Advice

[phil.d]

Anyone help have a few questions for train drivers.What motivated you to become a train driver.what challenges did you expect to face being a train driver and how did you deal with this.Thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

[driver9000]

I have had a lif long love of the railways and wanted to be a train driver since seeing a programme on TV called 'Railwatch' in 1989 that followed a driver in one of the programmes from Kings Cross - York. I was spell bound by the footage and decided there and then thats what I wanted to do in my career.

I read up on the role of train driving in my teens and came into the industry with my eyes open I knew what to expect. The main challenges are getting through the initial training - its intense and there is a lot of self teaching to be done, getting used to shift work can be draining especially if someone has gone from a 9-5 job to having to get up at 2am for work one week and going to bed at that time the next week. Working on your own for long periods concentrating hard on the road ahead and being responsible for about 500 people at a time are things not to be taken lightly. Luckily for me I have never worked a 9-5 day and my previous job as a bus driver already set me up for being used to shift work and being responsible for pasengers lives. I knew the pitfalls of train driving - it does its best to destroy your social life, and if your involved in an incident it can affect you for the rest of your life, Ive been involved in a fatality earlier this year and the companies train you to deal with the immediate aftermath and will help you through the following months by offering access to counselling.

I see it as the best job in the world, I get up actually wanting to go to work and enjoy what I do, and the close knit relationships you can develop with other drivers - not necessarily from your own company too - the dangerous aspects of the job are always there lurking in the background but thankfully they dont pop their heads up too often, and when they do you will have been trained to know what to do automatically as a professional railwayman by other professional railwaymen, each day is different and no two journies are the same.

Id advise anyone wanting to be a driver, that the best route in is to get a job in any grade possible and keep an eye on the internal vacancies list, bu you might be lucky enough to get straight in as a driver like I did.

 

[First class]

The natural progression to driver is usually:

Station Assistant - do about 6-12 months.
Conductor/Guard/Revenue Protection Inspector - 2-3 years probably.
Driver - 7-10years before looking for promotion...
-then possibly Operations Manager, Depot Manager, Driver Trainer etc...


Internal vacancies are a great privellege to have, so get into the industry asap, because my saying is:

"if you look after them, they'll look after you".