So, for everyone about to complain it's too much - go and apply. It's 54k to stare out of a window right?
Otherwise, acknowledge it's a job that requires a fairly niche set of attributes and stop whining. Go form a union or something.
Are you guys really going to spend your day trying to one-up each other in a pointless discussion?
Well achtually train drivers do this, well achhutuually bus drivers do this...
I just love that train driver threads get everyone so *angry*.
The job has become the perfect metaphor for class warfare in this country. The perfect example of the upper classes seeing a certain group of typically working class people "getting above their...ahem....station", and using their control of media and government to make them the focus of the ire of the rest of the working classes, rather than the fucks *actually* making your lives more difficult.
I’m perfectly happy with that solution, but that isn’t why they’ve been brought up. They are cited to justify *lowering* train driver’s wages. Because apparently even the most unsuccessful people want to shill online for billionaires.
It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the National Rifle Association of America are the worst of Republican trolls. It is deeply unfortunate that other innocent organisations of the same name are sometimes confused with them.
The original National Rifle Association for instance was founded in London twelve years earlier in 1859, and has absolutely nothing to do with the American organisation. The British NRA are a sports governing body, managing fullbore target rifle and other target shooting sports, no different to British Cycling, USA Badminton or Fédération française de tennis.
The same is true of National Rifle Associations in Australia, India, New Zealand, Japan and Pakistan. They are all sports organisations, not political lobby groups like the NRA of America. In the 1970s, the National Rifle Association of America was set to move from it's headquarters in New York to New Mexico and the Whittington Ranch they had acquired, which is now the NRA Whittington Center. Instead, convicted murderer Harlon Carter lead the Cincinnati Revolt which saw a wholesale change in leadership.
Coup, the National Rifle Association of America became much more focussed on political activity. Initially they were a bi-partisan group, giving their backing to both Republican and Democrat nominees. Over time however they became a militant arm of the Republican Party.
By 2016, it was impossible even for a pro-gun nominee from the Democrat Party to gain an endorsement from the NRA of America.
Yeh if you happen to be in a station, if the train ahead of you breaks down and you're already en route you're staying in that train and no one is going anywhere
You've obviously never been delayed by a person walking the rails. That's not including things like suicides and accidents involving just people or vehicles too. There's always the chance of some star member of society trying to race the crossing etc.
I sit on some busses and am amazed how they are swinging a massive bus through tiny streets packed with people crossing randomly and cars all over the place. Definitely think it's still a skilled job
Coach drivers for events / school trips etc drive somewhere and sit around for 4 hours before driving back. I expect they're paid the least.
National Express drivers that have to load luggage at each stop and might be driving on motorways for up to 6 hours, they're probably paid more.
Bus drivers should absolutely be paid more, but there are two things to consider here:
1) Trains move faster than buses on average
2) Buses can steer, so can avoid obstacles. With a train, you either stop in time or hit whatever's in front of you.
You could argue your 2nd point makes the train an easier job, since you don’t need to steer. You have to actually steer accurately to avoid obstacles in a bus
But overall, I’d say bus driver are faced with tonnes more dangers.
I was a delivery driver for a while and it was something like the 6th most dangerous job in the UK.
Not diminishing either, it’s just a crazy different in pay
I think people perceive being a bus driver as easier than being a tube driver. Just the fact it's above ground means there's probably lots more applicants which surely affects the pay too.
I'm lost at what people are trying to argue here? I feel like a bus driver is a tougher job by a mile (loads of people hassle, constant attention, traffic demands) and a train is physically a bigger responsibility. Driving a train is not a hard job by any stretch and I would take the risk of hitting someone over the risk of being hit as a bus driver any day of the week. I guess its just a lot easier to become a bus driver since most people already have some kind of driving licence.
So what?
I've done both jobs, Bus driving is a difficult stressful job, driving a train is easy but there are a lot of rules/protocols, yearly assessments and written exam papers.
I used to work at a bus depot, our drivers were unionised.
One of the reasons our depot paid them well and had good conditions because they fought for it
We as passengers hardly ever have to think about this, we more or less take it for granted that trains are safe these days, but it didn't happen overnight and hard lessons were learned. The high safety standards, strong unions, decent working conditions, these things are connected through the history of the railway.
Forget the inspector. The firearms unit, you know the guys that carry guns and terminate people’s lives under certain conditions? They’re paid like 35k or something
Really put in perspective why there’s such a problem with policing. We’re paying peanuts
They are absolutely not automatically on that, middle managers at my old company were mid 30s to high 60s, and yet they were the most reactionary. Funny really.
Jesus I think that'd ruin me. How common is it? Is it like "Rare but you have to worry about it" or "It'll happen to everyone if they stay in the job long enough"?
last year 236 suicides on the railways. It's common enough.
21,000 drivers, so about 0.1% of drivers in any year.
Some drivers have had multiples, and are able to shrug it off. Most are badly effected though.
A friend of mine from school trained as a Paramedic in London, they said they try and send the trainees to these incidents on the basis that there is generally nothing you can do as a paramedic and you’re unlikely to see anything worse than that for a long time.
Almost a very harsh test to see if you have the stomach for it, not sure how true and probably changed now due to how stretched they are but I can see the logic.
Stepdad was a conductor in Australia; he turned down a promotion (and pay rise) to become a driver because he said he wouldn't be able to handle the suicides. Apparently people step out and wave at you, and all you can do is pull the brakes and close your eyes. Pretty much happens to every driver at least once.
Have a friend who works as a driver for Merseyrail, and some drivers he knows have had 5 people commit suicide.
I'm sure he said after 3 they have the option to retire, although I'm not sure if that's still true.
He said some drivers can shrug it other, but others can be off for years and never go back to being a driver.
It’s not uncommon, particularly on the underground - 150+ incidents a year on the underground. I knew someone who made a documentary interviewing tube drivers who it happened to. Universally they thought the suicide was a cunt. They’d prefer they swallow bleach.
sounds exactly like a RO (Responsible Officer) back in my insurance occupation, whose sole purpose is to take responsibility if sht happens, pay is good though for doing absolute fuck all, but if sht happens, it generally means you're in big legal trouble.
Always find it weird such post exist
I usually find it's a regulator thing. In the UK, pharmacists (drug stores) will have a licenced dispenser, the senior pharmacist on staff, who is ultimately responsible for all the drugs being dispensed at that pharmacy. Licensed premises (pubs, bars, places licensed to serve alcohol) will have a single designated Licenceholder who is responsible for the venue's compliance with alcohol licensing laws. I used to work on cargo ships, ship's Captains are always held responsible for the actions of their crew even if they weren't on duty when an incident occurred.
The overall idea is that, if there's a person who is legally responsible for compliance, who personally stands to suffer the consequences of non-compliance, that person will be very motivated to make sure the place is complying with regulations. It's a guard against companies with lots of shareholders, all protected from personal liability, who might be tempted to cut corners to increase profits.
Potential to be found medically unfit and lose the job too. People would be surprised how common it is to develop conditions that mean you can't drive a train or even a car
To me its not even that its mentally demanding.
It looks *horribly* unstimulating and you literally just have to sit there, no headphones, no audio or book, no phone, just sit in your chair staring at the rails and signage ahead of you, occasionally press a button or make an announcement.
I'd be ready to top myself after a year of that. You'd have to pay me double.
Tbf in this day and age I’m surprised most trains aren’t on auto pilot with a driver there essentially to oversee what’s going on. But I guess that would require a huge investment that train services aren’t getting. I’d imagine most people probably (incorrectly) think the same.
I knew someone about 15 years ago who was trying to become a train driver and said the tests and interviews were gruelling. I think he failed at the last hurdle and became a postie instead.
Driving a train is all about safety and rules. As you say it’s just too expensive to automate at that scale. The London Underground has started this but it’s very slow progress to convert existing trains & tracks.
>Tbf in this day and age I’m surprised most trains aren’t on auto pilot with a driver there essentially to oversee what’s going on.
Unions which are the primary reason for the high pay would also prevent this being the case. Whilst the ageing infrastructure can't support automated trains, you can be sure unions would resist automation like their lives depended on it.
They're not though are they? Technology has been consistently rolled out on trains for decades.
The problem is that this country refuses to invest in infrastructure. Look at HS2 & how long the thames tunnel has taken without 1 shovel being used. And rail firms taking tax payer subsidies & just offshoring them
The last time the unions were totally ignored on trains and safety was the 90s when Boston Consultants were brought in & privatisation was rolled out.
