Emr depot driver shifts

[Adzlib]

Hi

I'm currently going through the EMR depot driver recruitment and was just wondering if anyone knows what the rough shift patterns are?

I've seen 7 on 2 off 7 on 5 off, but just wondered if anyone can assist with more detail? Or roughly how a month would look.


Thanks again

 

[LCC106]

Not entirely sure but have seen it posted on here before that a lot are night shifts. Taking trains on to the depot, fuelling, putting through wash, putting on the correct road on the park for the next shift to take over or putting onto platforms as necessary. May be some shunts from station to depot. Is this Derby or Nottingham? May help others to respond more accurately.

 

[Adzlib]

Not entirely sure but have seen it posted on here before that a lot are night shifts. Taking trains on to the depot, fuelling, putting through wash, putting on the correct road on the park for the next shift to take over or putting onto platforms as necessary. May be some shunts from station to depot. Is this Derby or Nottingham? May help others to respond more accurately.

I think it's for both depots mate but just a rough idea of how many days on and off etc would be great for either depot.
I'm seen all the forum posts around the role etc but nothing around the shifts. Thanks for the message though pal.

 

[Ptrains]

I've attached a copy of the shift pattern for Depot Drivers at Derby. You drop down one row each week, when you get to the bottom it starts again at the top.... Each box has the shift reference number, length (8hr 45min) and start time. Shifts with TA instead of the reference number are spare shifts, so can be moved 3 hours either way from the start time shown on here.

Hope this helps....

 

[eastersunday]

I've attached a copy of the shift pattern for Depot Drivers at Derby. You drop down one row each week, when you get to the bottom it starts again at the top.... Each box has the shift reference number, length (8hr 45min) and start time. Shifts with TA instead of the reference number are spare shifts, so can be moved 3 hours either way from the start time shown on here.

Hope this helps....

Thanks for adding that Ptrains. Has anyone got one for the Nottingham depot?

 

[Adzlib]

I've attached a copy of the shift pattern for Depot Drivers at Derby. You drop down one row each week, when you get to the bottom it starts again at the top.... Each box has the shift reference number, length (8hr 45min) and start time. Shifts with TA instead of the reference number are spare shifts, so can be moved 3 hours either way from the start time shown on here.

Hope this helps....

That's really helpful pal and a lot better than I thought they maybe. Fingers crossed for getting through the process.

 

[Tomnick]

Nottingham's current shed link. Very different pattern to Derby's, for various reasons. Same principles with spares (SP) though.





 

[eastersunday]

Nottingham's current shed link. Very different pattern to Derby's, for various reasons. Same principles with spares (SP) though.





Thanks Tom. Can I ask why the pattern is so different to the Derby one? And out of both patterns, which would you say is more favourable for a better work-life balance? From a quick glance I can see that there are more night shifts at Derby than Nottingham, Nottingham seems to have more day-time shifts. And Nottingham seems to work longer working weeks - quite a few 7 days in a row on some, where as Derby is just 4/5/6 day working weeks.

 

[greatkingrat]

This may be a stupid question, but what do the depot drivers actually do? I'd assumed there would only be one or two on each shift, to move units around the depot, but looking at the number of turns in the roster, they must be doing a lot more than that?

 

[LCC106]

Guessing one depot is largely high speed trains and the other is local ones. Taking them through the wash bay, fuel, into maintenance sheds, shunting on and off platforms etc. Lots of trains = more shunters and depot drivers required.

 

[Ptrains]

Derby is larger and has more maintenance facilities. It houses the intercity 222 and 180 fleet, with a few regional 170 and 156/158 units.

The trains are left by the mainline drivers either at the depot entry point or at the station. Depot drivers collect them and take them into onto the fuelling lines, then the wash plant and finally stabling them on one of the sidings for the cleaning teams to do their thing. In addition, various units will need moving in and out of several different maintenance sheds and the drivers do the prep for all units bar the 222s. Depot drivers will also take some of the trains out of the depot up to the station when they are ready to go out. Most of this work takes place at night, as the majority of trains are sent out early am and seem to get back in between 10pm and 2am.

At Derby there will usually be only 1 or 2 drivers around during the day and from around 7 or 8pm onwards the number of drivers will increase to around 8.

