NR - Track Maintenance or Off-Track

[stungata]

Hello everyone

I have recently been presented with the opportunity to join Network Rail as an Operative.

The 2 positions available are either Track Maintenance [Works Delivery] or Off-Track [Drainage only].

I am facing a dilemma now. I couldn’t decide which one would be more suitable in terms of career progression and development/opportunities to learn and grow.

I was hoping to receive some input from people that have worked or are currently working within these disciplines. Please share your experience.

Thanks in advance.

Happy holidays.

 

[TSG]

I can't tell you a lot because I've never worked in either of those disciplines, but I have worked in railway engineering for some time. The specifics of career progression or training and development opportunities isn't something I could generalise about and might even come down to staffing levels, whoever ends up as your individual line manager or the pressure on budgets in the delivery unit you join. To some extent it might depend on how far you want to go too (what I'm about to say matters more as you get up the ladder into planning/managing work). So far, so useless .

However, if you want to understand the complex system that the railway is I suspect you will get more understanding of how it all fits together in track maintenance than drainage. That's not to say drains aren't really important, because they are. I believe doing track renewal work you will more readily get an appreciation of all the interfaces to the different engineering disciplines.

Hope this helps and I wish you the best of luck

 

[stungata]

I can't tell you a lot because I've never worked in either of those disciplines, but I have worked in railway engineering for some time. The specifics of career progression or training and development opportunities isn't something I could generalise about and might even come down to staffing levels, whoever ends up as your individual line manager or the pressure on budgets in the delivery unit you join. To some extent it might depend on how far you want to go too (what I'm about to say matters more as you get up the ladder into planning/managing work). So far, so useless .

However, if you want to understand the complex system that the railway is I suspect you will get more understanding of how it all fits together in track maintenance than drainage. That's not to say drains aren't really important, because they are. I believe doing track renewal work you will more readily get an appreciation of all the interfaces to the different engineering disciplines.

Hope this helps and I wish you the best of luck

Thank you for the input. I appreciate it.

 

[stungata]

Is anyone else on here able to shed some light on this?

I really can’t decide which way im steering to.

Many thanks in advance!

Edit: typo

 

[Yzerman]

Worked in pway for nwr you could progress if you put the time in and show willing . The jobs mainly good ,a few stinking shifts on a weekend
Off track would probably be easier imo

 

[J3053B]

Off track is great used to work on it, more day shifts than p way as you don’t generally require possessions for the work they do.