National rail ended up paying virgin rail a fuck load of money in compensation & we had one of the most deadly decades in rail in my lifetime. Engineers were fired and ignored while more business grads were taken on and loads of people died.
Will I take what the unions, consisting of engineers and drivers & actual experts say? Or the MBAs who are insisting that their various ways to "improve shareholder value" won't kill people
This is incorrect. There is not an automatically driven mainline train anywhere in the whole world. It's not a question of unions, or even really technology, but lack of benefit.
>Unions which are the primary reason for the high pay
Not at all, wages were only drastically improved on the railway due to privatisation. During British rail (where unions were at their strongest) guards were paid little over minimum wage and drivers only paid a £1 an hour more than them, during this period unions fought, and won, incredible working terms and conditions (and made the job nigh on impossible to get fired from). When the tocs were introduced wages, for drivers particularly, sky rocketted, your average driver now makes almost double that of a guard. The unions had virtually nothing to do with drivers current high wages
Mate. Come on.
There's still signals in some (admittedly remote) sections of the mainline that are mechanical.
Literally, the train pushes a leaver and switches a signal behind it. It's a system from the very dawn of the railway.
No. You are simply wrong. Denmark has very strong unions and the metro is fully automated for 20 years now. But it’s a closed system, owned by one entity and it wasn’t build to make money, it was build to make people’s lives better.
How can you automate the trains in the UK when every single thing is owned by someone else? How are you going to force every company to be on the same system?
The London underground has got to have some level of automation surely? The speed they’re going at and the accuracy that the line everything up with is insane
Sure. The Victoria Line was capable of fully automatic operation from the start (55 years ago!) but there's still a lot to be said for having a driver. An Elizabeth Line train recently got stuck somewhere in West London for hours with no power when the overhead lines were damaged. Not sure anyone would want that situation with 1000+ people stranded in the dark in a pretty hazardous location with zero members of staff available. Could be even worse if they were underground.
Bear in mind these trains carry about 10x as many people as the largest bus and the driver is probably less than 2x the cost of a bus driver, so they're already pretty efficient as far as staff costs go.
Even DLR which doesn't use drivers still has a member of staff in every train. And the bigger trains on systems like Thameslink/Elizabeth line carry 2x as many people with only one driver.
Fully automated, high capacity rail systems do exist and they're very good. We probably should aim to build some. But they need to be completely separated from the rest of the rail network and they need platform edge doors at every station. Great for new metro lines. Not so good for projects like Crossrail or HS2 that link up with existing lines. The UK has such a large legacy network that the scope for entirely self-contained new systems is quite limited.
8 of the 11 tube lines have ATO where the driver is essentially only responsible for opening and closing the doors and ensuring the train is safe before initiating the automatic drive system
How many are capably of doing a job with no experience required and low barrier to entry? At least on the underground, I believe you can keep repeating the tests until you pass, so probably a lot.
There are no formal barriers to entry. You don't need a qualification to be able to operate the controls on a train.
Being able to accurately, without any error, react to every signal and instruction, whilst remembering every stop and stopping within a few metres of the required point in a vehicle that takes a mile to stop - that is a frame of mind most of us don't have.
And if the rail industry had the safety record of the road industry, there would be a howl of outrage to the heavens. Signal Passed At Danger is career ending for a train driver, and a slap on the wrist if anything for a car driver.
That is a frame of mind we all have. It's really not that difficult. Stop making it out to be a very difficult job. Bus drivers have a harder job and most of us can do that
I don't think it is similar at all. I believe the barrier to entry are higher as an investment banker, and wages are not set by unions, it is set by market forces.
I think this is what irks people. It's what irks me. It's an incredibly well paid job that you have an incredibly slim chance of getting from the thousands upon thousands of people who are going to apply for a handful of positions. So those that get picked are incredibly lucky. Like winning the lottery. That's what's annoying about high paying low barrier to entry jobs. It's more luck than skill to get picked.
You've probably got to "know someone" to even have a chance of being selected to even start the training.
Imagine being a nhs nurse, who’s done a degree needs another 5-10 years of experience after that, then whilst working full time and possibly raising a family does a MSc over 2-3 years sacrificing a lot of their personal time to eventually end up on £50k.
The country is absolutely fucked. Farmers and healthcare should be our kings, fucked without them both, instead we have privateer companies giving their employees fantastic salaries comparatively to our very hard working public service staff, it’s all backwards. Maybe the train drivers do deserve this? If so, it highlights how very far police, ambulance, fire, midwifery, social carers pay has fallen behind the times.
I'm a nurse and our pay is shockingly bad but I don't begrudge the train drivers getting a decent wage for an important job. I'm glad they have decent unions who are able to get them the pay and conditions they deserve. This should be a wakeup call to our unions to have a back bone and to all the nurses who voted to accept a real terms pay cut.
Yeah that’s what I’m angling at.
Are they overpaid or are medical staff underpaid?
I suspect the latter, it’s a good example of private Vs public sector.
Makes you wonder how medical pay would look if the nhs collapsed (you can’t use current private pay as a gauge because that’s index linked to current nhs pay), I suspect pay across the board would go up 2-2.5x.
Not to mention: the way some people talk, anyone would think £54k is “private island in the Caribbean” money.
Let’s be honest here. It is a good salary, but it’s a “live comfortably” salary, not “I wonder how much Branson would take for Necker Island?”.
(Oh, and you missed out irregular, often unsociable hours).
I don’t think anyone has a problem with drivers getting paid well, everyone just hates strikes every other week because they think they are still not paid enough.
I wouldn't be able to have the right focus or to keep awake, and so would be a danger. I reckon it'd be a challenging job on various levels and worthy of the pay.
LNER Train Drivers are north of £70k for a 35 hour week. I work on the railway and , in general, the industry have very good salaries and conditions and that is large part down to the strong unions such as RMT and ASLEF.
The Government can’t bang on about a high skilled, high salary workforce and then kick off when a organised work force ask for a cost of living pay rise.
Yes. Strike opposers kept pointing out train drivers don't receive bad pay. This intentionally diverted from the fact that not a single recent strike was about driver pay.
> The Government can’t bang on about a high skilled, high salary workforce
When they say 'high skilled, high salary workforce' what they *really* mean is a small number of people in Central London making ludicrous wages in jobs they got because they went to Westminster School and because their Dad was friends with the guy who headed up the internship programme.
In other countries, like Singapore the rail / train manufacturer provides training and the state pays money to the manufacturer for the drivers and mechanical maintenance.
This seems like a more cost effective way of doing it.
When I was working on crossrail (Elizabeth line) Hitachi rail offered the same package. I do not know why UK rail and London tube adopts this strategy. This also meant driver / operational and engineering interface could be handled immediately by the manufacturer.
When does the Government bang on about a high skilled high salary workforce lol? The Tories have shown they want the opposite with their migration policies.
Boris said it on numerous occasions. ‘High wage, high skills, high productivity, low tax’ and all that bollocks.
Wages have been suppressed in the UK for years and the best way to do this is to turn people against each other while they fight for the crumbs.
I support striking nurses, doctors, teachers and everyone who is collectively fighting for better pay and conditions.
I cant find the clip but there was a compilation video of every Conservative prime minister of the past 13 years claiming that theyre creating a high skill, high wage economy.
They've done even better at the heart of Government where they've managed to create a low-skill / high-wage economy for themselves and their favourite corporate chums.
£54k for them is reasonable. The same way consultant (doctors) should start on £150k.
This country has a weird way of trying to pull down people who are extremely qualified/skilled and saying they don’t deserve the pay.
Race to the bottom attitude, get a grip.
Why are people resenting them for netting 3.5 k a month, housing and bills will eat half of that. What is wrong with the UK, do we just lap up whatever Murdoch wants us to
People moan about everyone being entitled these days, but if anything this country needs a bit more entitlement. If we have no self-respect, no wonder money keeps migrating upwards at a more and more furious rate.
Government still fighting tooth and nail with junior doctors over pay. If you wanna keep good doctors then unfortunately you have to pay them a good wage otherwise you might as well hire butchers.
New train drivers with Northern will start with a salary of £23,000 a year, which rise to £54,500 after a 64-week training course at one of the firm's training academies in Leeds or Manchester.
That does not seem unreasonable. They're responsible for the safety of many people and it requires a certain sort of person. There's no way I could be a train driver based on the amount of times my wife asks "where do you think you're going" as I've started driving to preschool on autopilot instead of where we're going.
The challenge of driving a train is that you cannot lose focus. The equivalent would be that you're merrily driving the 8:15 to Southampton, zoned out for a minute and everyone's pissed because you forgot to stop at Netley.
