Train for a career in the Great British railway industry.

BY KATE NEWTON

If you ask a child to draw a picture of a train nine times out of ten you’ll probably find that they’ll draw a version of Thomas the Tank Engine. The 1T57 ‘Fifteen Guinea Special’ was the last main-line passenger train to be hauled by steam locomotive power on British Railways on 11 August 1968 – that’s 45 years ago! Why aren’t children drawing pictures of the Class 373/1? It’s the longest and fastest passenger train in current UK service, used for the cross-channel, High Speed 1 (HS1) service. It’s so cool and sleek and it goes 190 miles an hour – come on kids! Let’s see some drawings of that!

The UK still has a reputation for being the best when it comes to building trains – the world still respects Britain as being the birthplace of the railway industry. Visitors from Korea, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and many other countries come here regularly to find out how we do it so well.

Gil Howarth is Chief Executive of the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering (NSARE). He told Moving On that to maintain our rail system’s world-wide reputation for excellence, NSARE are committed to a campaign to inform young people about jobs in the railway sector, to train and undertake railway apprenticeships and learn the vital skills needed to keep Britain at the forefront of this technologically cutting-edge industry. Howarth spoke to us about the exciting new developments our national rail system will be benefitting from during the next 10-20 years and why it is so important to equip young people with the relevant skills to service and advance the UK’s rail industry.

Over 100,000 people work in the rail industry and many other jobs are dependent on it. In the next 15 years, 10,000 jobs will have been created in the sector to support its forecast growth. At the moment, NSARE is focusing on the need to highlight the availability of careers in the rail industry to make young people aware of the amazing opportunities it has to offer them in order to close the current, yawning skills gap.

20 years from now the railways will have been transformed by new technology and will be run by sophisticated communications systems, where trains can ‘talk’ to each other – the idea being that they never stop unless they’re at a station dropping off passengers.

At 14-16 years – If you think you’d like to study engineering at degree level, with a view to going into the rail industry, make sure you choose to study GCSE Maths and Physics.

At 18+ and if you’re an engineering graduate, the rail industry offers a wide choice of potential career pathways in technical and operational disciplines, for which technical and business-related qualifications are in demand.

Employers in the UK rail sector include Network Rail, London Underground, Virgin and Siemens. NSARE are in the process of setting up a website dedicated to railway careers and apprenticeships where you’ll be able to find all the information you need.

For more information go to: http://www.nsare.org/