Training

[Dolive22]

Two questions:
1) How much training is involved in each of the jobs (ticketing staff, platform work, guard, RPI etc.)?


2) Where do track maintenance personnel come from? I mean do they start out as a raw recruits, take the PTS course and learn by doing, or is there a central college that teaches them how to fix track?

I know there are BTEC ND, NC and NAs for engineering work and technical certificates etc. but didn't notice the BTEC ND in Railway Engineering Operations at my local FE college.

 

[Matt Taylor]

My ticket office training course was six weeks in 2001, I gather the course is now just three weeks. I am about to start guard training and have about six weeks in the classroom followed by route learning etc so maybe 3-4 months in total?

That's for SWT by the way.

 

[175001]

My guards training with Northern consisted of 12 weeks in school, with one of those weeks traction training, then after passing out, nearly 2 months of road learning, but that all depends on the depot and its roads.

 

[Greenback]

My retail training consisted of

5 days in the ticke toffice watching colelagues selling tickets and using an APTIS
8 days induction, first aid, fire safety and retail training in a classroom in Paddington that didn't have any fares manuals, timetables, PC's or ticket machines.
Another 5 days on the job being supervised by an experienced colleague.

 

[Hydro]

2) Where do track maintenance personnel come from? I mean do they start out as a raw recruits, take the PTS course and learn by doing, or is there a central college that teaches them how to fix track?

There's a two week course for PWay known as Track Induction which will introduce a new starter to basic track types, components, tools, techniques, and so on. These courses follow a fixed syllabus delivered by any number of railway training companies. Then go and work in a gang, getting live experience. Network Rail certainly have the closest thing to a college in their Apprentice training facilities, Balfours and Amey sent their Apprentices there as well. That's a three year course, with BTEC and NVQ's galore.

 

[RJ]

For ticketing and customer information, I went through the following;

1 week station induction/shadowing existing colleagues
3 days company induction
4 weeks at the dedicated training school led by an expert
3 weeks in the ticket office being shadowed by a mentor
2 one day courses in Customer Service

Penalty Fares training ranges from two days to a week depending on how familiar you are with the system to start with.

Customer information is mainly confirming ticket validities, printing out journey plans and using TRUST/The Manual/Routeing Guide to assist with any other queries, that is mainly learnt from other colleagues if you're brand new to the industry.

 

[GB]

My ground staff training consisted of 5 weeks in the classroom and about 5 to6 weeks on the job training learning the core job. Its then about 2 to 3 weeks per extra job/location after that.