Advice on getting a rail career

[daz6966]

Evening all, newbie here so please be gentle

I have reached the ripe old age of 38 and am looking for a career change. I have spent the last 20 years trawling the motorways in a sales/commercial capacity for various businesses within the quarrying industry.

In a nutshell, i'm ****ed off with travelling 40000 miles a year on congested roads and effectively working 11 hours a day. The financial rewards are good (37k per annum, company car etc) but I have reached a point where I want some quality of life and not just live for weekends.

When assessing what to do with my future career, I thought back to my days as a YTS with British Rail in the late 80's. I was the first of our YTS group to get a permanent role, which was a materials buyer for the civils section. But even in this role, I missed the day to day customer contact which I so enjoyed on my YTS, particularly within the ticket office. I stuck the buyers role for 6 months then up came a ticket office and parcels area relief job, which looking back, I absolutely loved. I had to leave due to personal problems after 2 years.

Anyway, enough nostalgia. I would give my right arm to get back into that sort of environment and am currently scouring TOC websites on a regular basis for my dream career. I'm prepared to take a serious cut in salary in order to get some sort of work life balance back.

Can anyone give me any sort of advice. Ticket office jobs seem very few and far between from what I can gather. I would be prepared to work for the following TOCS:
Virgin / TPE / Northern / Merseyrail (Anyone or anywhere in the NW)

Any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks in advance.

 

[EM2]

What about out on the station as a Customer Service Assistant/Officer? Plenty of day-to-day involvement with the public there.
Network Rail have those posts at major stations.
TOCs also have these roles, quite often there'll be train dispatch involved.
Or Revenue Protection (i.e Ticket Inspector) for a TOC?

 

[daz6966]

What about out on the station as a Customer Service Assistant/Officer? Plenty of day-to-day involvement with the public there.
Network Rail have those posts at major stations.
TOCs also have these roles, quite often there'll be train dispatch involved.
Or Revenue Protection (i.e Ticket Inspector) for a TOC?

Roles like that sound right up my street. Are all those posts advertised externally? The only one I can find at the mo is CSA with Virgin out of Lime Street, but its only a 3 month temp contract. To take a short term contract would be a major gamble.

 

[oliverj8]

Northern and TPE have a few in North West area.

Just go onto the careers sections of their websites.

Have you thought about the Manchester Metrolink?

 

[142094]

Due to the amount of services they run and the number of stations they serve, Northern always seem to have vacancies for 3-4 jobs every time I check their website.

Here is the link.

Keep checking the websites, seems each TOC has a new job up every couple of weeks or so.

 

[daz6966]

Just checked updated vacancies today and like the look of two CSA roles, one for Northern Rail at Roby and one for Virgin at Lancaster (which is where my parents live).
Virgin seem to pay a little bit more than Northern.

 

[TDK]

Evening all, newbie here so please be gentle

I have reached the ripe old age of 38 and am looking for a career change. I have spent the last 20 years trawling the motorways in a sales/commercial capacity for various businesses within the quarrying industry.

In a nutshell, i'm ****ed off with travelling 40000 miles a year on congested roads and effectively working 11 hours a day. The financial rewards are good (37k per annum, company car etc) but I have reached a point where I want some quality of life and not just live for weekends.

When assessing what to do with my future career, I thought back to my days as a YTS with British Rail in the late 80's. I was the first of our YTS group to get a permanent role, which was a materials buyer for the civils section. But even in this role, I missed the day to day customer contact which I so enjoyed on my YTS, particularly within the ticket office. I stuck the buyers role for 6 months then up came a ticket office and parcels area relief job, which looking back, I absolutely loved. I had to leave due to personal problems after 2 years.

Anyway, enough nostalgia. I would give my right arm to get back into that sort of environment and am currently scouring TOC websites on a regular basis for my dream career. I'm prepared to take a serious cut in salary in order to get some sort of work life balance back.

Can anyone give me any sort of advice. Ticket office jobs seem very few and far between from what I can gather. I would be prepared to work for the following TOCS:
Virgin / TPE / Northern / Merseyrail (Anyone or anywhere in the NW)

Any advice would be gratefully received. Thanks in advance.

I joined the railway at 37 as a driver, best thing I ever did, not saying go as a driver but aim for the operations side if you can as these jobs seem to be more secure and higher paid with good hours, it may be a good idea writing to all the TOC's you mention requesting a gurads or drivers job even if they are not recruiting, find their HR address and just send your CV and a covering letter off with the reasons you put in this post. I recruited a driver once on a letter he sent with his CV and he turned out to be a great employee in a very similar scenario as yours.

 

[142094]

Just checked updated vacancies today and like the look of two CSA roles, one for Northern Rail at Roby and one for Virgin at Lancaster (which is where my parents live).
Virgin seem to pay a little bit more than Northern.

From what I've read on here, it seems like once you have a job with the railway you can pretty much go from there and climb the ladder. Seems as if most TOCs recruit from inside first then open it up to the public.

 

[TDK]

From what I've read on here, it seems like once you have a job with the railway you can pretty much go from there and climb the ladder. Seems as if most TOCs recruit from inside first then open it up to the public.

That is incorreect, most TOCs will advertise both as they will also have to replace anyone who get promoted!