It takes longer than you'd think to shift a train around, especially when you've dropped a unit at one end of the depot and have to walk 10 minutes to the other end to get the next.

 

[whoosh]

Also, the layout at Derby isn't ideal - an ideal layout would be, fuel road, carriage washer, stabling sidings. At Etches Park this isn't all in a nice straight line. The compact footprint of the site requires trains to go into a headhunt after the washer and change direction. Then go into another headhunt and change direction again to access the stabling sidings.
This involves either the driver walking the length of the train each time to change cabs, or a driver each end to cut the walking time and speed things up. Either way costs drivers.
Quite a busy place at night - apart from class 360s and a handful of 222s, all other Intercity stock come back to Etches Park, along with a fair few Sprinters as well. Any that go out in multiple may need remarshalling and shunting around.

 

[Tomnick]

Thanks Tom. Can I ask why the pattern is so different to the Derby one? And out of both patterns, which would you say is more favourable for a better work-life balance? From a quick glance I can see that there are more night shifts at Derby than Nottingham, Nottingham seems to have more day-time shifts. And Nottingham seems to work longer working weeks - quite a few 7 days in a row on some, where as Derby is just 4/5/6 day working weeks.

Sorry for the slow reply. I've had a world of trouble trying to reply to this on mobile!

Nottingham's fundamentally very different to Derby, in that Eastcroft is a relatively small maintenance depot with not much siding capacity, so most units stable overnight on the station instead of being brought out from the depot in the morning. That means that the bulk of the work is earlier in the night - once the last units have been fuelled and the station's been set up, there's not much to do other than prepping units to go into service. There's also a lot more work in the daytime, attaching/detaching portions (primarily Liverpool services, but also summer Skegs and a few others) and shunts between platforms in what's quite an operationally complex station.

Hard to say what's better really. There's something to be said for working nights most of the time - it saves the constant transitions from one shift to another. I'm not a big fan of nights personally, though. Even finishing in the early hours of the morning feels better. Most at Notts love the long weekends, on the other hand - five (or six) consecutive days off every third weekend. It makes it easier to fall onto the same pattern as friends/partners/etc in the workplace too.

 

[eastersunday]

Sorry for the slow reply. I've had a world of trouble trying to reply to this on mobile!

Nottingham's fundamentally very different to Derby, in that Eastcroft is a relatively small maintenance depot with not much siding capacity, so most units stable overnight on the station instead of being brought out from the depot in the morning. That means that the bulk of the work is earlier in the night - once the last units have been fuelled and the station's been set up, there's not much to do other than prepping units to go into service. There's also a lot more work in the daytime, attaching/detaching portions (primarily Liverpool services, but also summer Skegs and a few others) and shunts between platforms in what's quite an operationally complex station.

Hard to say what's better really. There's something to be said for working nights most of the time - it saves the constant transitions from one shift to another. I'm not a big fan of nights personally, though. Even finishing in the early hours of the morning feels better. Most at Notts love the long weekends, on the other hand - five (or six) consecutive days off every third weekend. It makes it easier to fall onto the same pattern as friends/partners/etc in the workplace too.

I'm sure it must be a bit easier having done all of the hard work at the start of the shift, where you can then relax a little towards the end of the shift - especially when doing nights! I think I'd prefer the Nottingham schedule, as you say it would make it easier to fall onto the same pattern as others outside of the industry. Thank you very much for all of your advice, it's been very helpful.

 

[Tomnick]

It's not so much that the hard work's done at the start of the shift - it's more that whole shifts are generally earlier than they are at Derby! Start earlier, finish earlier. Most will have gone home by 2 or 3 in the morning, even earlier on a good night, leaving just the two night drivers to do most of the preps and any odd moves left over.

Good luck, anyway!

 

[eastersunday]

It's not so much that the hard work's done at the start of the shift - it's more that whole shifts are generally earlier than they are at Derby! Start earlier, finish earlier. Most will have gone home by 2 or 3 in the morning, even earlier on a good night, leaving just the two night drivers to do most of the preps and any odd moves left over.

Good luck, anyway!

Oh I see what you mean! So for any shifts starting between 8-11pm should finish earlier than the predicted finish time of 4-6am? I can see on the roster posted above that some night shifts are around 7.5 hours long.
Thank you!