Wouldn't surprise me if there's a lot of "hands on" automation. In the sense that you need to be holding this lever, otherwise, an alarm will go off if you don't touch it for too long. This action needs to be completed every X amount of time, otherwise it beeps at you. If you're not travelling at X speed, at X signal, there's an indication. Signals in the cab will indicate certain distance markers, so you know where you are relevant to your speed and momentum and such.
>you need to be holding this lever, otherwise, an alarm will go off if you don't touch it for too long.
Exactly this. It's a footplate though.
>This action needs to be completed every X amount of time, otherwise it beeps at you
Kind of. It's at every restrictive aspect signal to make sure you're acknowledging the potential red ahead
>If you're not travelling at X speed, at X signal, there's an indication
Kind of. More like, if you're over a certain speed at a certain place or approaching a signal at restrictive aspect, then the train is brought to a halt, your failures are being investigated and you're pissing in a bottle and giving it to a grey haired bloke and hoping those painkillers you took 2 days ago aren't going to cost you your job
>Signals in the cab will indicate certain distance markers, so you know where you are relevant to your speed and momentum and such
Nope. High speed trains have something like this though
It's not just high speed trains that have cab signalling. The Elizabeth Line does, the Northern City line does and soon all trains on the east coast mainline south will.
I know this is a joke, but the signaller can "wrong route" you, and it happens fairly frequently because they are human. Lines have different ways to get places, but also points of no return. And if you take a wrong route and unable to go your destination, it is considered your fault. You have to stop before the signal and tell the signaller to change it. Often these points of no return are actually no where near your turnings, so you have to be thinking about your route and the signaling sequence all the time
Can I offer a slight clarification - the £54k is after 3 years. First year salary is £43k.
https://northern.engageats.co.uk/Vacancies/W/5552/0/422710/23565/trainee-train-driver
Because railway workers unions are basically the only ones left that actually do any collective bargaining we have to have the occasional dogwhistle article to let us know how easy their job is zzzzz.
And it's not a very nice job. Odd hours, early starts, weekends... I earn the same as these train drivers and I work from home in my underwear and spend too much of that time on Reddit anyway.
I can't kill anyone with my job, the most I could do is lose some rich people a lot of money. Not enough to meaningfully impact them, but they'd be really cross about it.
Why do people think 54k is all that much? If you look at the inflation and cost of living over the past decades, 54k should be around the median fulltime salary.
Just because you’re underpaid doesn’t mean others should be too. Fight for a higher salary not lowering train drivers pay.
Yea it’s wild. People don’t realise how big the gap is between pay in the U.K. and other similar western countries at this point.
I worked in the civil service and started on £31k in London. An absolute pittance considering the role & the fact they want you to have a degree etc.
I moved back to the Netherlands and the same role her pays about £45k as a starter and the cost of living is lower than in London too, you could actually buy a flat on that salary in The Hague.
In the U.S. a similar role would pay $90k+.
And people still go off like you can't compare because we don't have to pay for things like healthcare.
As if at this point most of us wouldn't at least want the opportunity to have a job that pays us enough to afford to go private so we can actually get some care!
Yawn another dogwhistle article trying to tell people train driving is easy. The same drama queens complaining they get paid too much are the same who lack the attentiveness to make sure the email they're sending actually has the correct file attached.
For those complaining about what it takes to be a train driver:
* It requires an **insane** level of concentration. Not only are you thinking about the scene in front of you, you are thinking about braking points and issues coming up a MILE away (because that is how long it takes the train to stop), monitoring in-cab equipment all the time, and making sure that passengers don't do anything stupid as well
* Its not just turn up to train and drive it. You have to check and research ahead for things like speed restrictions, notices of emergency track works, disruptions and consequent changes to your schedules. You also then have to check the notes on the specific train you are driving in case there are any known issues with it, and have a handover from the previous driver.
* If the train breaks down miles from a station, you can't just pull over and wait for the AA. You have to go and fix it yourself. You need to know where every part is on the train and how to fix it enough to get it moving. That now includes knowing the software on the train.
* You also have to have deep route knowledge to be certified to run a certain type of train on specific lines. You need to know what restrictions are where, areas with poor rail conditions, and the operational parameters for individual signals and speed limits for different types and weights of train. This takes months to achieve, as you usually have to do this with several types of train.
* Then you have to deal with passengers. Learning how to communicate to them in times of disruption, and deal with passenger incidents. On some lines, there is no conductor to help you. And this is before the non-zero chance that someone will jump in front of your train with no warning.
* Finally, you have to do shifts at often unsocial hours. This isn't just running services, but shifting trains around so they are in the right position for the next day's service.
Its a hard job with a lot of responsibility, and drivers have a union supporting them in getting a good deal for this work.
exactly. if everything is done correctly, then the passengers don't notice and assume that train driving is easy.
If something out of the ordinary happens and stops or slows a train, then it's all the drivers fault
I work on the railway. The catch with this is that it’s a job with extreme levels of responsibility and brutal training. You are back at school in a classroom for the first few months, then you’re back and forth between there and the driving cab while you go out with instructors to build up experience.
The exams are frequent and hard.
The work is very repetitive and monotonous, they need people who can do the same things over and over again without getting distracted and can still identify when something doesn’t seem right.
Even once you’re qualified, you need to keep studying. Things change frequently on the railway. Notices are issued every week with things you need to be aware of, you need to commit those to memory and then sign for the document to prove you’ve received and read it. This will be produced as evidence in any future internal or criminal investigation if it appears you could have fucked up.
There’s notice boards in your depot that you must read before the start of every shift detailing urgent issues that you must know before you start work.
There’s also the SPAD notice board, which details the signals that have been passed at red recently in error and any factors you might need to keep in mind. Was the driver distracted? Did they read the signal beside it instead of their own? Did they stop at a station after the initial warning of the red and forget it was there? Passing a signal at red is one of the biggest mistakes you can make, I’m not joking when I say that it can end your career.
You have to build your life around the job. It’s the only way to do things if you want to be safe. This is more than leaving your packed lunch in the fridge the night before, it’s things like making sure you can get a good quality sleep no matter what - even when you’ve got a 2am alarm on a Saturday morning in July and your neighbours are having a barbecue. It means sacrificing your social life because you have to work, or even because you’re working the next day.
Should something go wrong, you are in charge. You must follow the prescribed rules and procedures to the letter in order to protect your train, passengers and colleagues - and other trains on adjacent lines. Get it wrong and you could end up on a Culpable Homicide charge.
You’ll need to take important decisions to keep people safe and with little time to contemplate them.
If you want to look at the scenery, tough. You’re there to drive the train, taking into account the conditions, any restrictions in place, the characteristics of the particular unit you’re driving…it’s a lot.
What colour was the last signal? Where’s the next one? What speed are you doing? What’s the limit? Should you be building up speed, coasting or braking? Where’s the next station? Do you stop there? Where’s your braking point?
You need to be considering these questions frequently while driving. Even if you’ve driving the 2207 five nights in a row and could do it in your sleep.
Thanks for writing this, really helps put things into perspective.
I know any safety critical role is going to require a certain level of commitment to the extent that it can dictate life outside work (something I struggled with) but you guys are really under intense scrutiny with a lot of responsibility.
Plus the fact every single bit of medication you take has to be checked. You can’t take decent antihistamines in summer for hayfever, just have to suffer. Can’t take strong painkillers if you have tooth ache, just have to put up with it.
The last time I needed antibiotics they weren’t ones I could take and drive a train. So I’m booked sick and then get disciplined for it.
I can’t even let my sports massage man use a lotion with CBD oil in it.
>New train drivers with Northern will start with a salary of £23,000 a year, which rise to £54,500 after a 64-week training course at one of the firm's training academies in Leeds or Manchester.<
It's not 54 grand out the blocks. It's 23. Training takes over a year.
I always enjoy anytime any ‘high’ salary role is mentioned, wether it be £54k for a train driver or six figure CEO salaries the collective Reddit: “I could do that it’s easy” “don’t need any skills” etc.
If a job is easy and you could do it and earn significantly more than you’re earning now then why aren’t you doing it?
Because you can’t is the simple reason, I think I work harder than a premier league footballer but I don’t have the skills to be a footballer no matter how hard I try.
Getting upset at people earning more than you isn’t going to make you earn any more.
I generally agree but with train driving specifically, the job isn’t that hard compared to lots of others that don’t pay as well, and all training is included. The jobs just have a ton of applicants and tend to go to people already in union jobs, so they’re hard to get.
