 reasons to pass a signal at danger being one) I just had to sit in my room and write them down, again and again and again.
Thanks Kraken. That is reassuring. The other consideration is how long it is likely that you will be on the lower wage until sign off as competent to manage the initial financial hit. I guess that is a piece of string question, depending on the grade of the box?
Thanks Puddock, that is food for thought. That's quite a notable proportion. I guess it will come down to hard work at IST and a propensity to learn and withhold information
The Puddock
Member
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to scare you or wind you up. It’s just that I’ve been involved in the signalling world for a long time and a 90% first time pass rate just didn’t reflect what I’ve seen. If I look back before 2020 I’d say that of all the trainees I’ve known probably around 55% passed first time, around 35% passed on a second attempt and the remaining 10% left the company for whatever reason. The reason I picked 2020 was that the structure of the course has changed significantly over the years and 2020 seemed to be recent enough to give a decent comparison to today but also long enough ago to give a reasonable sample size.
Passing the school first time is entirely achievable if you are prepared to put the effort in. The stuff they teach you isn’t particularly ‘hard’ as such, but it is arcane and can be difficult to commit to memory. It’s much harder if you’ve been away from a learning environment for some time because it takes a while to get your brain back into receive mode. Personally I think the quality of the trainer has a huge influence on how well a class does but unfortunately that’s the one thing that the students can’t control.
Your reply didn't wind me up and I am grateful for a balanced, current and accurate view. My current role is heavy on rules and regs so hopefully that would stand me in good stead, but I have been out of the classroom for mote years than I would care to admit.
I think also to bear in mins is that it's hard to quantify due to the scope of people NR recruit for signallers. Its not like a school/college exam where you are all the same age have had the same rype of education, you will be in a group potentially with people that haven't been in a classroom environment for 20+ years who may have had limited education you may have a 20yr who has just come out of education. So really I wouldn't look to much at class failures purely to evryones diffrent all you can do is listen to your tutor look at all the advice on here and put in 100% effort.
Spend as much time the first two weeks as you can trying to learn and master the normal mode of signalling on the simulator , including learning the back desk
HamSandwich
Member
Definitely this! You will need your weekends to recover before the week starts again. It's only a few months to put your friends and social life on hold for the sake of an amazing job for possible the rest of your working life - totally worth it.
I’m going to disagree with a lot of the advice on here, a lot is made of the course and how full on it is but any notion of putting “life’s on hold” is a bit extreme, the advice I would give is stay back at the training centre to do any of your studying keep your hotel to decompress in. The same goes for your weekends if you’re not taking any time off then you aren’t going to know whether you are actually retaining any of the information or not. It is a full on course but very very manageable.
Good point
SalzH
Member
100% this, especially the back desk. In my experience candidates that avoid/fail to learn the back desk have a higher fail rate than those that learn it.
On my IST course 7 out of 9 passed first time, the two that failed passed second time, all have since got permanent positions, four of us have since been promoted to higher grades.
Since my course I've been involved in a capacity with two other IST groups which had 7/8 and 5/9 pass first time, of the first time passers 10 have permanent positions, 2 are still applying. Of the 5 that failed, 3 passed second time, the remaining two are resitting sometime in the New Year.
Dread Pirate
Member
What is the back desk?
This is acting as the other 3 signallers that the hornby junction sim (on the AB course) interacts with, setting trains running, setting the speeds trains run at, SPADing etc,
It sounds daunting but in reality it’s not. But it does take some getting used to initially.
I think this is dependant on your LOM and the feedback from the WDS. What is your attitude like and how much effort are you putting in. In reality it won’t be infinite attempts but I’d reckon you have at least 2 cracks at it.
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Thanks for the advice and merry Christmas.
The Puddock
Member
The new 'Ops Deal' agreement guarantees two attempts at IST. It may have happened somewhere, sometime (perhaps in very exceptional circumstances) but I have never known or heard of anyone getting a third shot at passing the course.
jag1
New Member
I posted on here a while back after completing the psychometric tests, unfortunately I failed!
Been miffed ever since, felt like I did well on everything apart from that gridchallenge, where you have to remember that sequence of dots with tasks inbetween. I really mucked it up though, so I reckon (more like hope actually) that was what failed me. Not sure how they compile the results: I initially thought it would be simply a net score, where you needed a total score above x to pass. This would mean that if you did horribly at one section (like me) then as long as you did really well in the others then it would be ok.
But the more I think about it the more I think it’s likely that each task has a score that you need to pass. It seems to make more sense overall.
What I would like to know is whether that behavioural “questionnaire” they gave us is used for: is it part of the test (are you scored on it) or is it more of a “get to know you” sort of thing?
Either way, I have to wait until early march before I can start applying again, which sucks, but I only have myself to blame.
I can assure you I won’t be failing a second time!
Been miffed ever since, felt like I did well on everything apart from that gridchallenge, where you have to remember that sequence of dots with tasks inbetween. I really mucked it up though, so I reckon (more like hope actually) that was what failed me. Not sure how they compile the results: I initially thought it would be simply a net score, where you needed a total score above x to pass. This would mean that if you did horribly at one section (like me) then as long as you did really well in the others then it would be ok.
But the more I think about it the more I think it’s likely that each task has a score that you need to pass. It seems to make more sense overall.
What I would like to know is whether that behavioural “questionnaire” they gave us is used for: is it part of the test (are you scored on it) or is it more of a “get to know you” sort of thing?
Either way, I have to wait until early march before I can start applying again, which sucks, but I only have myself to blame.
I can assure you I won’t be failing a second time!