 

[Colin1980]

Oh I see what you mean! So for any shifts starting between 8-11pm should finish earlier than the predicted finish time of 4-6am? I can see on the roster posted above that some night shifts are around 7.5 hours long.
Thank you!

From what I hear if you get a quiet night occasionally you get gone a bit earlier if you are lucky. If you are banking on this then you'll come a cropper. All at Derby love our overnights, proper team environment mucking in together, and not facing the constant shifts round the 24hr clock. Finish at 0500 or so, get some sleep and have the afternoon and evening with family.

The other thing to consider with the two depots is the current backlog. Derby, with the new high speed bi-modes due in the next couple of years will be enroling a lot harder over the next 18 months. Should you pass every test and opt for Notts, where the mainline links are already full, and you'll be waiting ages for retirements etc before being taken from the talent pool, and even then face years on the shed before getting mainline.

 

[LowLevel]

From what I hear if you get a quiet night occasionally you get gone a bit earlier if you are lucky. If you are banking on this then you'll come a cropper. All at Derby love our overnights, proper team environment mucking in together, and not facing the constant shifts round the 24hr clock. Finish at 0500 or so, get some sleep and have the afternoon and evening with family.

The other thing to consider with the two depots is the current backlog. Derby, with the new high speed bi-modes due in the next couple of years will be enroling a lot harder over the next 18 months. Should you pass every test and opt for Notts, where the mainline links are already full, and you'll be waiting ages for retirements etc before being taken from the talent pool, and even then face years on the shed before getting mainline.

It's been the opposite way round for some time. Various Derby depot drivers turning up at Nottingham to avoid a long wait to go mainline at Derby.

Nottingham has been a constant cycle of movement for drivers for years now. Usual wait time to go to the mainline seems to be less than a year at present.

I'm not a driver but I've been a guard at Nottingham for quite a long time, there used to be several years waits to go mainline but that hasn't been the case for ages, even with the influx of new straight to mainline drivers who should have been at Liverpool.

 

[Colin1980]

It's been the opposite way round for some time. Various Derby depot drivers turning up at Nottingham to avoid a long wait to go mainline at Derby.

Nottingham has been a constant cycle of movement for drivers for years now. Usual wait time to go to the mainline seems to be less than a year at present.

I'm not a driver but I've been a guard at Nottingham for quite a long time, there used to be several years waits to go mainline but that hasn't been the case for ages, even with the influx of new straight to mainline drivers who should have been at Liverpool.

Yes, Liverpool recruits and Derby staff and some ex-freight drivers in too apparently. There was a major shortage at Notts for a while over last few years, heightened by covid, but from what I hear that is now over and the current recruitment drive face a long wait. Didn't Derby backlog a few years ago due to having to take some ex-Neville Hill staff? Only what I hear mind, don't shoot the messenger.

 

[eastersunday]

From what I hear if you get a quiet night occasionally you get gone a bit earlier if you are lucky. If you are banking on this then you'll come a cropper. All at Derby love our overnights, proper team environment mucking in together, and not facing the constant shifts round the 24hr clock. Finish at 0500 or so, get some sleep and have the afternoon and evening with family.

The other thing to consider with the two depots is the current backlog. Derby, with the new high speed bi-modes due in the next couple of years will be enroling a lot harder over the next 18 months. Should you pass every test and opt for Notts, where the mainline links are already full, and you'll be waiting ages for retirements etc before being taken from the talent pool, and even then face years on the shed before getting mainline.

Definitely not banking on it, it was just curiosity. The shift times are much better at Nottingham, no where near as many nights as Derby, but each to their own.

EMR have just heavily recruited last year to top up their depot driver talent pool for Notts/Derby and they're now doing the same again just over 12 months later, I believe a lot have already been taken out of the 2022 talent pool. The mainline links aren't already full, there is an urgent need for drivers. So I tend to believe what LowLevel has said, you won't be in the role as a depot driver for too long before being given the opportunity to go mainline - the recent large recruitment drives back this up. An EMR manager advised me that Nottingham was currently the best out of the two for progression to mainline but both Derby and Notts need drivers.

Worst case scenario, if you're waiting ages to go mainline as a depot driver, surely you can just apply as a qualified driver at another TOC because EMR put you through full driver training and issue you with an EU license!?