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Changing my Career

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mcatts

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10 Oct 2015
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Hi all - I'm new!

Just a quick question really, I've relocated down to South London and I'm looking to change my career to something (anything) on the railways.

My background is in the logistics sector working in I.T.

Does anybody have any advice?
 
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TheEdge

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29 Nov 2012
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Does anybody have any advice?

Never eat yellow snow.

But seriously, that's such a huge question and the industry has so many job positions of so many different types it would be impossible to answer.

What do you want? To drive trains? Work with customers? Operational work? Railway IT? Train Planning? Admin? HR?
 

Scottw

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6 Jan 2013
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m looking into a change of career aswell, currentley a fabricator in the north east,any ideas what I could turn my hand to ? how far do the teams operate from a base at darlington or Gateshead ?
 

red2005

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Very vague guys!

as someone said above there are so many jobs within the industry it's almost impossible to advise you without knowing what your personalities are etc......for example it's no good us telling you to go flat out for customer facing roles if you don't like working with people.

Don't you have any kind of inkling what you wan't to do?
 

NX

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"I wanna be a train driver coz they earn lots of money"

NX
 

mcatts

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10 Oct 2015
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Sorry for the vagueness!

I'd love to be a train driver, however I have partial colour blindness (blues/purples etc)... nothing with red, amber or green (I can drive perfectly well) but I suspect I wouldn't be able to get a driving job because of this?

I'm keen on 2 other aspects; customer facing (platform, ticket seller, train manager) or the behind the scenes stuff like planning.

I don't have a degree, just a solid work record in the I.T sector
 

NX

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Any kind of colour blindness will rule you out of most if not all safety critical roles, ie driver, guard, platforms, shunted etc


NX
 

A-driver

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Any kind of colour blindness will rule you out of most if not all safety critical roles, ie driver, guard, platforms, shunted etc





NX


Depends if you can pass the colour blind test. Im not suggesting cheating but ask an optician to do a colour blindness test to see if the blue/purple blindness would be severe enough to fail. Standards are stricter for drivers than many other grades.

Always worth getting these kind of health concerns assessed by a professional than assuming you are automatically ruled out.
 

mcatts

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10 Oct 2015
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Depends if you can pass the colour blind test. Im not suggesting cheating but ask an optician to do a colour blindness test to see if the blue/purple blindness would be severe enough to fail. Standards are stricter for drivers than many other grades.

Always worth getting these kind of health concerns assessed by a professional than assuming you are automatically ruled out.

Thank you very much, that's really helpful!
 

TheEdge

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Signalling does sound interesting...

With the ongoing move towards the ROC (Regional Operating Centres) and away from old (steam era) signal boxes and 1970/80s Power Signal Boxes signalling is not the stablest place to be at the moment.

Most signallers seem to be in a constant state of limbo on when their boxes will be closing and where they will be going.
 

TomBoyd

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2 Sep 2013
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With the ongoing move towards the ROC (Regional Operating Centres) and away from old (steam era) signal boxes and 1970/80s Power Signal Boxes signalling is not the stablest place to be at the moment.

Most signallers seem to be in a constant state of limbo on when their boxes will be closing and where they will be going.

In some ways I can see where you're coming from but...

A) the program isn't advancing as quickly as planned.

B) the modernisation means that the company is in a on going battle to trim the fat. The future of signalling is in an educated, articulate, younger crowd. There are tons of opportunities. If you're going to get in, get in now.

BUT you should be prepared to move to a ROC. that is the future, be it in 1 , 3, 10 or 20 years
 
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