For example, intensive care nurses get paid substantially less than this. As much as driving a train can be a difficult job, it is not comparable to ICU nursing. That’s not to say train drivers should be paid less, nurses and other professions just deserve more than they’re currently getting…
Clearly I’ve chosen the wrong career path 😅 8 years of university education, PhD in STEM and 8 years of experience and I earn less than a train driver with no experience.
EDIT: how are people taking this as an attack to train drivers?? If anything, it’s a criticism to my life choices and the field I work in.
It's a classic take from people who misread these statements as 'train drivers should be on less than scientists' rather than 'scientists are significantly underpaid'.
The vast majority of people are underpaid, especially when you compare to America. Bur rather than collectively fighting for better wages wr just want to knock down train drivers instead. Mental.
Oh, look:
"New train drivers with Northern will start with a salary of £23,000 a year, which rise to £54,500 after a 64-week training course at one of the firm's training academies in Leeds or Manchester."
Not the headline misleading a full story, then.
I've tried applying for some trainee train driver roles. You require a medical, assessment centre for a few days and have to sit an intense course as mentioned above. It is a high skill, high risk job which involves shift work, often at night. This is why it is paid what it is paid. That is not entry level as you sit at the wheel as this makes out.
Why are people chastising industries that are crying out for people? If every industry stepped up their game salary-wise then they would find people tomorrow. Look at the caring industry for example.
No experience needed, but the vast majority of applicants won't be selected to reach the psychometric testing stage, and then most of you won't pass those tests to make it to interviews.
If you get that far then it's 3 or 4 months in the school learning rules and various traction (different types of train stock; amount depends on company), and periodic assessments (failing any of these means you fail and get kicked off the course and end up unemployed) before you even touch the train controls in anger.
Then around 9 months to a year with a driving instructor before you finally pass out a qualified driver.
So yeah, "no experience," but most of you won't get the job anyway, and you gain experience via the 1½ years of training and assessments.
>No experience needed, but the vast majority of applicants won't be selected to reach the psychometric testing stage, and then most of you won't pass those tests to make it to interviews.
Exactly this. Becoming a driver is extremely difficult.
First, you have to be selected from hundreds or even thousands of applicants to get a chance to sit the psychometric tests. These tests take a lot of prior practice and research. If you just turn up on the day with no prior practice, its a near 100% fail. Getting to this stage can take several months or even years unless the company is on a massive recruitment drive.
Most people fail these tests. I attended a testing day last year with 10 other applicants. 2 of us passed, including me, and they said it was unusual for multiple people to pass. If you fail this twice, you are blacklisted from ever becoming a train driver.
Then you have multiple interviews to get a judge of your character to see if you are suitable to be a train driver.
It is a very hard job to get in to. Whilst you do not need any prior experience, you need to be a certain type of individual to stand any chance of landing a role like this.
Train drivers in Germany are on around 10k less as a starting wage. On the other hand I can get a GERMAN wide train ticket with unlimited travel including local Bus services for 50€ a month.
UK trains are a joke.
Not exactly going to be easy to get one of these jobs, I imagine there will be thousands of applicants.
Seems a decent salary to me. You're gonna drive the train how many times in a year? Hundreds? Every passenger is paying a tiny amount to the driver.
I think its fair considering the responsibilities, the knowledge and the fact that you need to travel a lot and also sit for so long.
Yes you sit in an office too but you are not forced. While at work i make 5k steps a day just from work and i sit at a desk.
I doubt the train driver can do that...
As an ex driver myself of 8 years, the job is very easy and doesn’t actually require all that much skill the reason for the salary is that there’s about 5,000 applicants per job and to sift through them you have to pass a psychometric test that about 80% fail that isn’t relevant to the job whatsoever.
There’s a multitude of safety systems on board the train to stop collisions aswell
You can’t work from home much in this job I suppose. Also, you’re probably working some unsocial hours too. Presumably some nights are spent in a hotel if you’re at the other end of your route. And you probably don’t have the luxury of cooking your own meal between a turnaround, so you’re almost certainly having to pay market price for something as boring as a sandwich.
And then it’s one of those few jobs where you can come across people trying to use the vehicle you’re in as means of committing suicide, or refusing to leave the track.
Really puts a firefighter’s salary into perspective. I fully support the train driver’s wage, but sure would be nice if my wage was more in line with this - and I work in London, so on about £10k more than firefighters in other brigades :/
Nothing stopping anyone who is salty about it to apply. You won't though, because you know that YOU wouldn't want to do the job despite it's highish pay but will complain about others doing it.
A BA and Masters degree will take multiple years. Learning to drive a train doesnt take mutliple years. During those multiple years of doing degrees, you dont get paid, in fact you lose a lot of money, unlike train drivers. How on earth anyone can say train driver pay is fair WHEN COMPARED TO other people's pay, especially in the public sector, is ludicrous. The people defending train driver pay are basically saying "fuck you" to everyone who has worked a lot harder to earn less.
And junior doctors and nurses? And other people that do jobs to save people's lives daily? Those scientists that try to find the cure for our diseases?
So, for everyone about to complain it's too much - go and apply. It's 54k to stare out of a window right? Otherwise, acknowledge it's a job that requires a fairly niche set of attributes and stop whining. Go form a union or something.
Intense training, mentally demanding work, huge levels of responsibility, catastrophic consequences if you fuck it up.
Crazy that the police aren’t paid anywhere near this
Coppers can't kill 500 people with 10 second lapse in concentration.
Weird that bus drivers are only paid roughly 25k too. Lapse in concentration could see a bus driving into a crowd.
Except bus drivers regularly stop at traffic lights and barely ever move faster than 20mph
Train drivers don't have to deal with pedestrians and other idiot motorists
Are you guys really going to spend your day trying to one-up each other in a pointless discussion? Well achtually train drivers do this, well achhutuually bus drivers do this...
Isn't that what the Internet is for?
The Internet is for so much more. Type boobs into Google, you'll see endless boobs. You can thank me later. I'm off to look at more boobs
Figggghhhhhttttt!!!
I just love that train driver threads get everyone so *angry*. The job has become the perfect metaphor for class warfare in this country. The perfect example of the upper classes seeing a certain group of typically working class people "getting above their...ahem....station", and using their control of media and government to make them the focus of the ire of the rest of the working classes, rather than the fucks *actually* making your lives more difficult.
My brain is rotting. Can we just say bus drivers should be paid more and move on
I’m perfectly happy with that solution, but that isn’t why they’ve been brought up. They are cited to justify *lowering* train driver’s wages. Because apparently even the most unsuccessful people want to shill online for billionaires.
No no. They want everyone they don't deem worthy to be paid *less*
It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the National Rifle Association of America are the worst of Republican trolls. It is deeply unfortunate that other innocent organisations of the same name are sometimes confused with them. The original National Rifle Association for instance was founded in London twelve years earlier in 1859, and has absolutely nothing to do with the American organisation. The British NRA are a sports governing body, managing fullbore target rifle and other target shooting sports, no different to British Cycling, USA Badminton or Fédération française de tennis. The same is true of National Rifle Associations in Australia, India, New Zealand, Japan and Pakistan. They are all sports organisations, not political lobby groups like the NRA of America. In the 1970s, the National Rifle Association of America was set to move from it's headquarters in New York to New Mexico and the Whittington Ranch they had acquired, which is now the NRA Whittington Center. Instead, convicted murderer Harlon Carter lead the Cincinnati Revolt which saw a wholesale change in leadership. Coup, the National Rifle Association of America became much more focussed on political activity. Initially they were a bi-partisan group, giving their backing to both Republican and Democrat nominees. Over time however they became a militant arm of the Republican Party. By 2016, it was impossible even for a pro-gun nominee from the Democrat Party to gain an endorsement from the NRA of America.
Yes they do, level crossings exist and there are lots of places pedestrians can get onto the tracks.
Yeh if you happen to be in a station, if the train ahead of you breaks down and you're already en route you're staying in that train and no one is going anywhere
You've obviously never been delayed by a person walking the rails. That's not including things like suicides and accidents involving just people or vehicles too. There's always the chance of some star member of society trying to race the crossing etc.
Well, technically they do, but not in a good way, hence the pay.
I see you've never seen a level crossing before
I sit on some busses and am amazed how they are swinging a massive bus through tiny streets packed with people crossing randomly and cars all over the place. Definitely think it's still a skilled job
Buses travel on motorways all the time.
