I’ve been around the industry for 20+ years now and it’s the one job that I’ve always thought “not for me”:
It’s a lonely job, locked in your cab for hours, either stopping every few minutes or hourly.
Yes there are safety systems, but you’ve got up to 1000 people on that train that you’re ultimately responsible for.
Those safety systems irritate you regularly to make sure you’re awake.
You have to be able to drive that route whatever the weather. Fog taking visibility down to 5 yards? You still have to drive at 90, you still stop on a platform within 2 metres. Everything to time or “please explain”.
It’s all stop/go, but if something goes wrong then every action you take is recorded, all poured over by investigators (not always safety – sometimes performance) and if there’s one thing you did wrong then it’s black mark time.
The reason you can drive 600 tonnes of metal at >100mph is because you’ve had to learn the route you’re driving (00’s of hours of route learning), and you must have driven it at least once in the past 12 weeks. If it’s been longer then you have to go through all those hours of learning again(one of the main issues the industry is still dealing with following COVID) If there are routes you don’t regularly drive, then on one of your ‘rest days’ you have to go out and ride that route in the cab and “route refresh”by sitting alongside another driver.
Drivers are a curious and mercurial bunch no mistake, but when you see even a glimpse of what their job entails I know 100% that “the money is good and look at the pension” is not going to get you far.
