Railway Apprenticeships

[Alex 2901]

Hi, having spent the past week trawling through apprenticeships to find anything public transport related, but not really succeeding, except for National Express West Midlands, I'm trying to see if any Rail based apprenticeships might be available, and what would be needed to apply?

If possible, I'd be looking for something based around the Midlands, or within easy reach of the Midlands?

Alex

 

[Economist]

Are you looking solely at what is open for applications now or are you looking at what has been available in the past year or so?

From what I can recall, a lot of programmes across various industries tend to open in the first half of the year and start in September. Network Rail often have a lot of apprenticeships, the TOCs themselves often have office/customer apprentices and engineering apprentices. Virgin ran something called RedTrack where they sponsored people through a degree, basically a fast track to management, they may well run it again.

 

[Hooligan]

Network Rail apprenticeships
http://www.networkrail.co.uk/careers/schemes/students-and-graduates/advanced-apprenticeship-scheme/

 

[Stow]

London Midland have an Engineering apprentice scheme but will have to wait until next intake to apply;

http://www.londonmidland.com/about-...nment-s-commitment-to-apprenticeships-1205751

 

[alxndr]

Several of the contractor companies have been known to offer essentially the same apprenticeship scheme as the Network Rail one, although most of the people tended to be London-based from what I can remember. Seems like some of them also have apprenticeships in other bits of the industry too, so might be of interest depending on what it is that you want to do.

Costain - http://costain.com/careers/routes-into-costain/apprenticeships/
Siemens - https://www.siemens.co.uk/careers/en/students/apprenticeships.htm
Balfour Beatty - http://www.balfourbeatty.com/career...chool-leavers/school-leavers/apprenticeships/

 

[Nym]

It would be a long commute but TfL also offer a very significant number of apprenticeships.
None of them are in true engineering, but plenty of maintainer, technician, project manager etc roles.
A quick google search will show the extent of available schemes.
To help the commute there is a 75% refund of your season ticket purchase (taxed) and an intrest free season ticket loan for which you are eligable from day 1 in the job.