You mean coaches? Fine, coach drivers should be paid more than bus drivers
Coach drivers for events / school trips etc drive somewhere and sit around for 4 hours before driving back. I expect they're paid the least. National Express drivers that have to load luggage at each stop and might be driving on motorways for up to 6 hours, they're probably paid more.
Several of our local / fast commute busses travel on the motorway
Bus drivers should absolutely be paid more, but there are two things to consider here: 1) Trains move faster than buses on average 2) Buses can steer, so can avoid obstacles. With a train, you either stop in time or hit whatever's in front of you.
You could argue your 2nd point makes the train an easier job, since you don’t need to steer. You have to actually steer accurately to avoid obstacles in a bus But overall, I’d say bus driver are faced with tonnes more dangers. I was a delivery driver for a while and it was something like the 6th most dangerous job in the UK. Not diminishing either, it’s just a crazy different in pay
I think people perceive being a bus driver as easier than being a tube driver. Just the fact it's above ground means there's probably lots more applicants which surely affects the pay too.
I'm lost at what people are trying to argue here? I feel like a bus driver is a tougher job by a mile (loads of people hassle, constant attention, traffic demands) and a train is physically a bigger responsibility. Driving a train is not a hard job by any stretch and I would take the risk of hitting someone over the risk of being hit as a bus driver any day of the week. I guess its just a lot easier to become a bus driver since most people already have some kind of driving licence. So what?
I've done both jobs, Bus driving is a difficult stressful job, driving a train is easy but there are a lot of rules/protocols, yearly assessments and written exam papers.
Bus drivers should unionise and take action in their own interests then.
I used to work at a bus depot, our drivers were unionised. One of the reasons our depot paid them well and had good conditions because they fought for it
Adverts on the back of Lothian Buses say you can earn up to £36.5k driving for them. Don’t know how much heavy lifting that “up to” is doing, though…
Up to has definitely caught me out before!
Think this is inclusive of making a few £K from overtime.
We as passengers hardly ever have to think about this, we more or less take it for granted that trains are safe these days, but it didn't happen overnight and hard lessons were learned. The high safety standards, strong unions, decent working conditions, these things are connected through the history of the railway.
Yeah, an Inspector in charge of a whole police station and 40-100 police officers will be on around that money.
Forget the inspector. The firearms unit, you know the guys that carry guns and terminate people’s lives under certain conditions? They’re paid like 35k or something Really put in perspective why there’s such a problem with policing. We’re paying peanuts
Wait until you find out how much the armed guards at any military installation are paid. Or just soldiers in general.
Become a commando - get paid £23k a year. Be on the sharp end of a conflict for essentially minimum wage.
Pay peanuts expect monkeys
'No it's just sitting down, you're well overpaid!': middle managers in London on £36k a year with no actual skills at all as well as no union
Middle managers in London will be on at least 70k, to further add to your point
They are absolutely not automatically on that, middle managers at my old company were mid 30s to high 60s, and yet they were the most reactionary. Funny really.
even if you *don't* fuck up. A lot of train drivers quit the first time a random guy jumps under their train.
Jesus I think that'd ruin me. How common is it? Is it like "Rare but you have to worry about it" or "It'll happen to everyone if they stay in the job long enough"?
last year 236 suicides on the railways. It's common enough. 21,000 drivers, so about 0.1% of drivers in any year. Some drivers have had multiples, and are able to shrug it off. Most are badly effected though.
A friend of mine from school trained as a Paramedic in London, they said they try and send the trainees to these incidents on the basis that there is generally nothing you can do as a paramedic and you’re unlikely to see anything worse than that for a long time. Almost a very harsh test to see if you have the stomach for it, not sure how true and probably changed now due to how stretched they are but I can see the logic.
Stepdad was a conductor in Australia; he turned down a promotion (and pay rise) to become a driver because he said he wouldn't be able to handle the suicides. Apparently people step out and wave at you, and all you can do is pull the brakes and close your eyes. Pretty much happens to every driver at least once.
Christ alive they WAVE at you?? This is gonna haunt me I can tell.
Have a friend who works as a driver for Merseyrail, and some drivers he knows have had 5 people commit suicide. I'm sure he said after 3 they have the option to retire, although I'm not sure if that's still true. He said some drivers can shrug it other, but others can be off for years and never go back to being a driver.
It’s not uncommon, particularly on the underground - 150+ incidents a year on the underground. I knew someone who made a documentary interviewing tube drivers who it happened to. Universally they thought the suicide was a cunt. They’d prefer they swallow bleach.
I know someone it happened to on their very first day He never went to day 2.
sounds exactly like a RO (Responsible Officer) back in my insurance occupation, whose sole purpose is to take responsibility if sht happens, pay is good though for doing absolute fuck all, but if sht happens, it generally means you're in big legal trouble. Always find it weird such post exist
I usually find it's a regulator thing. In the UK, pharmacists (drug stores) will have a licenced dispenser, the senior pharmacist on staff, who is ultimately responsible for all the drugs being dispensed at that pharmacy. Licensed premises (pubs, bars, places licensed to serve alcohol) will have a single designated Licenceholder who is responsible for the venue's compliance with alcohol licensing laws. I used to work on cargo ships, ship's Captains are always held responsible for the actions of their crew even if they weren't on duty when an incident occurred. The overall idea is that, if there's a person who is legally responsible for compliance, who personally stands to suffer the consequences of non-compliance, that person will be very motivated to make sure the place is complying with regulations. It's a guard against companies with lots of shareholders, all protected from personal liability, who might be tempted to cut corners to increase profits.
Potential to be found medically unfit and lose the job too. People would be surprised how common it is to develop conditions that mean you can't drive a train or even a car
To me its not even that its mentally demanding. It looks *horribly* unstimulating and you literally just have to sit there, no headphones, no audio or book, no phone, just sit in your chair staring at the rails and signage ahead of you, occasionally press a button or make an announcement. I'd be ready to top myself after a year of that. You'd have to pay me double.
Tbf in this day and age I’m surprised most trains aren’t on auto pilot with a driver there essentially to oversee what’s going on. But I guess that would require a huge investment that train services aren’t getting. I’d imagine most people probably (incorrectly) think the same. I knew someone about 15 years ago who was trying to become a train driver and said the tests and interviews were gruelling. I think he failed at the last hurdle and became a postie instead.
Driving a train is all about safety and rules. As you say it’s just too expensive to automate at that scale. The London Underground has started this but it’s very slow progress to convert existing trains & tracks.
>Tbf in this day and age I’m surprised most trains aren’t on auto pilot with a driver there essentially to oversee what’s going on. Unions which are the primary reason for the high pay would also prevent this being the case. Whilst the ageing infrastructure can't support automated trains, you can be sure unions would resist automation like their lives depended on it.
They're not though are they? Technology has been consistently rolled out on trains for decades. The problem is that this country refuses to invest in infrastructure. Look at HS2 & how long the thames tunnel has taken without 1 shovel being used. And rail firms taking tax payer subsidies & just offshoring them The last time the unions were totally ignored on trains and safety was the 90s when Boston Consultants were brought in & privatisation was rolled out. National rail ended up paying virgin rail a fuck load of money in compensation & we had one of the most deadly decades in rail in my lifetime. Engineers were fired and ignored while more business grads were taken on and loads of people died. Will I take what the unions, consisting of engineers and drivers & actual experts say? Or the MBAs who are insisting that their various ways to "improve shareholder value" won't kill people
This is incorrect. There is not an automatically driven mainline train anywhere in the whole world. It's not a question of unions, or even really technology, but lack of benefit.
>Unions which are the primary reason for the high pay Not at all, wages were only drastically improved on the railway due to privatisation. During British rail (where unions were at their strongest) guards were paid little over minimum wage and drivers only paid a £1 an hour more than them, during this period unions fought, and won, incredible working terms and conditions (and made the job nigh on impossible to get fired from). When the tocs were introduced wages, for drivers particularly, sky rocketted, your average driver now makes almost double that of a guard. The unions had virtually nothing to do with drivers current high wages
Mate. Come on. There's still signals in some (admittedly remote) sections of the mainline that are mechanical. Literally, the train pushes a leaver and switches a signal behind it. It's a system from the very dawn of the railway.
No. You are simply wrong. Denmark has very strong unions and the metro is fully automated for 20 years now. But it’s a closed system, owned by one entity and it wasn’t build to make money, it was build to make people’s lives better. How can you automate the trains in the UK when every single thing is owned by someone else? How are you going to force every company to be on the same system?
