Hi Laura
I'm thinking of applying for the position based in the Cambridge depot.
If you don't mind, can you please tell me what kind of company it's like to work for? And info on the salary for a driver and the shift pattern.
Any info would be much appreciated really. If they accept my application, it would be the first time I would attend an assessment day for trainee driver so a bit unsure of what I'd need to practice.
Kind regards
Dave.
Hello Dave
As a driver for greater anglia I can give you a bit of insight. Greater anglia are still a very young company, so its difficult to give a true opinion of their operations, most things are still exactly the same including timetables, drivers diagrams from the nxea days. The trainee salary is as advertised. This rises to £30,000 roughly upon completion of your exams and qualified. You'll be on this for one year, known as the PQA period. After that year, another annual summary then you'll get the full whack of £39,005 although the has now risen to £40,565.
Of the three west anglia depots there is a bit of banter between the depots insinuating cambridge drivers have it easy, but its silly really because we all have jobs the cover most of the routes. Cambridge drivers will obviously cover most of the london to cambridges, bishops stortford the stansted expresses, and us chingford guys the chingford, enfield, cheshunt branches. Hertford easts seem to be distrubuted mainly between chingford and stortford depots. The Cambridge drivers 'sign' (drive over) the London Liverpool Street to Cambridge, Enfield, Chingford, Hertford East, Stansted airport and also down to stratford via temple mills (including orient way sidings) and also up to kings lynn from cambridge. Cambridge do not go to sign to ilford depot although chingford and stortford do.
Shifts you can expect week blocks of earlies, lates and nights, although you can swap shifts with any drivers. You can pretty much stick to what shifts you like providing you can find someone to swap with. Its a good company to drive for in my opinion. You get a nice mixture of inner suburban, semifast, and express work. We drive 3 different types of train, class 315, 317 and 379. Longest cambridge job is 10 hours (as required) longest driving job is 9h55min shortest is 7hrs.
In terms of the training
http://http://www.traindriver.org/ tells you everything. If you go into trainee drivers blog on that site even tells you the full story of a trainee when greater anglia was "one" railway. So the structure will be very similar to that blog. Good luck!