Career Change - Teacher to EMR Senior Conductor?

[Any Permitted]

I could just use some advice from people with experience of working on the railway but I'll just quickly lay out the situation I'm in first.

At the moment I'm a primary school teacher. I mostly really like my job but sometimes I skirt around burnout due to workload pressures and the unforgiving day-to-day grind of teaching. I am quite lucky that I'm in a role with good career progression, I am not desperate to leave teaching but I am open to it if the right role came along elsewhere. I do like the idea of a career change as sometimes I feel like I don't want to just do one job for the rest of my life.

Ever since I was a child I've wanted to work on the railway and I currently volunteer as a platform assistant on a heritage railway with the hope of progressing to a guard in the near future. The role is safety critical and customer-facing and I do one shift a week (more in the school holidays).

I recently applied to EMR for their Senior Conductor Apprenticeship role as I was curious whether my experience as a teacher and railway volunteer would be enough to be shortlisted. I am now at the stage of doing a video interview. I think it's a role I'd be well suited to but I'm also aware that spending the day going up and down on a busy, probably delayed Class 158 full of passengers is not an easy job and would be very challenging on some days.

The first 20 weeks pay would be £24,000 which then goes up to £32,000 - I currently earn just under £50,000, I can afford to take the financial hit as I own my house outright and have a decent amount of savings. I live around 10 minutes walk away from the station where I'd be based and I have a driving test booked for next month so would (hopefully) be able to drive by the time the role begins.

Am I utterly mad to be considering this? What's the reality of life as a conductor? How much pay progression is there in the early years of a conductor role? Is there any realistic chance to become a train driver later on in my career? Is there a difference between being a conductor and a guard?

 

[LowLevel]

You'd not be the first - there's lots of teachers, police, forces etc on the railway both as guard and driver.

You could if you wished apply for driver now, provided you passed the tests there is nothing stopping you entering from outside the industry, plenty do now.

There's no pay progression as a guard at EMR, once you're on the £32,000ish that's what your pay will be though there is generally overtime available which is paid on top.

My advice having done the job for many years is think about how you feel about the public. They make the job very rewarding and at times quite difficult. You have to be able to think on your feet and deal with slow days that can turn on an instant. It's a responsible job and you will be held accountable for decision making.

Feel free to private message me any specific questions you might want answering - I've done the job for over 10 years and have a pretty good handle on it.

 

[SouthernStar]

“Am I utterly mad to be considering this? What's the reality of life as a conductor? How much pay progression is there in the early years of a conductor role? Is there any realistic chance to become a train driver later on in my career? Is there a difference between being a conductor and a guard?”

As you highlighted, being a conductor can be a challenging and pressurised role, dealing with the public isn’t for everyone, you will have easy (sometimes very easy) days and on the other hand you will have disruptive days where everything just goes wrong! It’s also worth noting the shift work might take some getting used to if you’re currently a teacher working mostly office hours. In principle being a conductor is a bit of a dead end job, although opportunities for assessors/instructors and team managers exist, those roles will take time to progress into, and could be far and between depending on your location, size of TOC etc.

 

[Gemz91]

Don’t forget to consider the shift work. Early morning, late nights, weekend work. Any clubs your currently in that meet in the evenings you won’t be able to commit to as regular. If you have children time off during school holidays won’t be guaranteed. Person at our place is an ex teacher and hates the job due to the shift work.

 

[Grvrdvicdr]

Lad on my course for driving put it perfectly about leaving teaching. He now gets to spend more time with his own kids than other peoples, plus days off during the weekdays that aren’t school holidays are a blessing. But as long as you can adapt to shift work there’s always the possibility of going driving

 

[muz379]

At the moment I'm a primary school teacher. I mostly really like my job but sometimes I skirt around burnout due to workload pressures and the unforgiving day-to-day grind of teaching. I am quite lucky that I'm in a role with good career progression, I am not desperate to leave teaching but I am open to it if the right role came along elsewhere. I do like the idea of a career change as sometimes I feel like I don't want to just do one job for the rest of my life.

In terms of burnout obviously as a guard you wouldn't be taking work home with you in the same way you did as a teacher apart from perhaps during training . But there can still be stressful days , when everything goes wrong , the public are understandably unpredicatble at times as well which can make it a challenge . And working shifts can be a real challenge as well , particularly in the dead of winter when you are getting up in the middle of the night for a 4am start or not getting home until 2am . Of course different people get stressed by different aspects of the job . Different people obviously respond to different sources of stress in different ways .

Am I utterly mad to be considering this? What's the reality of life as a conductor? How much pay progression is there in the early years of a conductor role? Is there any realistic chance to become a train driver later on in my career? Is there a difference between being a conductor and a guard?

Really apart from the pay increase form trainee to qualified any other pay progression would be based on taking on other roles such as instructing . There will of course be opportunities to earn more with overtime but this is not guranteed . Plenty of people make the change from being Conductors/Guards to being Drivers . There are some transferrable skills there and the knowledge you will gain as a guard would help you as well . But it is by no means guranteed , its not unheard of for people to apply several times and be unsuccessful wheras the people you least expect will get it on their first application . If you did decide to go for it and wanted to give driving a chance in the future I certainly wouldn't advise going in there with the attitude of "ill be driving in a few years time" it won't go down well .

 

[JohnnyOne]

What I didn't know before I saw the advert for the trainee driver role is that you can be in a talent pool for years, in effect be in limbo. I don't know if that's the same for the conductor job your considering, but it would have made me think twice about applying rather than spending the time training for another profession.

 

[lae150]

Am I utterly mad to be considering this? What's the reality of life as a conductor? How much pay progression is there in the early years of a conductor role? Is there any realistic chance to become a train driver later on in my career? Is there a difference between being a conductor and a guard?

There is no pay progression as such. Every guard at a depot is on the same wage after trainee unless they are an instructor/coach too but most depots only have a few of these depending on how big. Hopefully you'll get a yearly inflation pay rise but the last few years have just been a battle with this from the government. You'll soon be making more than the basic working rest days etc though.
You have no better chance unfortunately of becoming a driver if you are a guard, in some cases I think you have less chance. If you want to be a driver, keep your eyes open as there are a few trainee driver roles around now and with a big shortage coming up there will be more over the next couple of years.
Good luck with the video interview . The guards job is a good one and some days are very rewarding and good fun. Some days are the complete opposite and everything goes wrong with people treating you badly but it's the same with every job!