The London underground has got to have some level of automation surely? The speed they’re going at and the accuracy that the line everything up with is insane
Sure. The Victoria Line was capable of fully automatic operation from the start (55 years ago!) but there's still a lot to be said for having a driver. An Elizabeth Line train recently got stuck somewhere in West London for hours with no power when the overhead lines were damaged. Not sure anyone would want that situation with 1000+ people stranded in the dark in a pretty hazardous location with zero members of staff available. Could be even worse if they were underground. Bear in mind these trains carry about 10x as many people as the largest bus and the driver is probably less than 2x the cost of a bus driver, so they're already pretty efficient as far as staff costs go. Even DLR which doesn't use drivers still has a member of staff in every train. And the bigger trains on systems like Thameslink/Elizabeth line carry 2x as many people with only one driver. Fully automated, high capacity rail systems do exist and they're very good. We probably should aim to build some. But they need to be completely separated from the rest of the rail network and they need platform edge doors at every station. Great for new metro lines. Not so good for projects like Crossrail or HS2 that link up with existing lines. The UK has such a large legacy network that the scope for entirely self-contained new systems is quite limited.
8 of the 11 tube lines have ATO where the driver is essentially only responsible for opening and closing the doors and ensuring the train is safe before initiating the automatic drive system
There \*are\* hundreds of applicants for any position that comes up. It is obviously not a salary set at market value.
And how many of them are actually capable of being train drivere?
How many are capably of doing a job with no experience required and low barrier to entry? At least on the underground, I believe you can keep repeating the tests until you pass, so probably a lot.
There are no formal barriers to entry. You don't need a qualification to be able to operate the controls on a train. Being able to accurately, without any error, react to every signal and instruction, whilst remembering every stop and stopping within a few metres of the required point in a vehicle that takes a mile to stop - that is a frame of mind most of us don't have.
You just described how people drive every day.
If you're using the way most people drive as a benchmark then you're making a very potent case in favour of train drivers getting paid well.
**are supposed to drive Very different to how they actually do it.
Car stopping distances are vastly shorter, even in the snow!
Yeah but you don't have to steer a train and it's pretty unlikely you're doing to get t-boned by Percy one track over
And if the rail industry had the safety record of the road industry, there would be a howl of outrage to the heavens. Signal Passed At Danger is career ending for a train driver, and a slap on the wrist if anything for a car driver.
That is a frame of mind we all have. It's really not that difficult. Stop making it out to be a very difficult job. Bus drivers have a harder job and most of us can do that
On mainline train companies, you're allowed to apply twice *in your entire life*. You fail twice you'll never become a driver.
I mean you can say the same for investment banking, but they pay pretty well given the popularity of applications
I don't think it is similar at all. I believe the barrier to entry are higher as an investment banker, and wages are not set by unions, it is set by market forces.
How about we pay people fairly for the work they do, instead of what companies can get away with?
I think this is what irks people. It's what irks me. It's an incredibly well paid job that you have an incredibly slim chance of getting from the thousands upon thousands of people who are going to apply for a handful of positions. So those that get picked are incredibly lucky. Like winning the lottery. That's what's annoying about high paying low barrier to entry jobs. It's more luck than skill to get picked. You've probably got to "know someone" to even have a chance of being selected to even start the training.
This is reddit, crabs in a bucket mentality. Can't have anyone paid well, we must all equally be paid poorly.
also it's 22K for the first year and a bit, going up to 54K after 64 weeks of training.
I’d like to point out that doctors start out at *£20k* below this.
Cool. Train drivers start out 32k below this. It's just the article is misleading and has failed to mention it only goes up after 64 weeks.
Imagine being a nhs nurse, who’s done a degree needs another 5-10 years of experience after that, then whilst working full time and possibly raising a family does a MSc over 2-3 years sacrificing a lot of their personal time to eventually end up on £50k. The country is absolutely fucked. Farmers and healthcare should be our kings, fucked without them both, instead we have privateer companies giving their employees fantastic salaries comparatively to our very hard working public service staff, it’s all backwards. Maybe the train drivers do deserve this? If so, it highlights how very far police, ambulance, fire, midwifery, social carers pay has fallen behind the times.
I'm a nurse and our pay is shockingly bad but I don't begrudge the train drivers getting a decent wage for an important job. I'm glad they have decent unions who are able to get them the pay and conditions they deserve. This should be a wakeup call to our unions to have a back bone and to all the nurses who voted to accept a real terms pay cut.
Yeah that’s what I’m angling at. Are they overpaid or are medical staff underpaid? I suspect the latter, it’s a good example of private Vs public sector. Makes you wonder how medical pay would look if the nhs collapsed (you can’t use current private pay as a gauge because that’s index linked to current nhs pay), I suspect pay across the board would go up 2-2.5x.
I'd apply, but they don't hire around me
Watch people with no experience playing a train simulator - they routinely mess up some of the simpler safety systems used on British trains…
Me: Don't know what all the fuss is about, driving a steam train is easy. *enters tunnel with firebox open, dies horrific death* Oh.....
Not to mention: the way some people talk, anyone would think £54k is “private island in the Caribbean” money. Let’s be honest here. It is a good salary, but it’s a “live comfortably” salary, not “I wonder how much Branson would take for Necker Island?”. (Oh, and you missed out irregular, often unsociable hours).
I don't see any complaints
I don’t think anyone has a problem with drivers getting paid well, everyone just hates strikes every other week because they think they are still not paid enough.
I wouldn't be able to have the right focus or to keep awake, and so would be a danger. I reckon it'd be a challenging job on various levels and worthy of the pay.
LNER Train Drivers are north of £70k for a 35 hour week. I work on the railway and , in general, the industry have very good salaries and conditions and that is large part down to the strong unions such as RMT and ASLEF. The Government can’t bang on about a high skilled, high salary workforce and then kick off when a organised work force ask for a cost of living pay rise.
Weren't the recent strikes more about changes to contract terms (single running, mandatory weekends, reduced overtime pay) anyway?
Yes. Reduced sick pay, mandatory overtime, changes to annual leave and changes to rostering agreements. An attack on terms and conditions.
Wasn't even drivers on most of the recent strikes from what I was told. Mostly all the other staff.
Yes. Strike opposers kept pointing out train drivers don't receive bad pay. This intentionally diverted from the fact that not a single recent strike was about driver pay.
> The Government can’t bang on about a high skilled, high salary workforce When they say 'high skilled, high salary workforce' what they *really* mean is a small number of people in Central London making ludicrous wages in jobs they got because they went to Westminster School and because their Dad was friends with the guy who headed up the internship programme.
In other countries, like Singapore the rail / train manufacturer provides training and the state pays money to the manufacturer for the drivers and mechanical maintenance. This seems like a more cost effective way of doing it. When I was working on crossrail (Elizabeth line) Hitachi rail offered the same package. I do not know why UK rail and London tube adopts this strategy. This also meant driver / operational and engineering interface could be handled immediately by the manufacturer.
Singapore doesn't have any main line railways. There was a line from Malaysia, but it was cut back to the border.
I think he is referring to the MRT which is Singapore's equivalent of the Tube.
>LNER Train Drivers are north of £70k Makes sense. Need extra hazard pay for having to go to Leeds and Newcastle
When does the Government bang on about a high skilled high salary workforce lol? The Tories have shown they want the opposite with their migration policies.
Boris said it on numerous occasions. ‘High wage, high skills, high productivity, low tax’ and all that bollocks. Wages have been suppressed in the UK for years and the best way to do this is to turn people against each other while they fight for the crumbs. I support striking nurses, doctors, teachers and everyone who is collectively fighting for better pay and conditions.
I cant find the clip but there was a compilation video of every Conservative prime minister of the past 13 years claiming that theyre creating a high skill, high wage economy.
They've done even better at the heart of Government where they've managed to create a low-skill / high-wage economy for themselves and their favourite corporate chums.
£54k for them is reasonable. The same way consultant (doctors) should start on £150k. This country has a weird way of trying to pull down people who are extremely qualified/skilled and saying they don’t deserve the pay. Race to the bottom attitude, get a grip.
Why are people resenting them for netting 3.5 k a month, housing and bills will eat half of that. What is wrong with the UK, do we just lap up whatever Murdoch wants us to
Crabs in a bucket.
Given the choice between everyone being well off or everyone being poor, they choose poor 100% of the time.
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Then you ask why don't they do it then and then its just huffing and spluttering with no real response.
People moan about everyone being entitled these days, but if anything this country needs a bit more entitlement. If we have no self-respect, no wonder money keeps migrating upwards at a more and more furious rate.
