Mc89
Member
I've been a technician on the east coast main line for a little while now within S&T faulting and maintenance. I'd hoped to retire at Network Rail but the modernising maintenance initiative has really sucked a lot of the joy out of the job with a reduction to 2 person teams and a new shift pattern that seems to encompass all the bad elements of previous rosters while doing away with much of the benefits of shift work.
I still love parts of the job like interesting faults and when you get chance to actually fix something but the negatives are beginning to outweigh the positives. It seems like the glaringly obvious issue is there's just not enough staff and not enough access to the infrastructure to do a good job. I sat at the side of the track for 9 hours the other night and managed a total of 18 minutes access.
I've worked really hard to be good at this job and have the opportunity in all likelihood to become a team leader in the very near future but i'm just not excited about that prospect anymore.
Has anyone recently moved away from the railway to another industry and do you think you made the right choice? did your skills transfer somewhat seamlessly or was there a steep learning curve? The thing i'm struggling with is that the railway infrastructure is pretty specialist and niche so am I just kidding myself thinking id be useful somewhere else?
I still love parts of the job like interesting faults and when you get chance to actually fix something but the negatives are beginning to outweigh the positives. It seems like the glaringly obvious issue is there's just not enough staff and not enough access to the infrastructure to do a good job. I sat at the side of the track for 9 hours the other night and managed a total of 18 minutes access.
I've worked really hard to be good at this job and have the opportunity in all likelihood to become a team leader in the very near future but i'm just not excited about that prospect anymore.
Has anyone recently moved away from the railway to another industry and do you think you made the right choice? did your skills transfer somewhat seamlessly or was there a steep learning curve? The thing i'm struggling with is that the railway infrastructure is pretty specialist and niche so am I just kidding myself thinking id be useful somewhere else?