Want to train to work on the london underground as either a driver or on the lines?

Question

i want to train to work on the underground as a driver or on the lines or tunnels! would like a list of websites that would help to start being trained and how i go about it!

Answer 1

Don't' bother. I've spent 4 years as a train driver and it's a complete load of ****. I recommend you go down to B&Q, get a large tub of emulsion paint and apply it to a wall of your house and watch that dry, meanwhile have various people knock at the window and ask you random timetable related questions, this will give you a real flavour for the job and If your smart, you'll come to your senses and realise that money isn't everything.

Answer 2

Basically google the London undergound (LUL) and follow the links from there

Answer 3

say you are a Muslim hardliner they will probabley set you on tomorrow

Answer 4

First of all, decide on the career path you wish to take. Station staff and drivers (and their respective managers) are employed by London Underground Limited. Maintenance staff mostly work for one of two main contractors: Tube Lines for the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly Lines, and Metronet for the other nine lines. Those companies also own and maintain the trains for their respective lines.

London Underground last accepted external applications for drivers around 2001; since then all applications have been internal only. Therefore if you want to become a driver you will first have to serve as station staff.

Answer 5

Trainman is absolutely right. I feel I should warn you that if you take the station staff route then you require an extremely thick skin. No matter how much abuse you expect to receive I guarantee you will still be unprepared.

Secondly, the drivers' job is a bloody hard one to get. First, you sumbit a competence assurance-based application form. Around nine out of ten applicants will fail at this stage. If you are one of the successful 10%, you will have to sit a series of pre-assessments including a co-ordination test (similar to the one used by airlines for pilots) and a fault diagnosis exercise, amongst other things. Around 75% of applicants fall at this hurdle.

If successful, you will be invited to an interview, and if you impress at this stage you may be offered the position of driver.

If so, you must undertake a medical (again, similar to an airline pilots) which includes a test for colour-blindness. (I've known people who went through over thirty years of life not realising they were colour blind until they undertook this medical!)

Having overcome these obstacles, you will eventually be offered a place on a intensive training course. The first seven weeks or so are classroom-based, with the first four spent learning about operational procedures and suchlike and the next three are spent learning about the workings of the actual trains you will be driving. In my experience this was the hardest part; it is like learning a foreign language in three weeks. There is a test at the end of it where faults are put onto a train and you have to fix them. Many people come this far only to fail this particular test.

All through the training you sit module-based assessments which require a pass rate of above 80%. Should you fail, it is back to the stations and a wait of at least six months before you can reapply.

If you are fortunate enough to get to this stage, you finally get to drive a train! Even then, it is a further eight to ten weeks spent with an instructor, learning not only how to operate a train but also the line you are driving on; controlled signalling areas, reversing points and much more.

Finally, the big day dawns. The culmination of approximately eighteen weeks of training; the road test. This is a full working day spent driving a train, in passenger service, being watched by two people.

For me, the gap between submitting the application form and passing the road test, and thus gaining my licence, was sixteen months. I was one of the few who got through first time.

On the plus side, once you have the job, as long as you follow all procedures correctly, you should be OK. It is often said that the driver's job is the hardest to get and the easiest to lose and, whilst there is undoubtedly an element of truth in this, much of it is down to you. I have seen so many people lose their jobs by making simple errors.

I should also point out that the job becomes extremely boring after a while! However, there are much worse things you could do. I know, I've been there!

Finally, the next time you're on the tube, reading the Evening Standard's editorial slagging off "greedy, lazy tube drivers", remember what they did to get there.

If I haven't managed to put you off yet, then go for it and good luck.