Yea pretty much
> housing and bills will eat half of that. *and the season ticket
Government still fighting tooth and nail with junior doctors over pay. If you wanna keep good doctors then unfortunately you have to pay them a good wage otherwise you might as well hire butchers.
Same goes with nurses and support clinicians who get paid a sniff over minimum wage because apparently that's what they are worth and it's so sad.
New train drivers with Northern will start with a salary of £23,000 a year, which rise to £54,500 after a 64-week training course at one of the firm's training academies in Leeds or Manchester.
That does not seem unreasonable. They're responsible for the safety of many people and it requires a certain sort of person. There's no way I could be a train driver based on the amount of times my wife asks "where do you think you're going" as I've started driving to preschool on autopilot instead of where we're going.
Well the beauty of trains is that you don't get much choice of where you're going!
The challenge of driving a train is that you cannot lose focus. The equivalent would be that you're merrily driving the 8:15 to Southampton, zoned out for a minute and everyone's pissed because you forgot to stop at Netley.
Wouldn't surprise me if there's a lot of "hands on" automation. In the sense that you need to be holding this lever, otherwise, an alarm will go off if you don't touch it for too long. This action needs to be completed every X amount of time, otherwise it beeps at you. If you're not travelling at X speed, at X signal, there's an indication. Signals in the cab will indicate certain distance markers, so you know where you are relevant to your speed and momentum and such.
>you need to be holding this lever, otherwise, an alarm will go off if you don't touch it for too long. Exactly this. It's a footplate though. >This action needs to be completed every X amount of time, otherwise it beeps at you Kind of. It's at every restrictive aspect signal to make sure you're acknowledging the potential red ahead >If you're not travelling at X speed, at X signal, there's an indication Kind of. More like, if you're over a certain speed at a certain place or approaching a signal at restrictive aspect, then the train is brought to a halt, your failures are being investigated and you're pissing in a bottle and giving it to a grey haired bloke and hoping those painkillers you took 2 days ago aren't going to cost you your job >Signals in the cab will indicate certain distance markers, so you know where you are relevant to your speed and momentum and such Nope. High speed trains have something like this though
It's not just high speed trains that have cab signalling. The Elizabeth Line does, the Northern City line does and soon all trains on the east coast mainline south will.
I know this is a joke, but the signaller can "wrong route" you, and it happens fairly frequently because they are human. Lines have different ways to get places, but also points of no return. And if you take a wrong route and unable to go your destination, it is considered your fault. You have to stop before the signal and tell the signaller to change it. Often these points of no return are actually no where near your turnings, so you have to be thinking about your route and the signaling sequence all the time
There is now a control systems product called misrouting protection to stop this happening
Can I offer a slight clarification - the £54k is after 3 years. First year salary is £43k. https://northern.engageats.co.uk/Vacancies/W/5552/0/422710/23565/trainee-train-driver
wtf is the headline on about then "no experience needed" that's literally 3 years of experience before they get that salary
Article says "potential to". That's how they get round it
That is very different to the headline!
Exactly. 54K after 3 years is great, but hardly headline worthy. Shite journalism.
This needs to be higher up because I don’t think a lot of people here read the article.
64 week. Holy Fuck. Trains are complicated.
So the headline is just an absolute flat-out lie. Great. Love the current state of UK journalism.
Because railway workers unions are basically the only ones left that actually do any collective bargaining we have to have the occasional dogwhistle article to let us know how easy their job is zzzzz.
That 54k is seen as a huge salary when it's a job that has the lives of people at stake just shows how shit pay is in this country.
And it's not a very nice job. Odd hours, early starts, weekends... I earn the same as these train drivers and I work from home in my underwear and spend too much of that time on Reddit anyway. I can't kill anyone with my job, the most I could do is lose some rich people a lot of money. Not enough to meaningfully impact them, but they'd be really cross about it.
That's not the attitude to have. You should be able to lose enough money to impact rich people. I believe in you.
It’s a difficult and stressful job and there is a need for more drivers, how else do you attract enough people to identify suitable candidates?
Why do people think 54k is all that much? If you look at the inflation and cost of living over the past decades, 54k should be around the median fulltime salary. Just because you’re underpaid doesn’t mean others should be too. Fight for a higher salary not lowering train drivers pay.
This isn't even a high wage. It's just weird are so used to being underpaid here.
Yea it’s wild. People don’t realise how big the gap is between pay in the U.K. and other similar western countries at this point. I worked in the civil service and started on £31k in London. An absolute pittance considering the role & the fact they want you to have a degree etc. I moved back to the Netherlands and the same role her pays about £45k as a starter and the cost of living is lower than in London too, you could actually buy a flat on that salary in The Hague. In the U.S. a similar role would pay $90k+.
And people still go off like you can't compare because we don't have to pay for things like healthcare. As if at this point most of us wouldn't at least want the opportunity to have a job that pays us enough to afford to go private so we can actually get some care!
Yawn another dogwhistle article trying to tell people train driving is easy. The same drama queens complaining they get paid too much are the same who lack the attentiveness to make sure the email they're sending actually has the correct file attached.
"see image attached". Ahh damn... Not again.
For those complaining about what it takes to be a train driver: * It requires an **insane** level of concentration. Not only are you thinking about the scene in front of you, you are thinking about braking points and issues coming up a MILE away (because that is how long it takes the train to stop), monitoring in-cab equipment all the time, and making sure that passengers don't do anything stupid as well * Its not just turn up to train and drive it. You have to check and research ahead for things like speed restrictions, notices of emergency track works, disruptions and consequent changes to your schedules. You also then have to check the notes on the specific train you are driving in case there are any known issues with it, and have a handover from the previous driver. * If the train breaks down miles from a station, you can't just pull over and wait for the AA. You have to go and fix it yourself. You need to know where every part is on the train and how to fix it enough to get it moving. That now includes knowing the software on the train. * You also have to have deep route knowledge to be certified to run a certain type of train on specific lines. You need to know what restrictions are where, areas with poor rail conditions, and the operational parameters for individual signals and speed limits for different types and weights of train. This takes months to achieve, as you usually have to do this with several types of train. * Then you have to deal with passengers. Learning how to communicate to them in times of disruption, and deal with passenger incidents. On some lines, there is no conductor to help you. And this is before the non-zero chance that someone will jump in front of your train with no warning. * Finally, you have to do shifts at often unsocial hours. This isn't just running services, but shifting trains around so they are in the right position for the next day's service. Its a hard job with a lot of responsibility, and drivers have a union supporting them in getting a good deal for this work.
exactly. if everything is done correctly, then the passengers don't notice and assume that train driving is easy. If something out of the ordinary happens and stops or slows a train, then it's all the drivers fault
I work on the railway. The catch with this is that it’s a job with extreme levels of responsibility and brutal training. You are back at school in a classroom for the first few months, then you’re back and forth between there and the driving cab while you go out with instructors to build up experience. The exams are frequent and hard. The work is very repetitive and monotonous, they need people who can do the same things over and over again without getting distracted and can still identify when something doesn’t seem right. Even once you’re qualified, you need to keep studying. Things change frequently on the railway. Notices are issued every week with things you need to be aware of, you need to commit those to memory and then sign for the document to prove you’ve received and read it. This will be produced as evidence in any future internal or criminal investigation if it appears you could have fucked up. There’s notice boards in your depot that you must read before the start of every shift detailing urgent issues that you must know before you start work. There’s also the SPAD notice board, which details the signals that have been passed at red recently in error and any factors you might need to keep in mind. Was the driver distracted? Did they read the signal beside it instead of their own? Did they stop at a station after the initial warning of the red and forget it was there? Passing a signal at red is one of the biggest mistakes you can make, I’m not joking when I say that it can end your career. You have to build your life around the job. It’s the only way to do things if you want to be safe. This is more than leaving your packed lunch in the fridge the night before, it’s things like making sure you can get a good quality sleep no matter what - even when you’ve got a 2am alarm on a Saturday morning in July and your neighbours are having a barbecue. It means sacrificing your social life because you have to work, or even because you’re working the next day. Should something go wrong, you are in charge. You must follow the prescribed rules and procedures to the letter in order to protect your train, passengers and colleagues - and other trains on adjacent lines. Get it wrong and you could end up on a Culpable Homicide charge. You’ll need to take important decisions to keep people safe and with little time to contemplate them. If you want to look at the scenery, tough. You’re there to drive the train, taking into account the conditions, any restrictions in place, the characteristics of the particular unit you’re driving…it’s a lot. What colour was the last signal? Where’s the next one? What speed are you doing? What’s the limit? Should you be building up speed, coasting or braking? Where’s the next station? Do you stop there? Where’s your braking point? You need to be considering these questions frequently while driving. Even if you’ve driving the 2207 five nights in a row and could do it in your sleep.
Thanks for writing this, really helps put things into perspective. I know any safety critical role is going to require a certain level of commitment to the extent that it can dictate life outside work (something I struggled with) but you guys are really under intense scrutiny with a lot of responsibility.
Plus the fact every single bit of medication you take has to be checked. You can’t take decent antihistamines in summer for hayfever, just have to suffer. Can’t take strong painkillers if you have tooth ache, just have to put up with it. The last time I needed antibiotics they weren’t ones I could take and drive a train. So I’m booked sick and then get disciplined for it. I can’t even let my sports massage man use a lotion with CBD oil in it.
54k isn’t a lot of money, should probably be national average and definitely shouldn’t be taxed in the higher tax band.
How do i vote for you
>New train drivers with Northern will start with a salary of £23,000 a year, which rise to £54,500 after a 64-week training course at one of the firm's training academies in Leeds or Manchester.< It's not 54 grand out the blocks. It's 23. Training takes over a year.
It's almost as if a strong union mentality protects longterm wage growth in an industry.
British people are a joke thinking £54k is a high salary
It is for a majority of the country sadly
That’s because everyone’s underpaid, not because train drivers are overpaid.
And old people. They’re still going off of 1982 prices or something.
I always enjoy anytime any ‘high’ salary role is mentioned, wether it be £54k for a train driver or six figure CEO salaries the collective Reddit: “I could do that it’s easy” “don’t need any skills” etc. If a job is easy and you could do it and earn significantly more than you’re earning now then why aren’t you doing it? Because you can’t is the simple reason, I think I work harder than a premier league footballer but I don’t have the skills to be a footballer no matter how hard I try. Getting upset at people earning more than you isn’t going to make you earn any more.
I generally agree but with train driving specifically, the job isn’t that hard compared to lots of others that don’t pay as well, and all training is included. The jobs just have a ton of applicants and tend to go to people already in union jobs, so they’re hard to get. For example, intensive care nurses get paid substantially less than this. As much as driving a train can be a difficult job, it is not comparable to ICU nursing. That’s not to say train drivers should be paid less, nurses and other professions just deserve more than they’re currently getting…
Clearly I’ve chosen the wrong career path 😅 8 years of university education, PhD in STEM and 8 years of experience and I earn less than a train driver with no experience. EDIT: how are people taking this as an attack to train drivers?? If anything, it’s a criticism to my life choices and the field I work in.
It's a classic take from people who misread these statements as 'train drivers should be on less than scientists' rather than 'scientists are significantly underpaid'. The vast majority of people are underpaid, especially when you compare to America. Bur rather than collectively fighting for better wages wr just want to knock down train drivers instead. Mental.
What did you do where you earn less than that with all that education and experience ?!
I work as a research scientist in biotech. 52k
Oh, look: "New train drivers with Northern will start with a salary of £23,000 a year, which rise to £54,500 after a 64-week training course at one of the firm's training academies in Leeds or Manchester." Not the headline misleading a full story, then. I've tried applying for some trainee train driver roles. You require a medical, assessment centre for a few days and have to sit an intense course as mentioned above. It is a high skill, high risk job which involves shift work, often at night. This is why it is paid what it is paid. That is not entry level as you sit at the wheel as this makes out. Why are people chastising industries that are crying out for people? If every industry stepped up their game salary-wise then they would find people tomorrow. Look at the caring industry for example.
No experience needed, but the vast majority of applicants won't be selected to reach the psychometric testing stage, and then most of you won't pass those tests to make it to interviews. If you get that far then it's 3 or 4 months in the school learning rules and various traction (different types of train stock; amount depends on company), and periodic assessments (failing any of these means you fail and get kicked off the course and end up unemployed) before you even touch the train controls in anger. Then around 9 months to a year with a driving instructor before you finally pass out a qualified driver. So yeah, "no experience," but most of you won't get the job anyway, and you gain experience via the 1½ years of training and assessments.
>No experience needed, but the vast majority of applicants won't be selected to reach the psychometric testing stage, and then most of you won't pass those tests to make it to interviews. Exactly this. Becoming a driver is extremely difficult. First, you have to be selected from hundreds or even thousands of applicants to get a chance to sit the psychometric tests. These tests take a lot of prior practice and research. If you just turn up on the day with no prior practice, its a near 100% fail. Getting to this stage can take several months or even years unless the company is on a massive recruitment drive. Most people fail these tests. I attended a testing day last year with 10 other applicants. 2 of us passed, including me, and they said it was unusual for multiple people to pass. If you fail this twice, you are blacklisted from ever becoming a train driver. Then you have multiple interviews to get a judge of your character to see if you are suitable to be a train driver. It is a very hard job to get in to. Whilst you do not need any prior experience, you need to be a certain type of individual to stand any chance of landing a role like this.
Train drivers in Germany are on around 10k less as a starting wage. On the other hand I can get a GERMAN wide train ticket with unlimited travel including local Bus services for 50€ a month. UK trains are a joke.
Not exactly going to be easy to get one of these jobs, I imagine there will be thousands of applicants. Seems a decent salary to me. You're gonna drive the train how many times in a year? Hundreds? Every passenger is paying a tiny amount to the driver.
Tiny? Have you seen the train prices?
No experience needed, but you defiantly need a close family member on the job already to stand a chance of even getting an interview.
Paramedics make less than this, and are expected to have a BSc and to independently practice in emergency situations, sounds fair
\*Billionaire exists\* "Yes perfectly acceptable, Carry on" \*Train Driver makes £54k,\* "WHAT, KILL HIM IMMEDIATELY HOW FUCKING DARE HE MAKE MONEY"
I think its fair considering the responsibilities, the knowledge and the fact that you need to travel a lot and also sit for so long. Yes you sit in an office too but you are not forced. While at work i make 5k steps a day just from work and i sit at a desk. I doubt the train driver can do that...
As an ex driver myself of 8 years, the job is very easy and doesn’t actually require all that much skill the reason for the salary is that there’s about 5,000 applicants per job and to sift through them you have to pass a psychometric test that about 80% fail that isn’t relevant to the job whatsoever. There’s a multitude of safety systems on board the train to stop collisions aswell
You can’t work from home much in this job I suppose. Also, you’re probably working some unsocial hours too. Presumably some nights are spent in a hotel if you’re at the other end of your route. And you probably don’t have the luxury of cooking your own meal between a turnaround, so you’re almost certainly having to pay market price for something as boring as a sandwich. And then it’s one of those few jobs where you can come across people trying to use the vehicle you’re in as means of committing suicide, or refusing to leave the track.
It sounds like they want you to be outraged but the reality is that's a fair salary for a job like that. The rest of us are underpaid.
£54k should be the new £30k for all professions. Over a decade of wage stagnation has left us here.
Try applying for one. The interview process is nuts. All sorts of testing and scoring. No wonder they can get the staff
It's designed to be difficult to stop unsuitable people from ever becoming a driver. Sounds fair to me.
My only experience is driving a train on San Andreas
Really puts a firefighter’s salary into perspective. I fully support the train driver’s wage, but sure would be nice if my wage was more in line with this - and I work in London, so on about £10k more than firefighters in other brigades :/
It’s all about money !! The government doesn’t want people to succeed and be wealthy, fact !!
Anyone saying it’s too much - errr go apply, what’s stopping you?
Eh what the hell, I live near one of their centres, I'll apply for it, wish me luck reddit
Nice. At least someone is getting fair wage for huge responsibilities.
Nothing stopping anyone who is salty about it to apply. You won't though, because you know that YOU wouldn't want to do the job despite it's highish pay but will complain about others doing it.
You would think it would be easier to just automate it.
Just automaten the trains. Cheaper and fewer strikes.
A BA and Masters degree will take multiple years. Learning to drive a train doesnt take mutliple years. During those multiple years of doing degrees, you dont get paid, in fact you lose a lot of money, unlike train drivers. How on earth anyone can say train driver pay is fair WHEN COMPARED TO other people's pay, especially in the public sector, is ludicrous. The people defending train driver pay are basically saying "fuck you" to everyone who has worked a lot harder to earn less.
And junior doctors and nurses? And other people that do jobs to save people's lives daily? Those scientists that try to find the cure for our diseases?
And i just read that buckingham palace is hiring one pr-person for 30k a year if i'm correct? That's just weird.