apprentice Review

on a day to day basis I support my team/ gang on track doing various activities such as earthing and patrolling. When I was at westwood we completed our 21 weeks training to go on track by doing basic engineering such as wiring and testing and maintaining mechanical devices which I enjoyed a lot but thought it had no relevance for track

there is various skills I have learnt during my training, such as how to strip apart a points machine ect. the other main skills I learnt was to correctly assemble a doles house to the correct safety procedure. a final skill I learnt was with how crucial high morale is to a team

I enjoyed the apprenticeship a lot for many reasons, it has introduced me to new people from all different cultures, backgrounds and religions, also it has taught me a lot of nothing that id never forget in the future and looking forward to carrying on my career with network rail :)

for the programme is structured well but there is a lot of things that need to be improved, the first one being functional skills maths and English as you already need the qualification for the job the other thing I think needed to be scraped was the fitness programme as I felt it doesn't fit your needs on track

my employer offers me a lot of support and helps with any problems I come across as soon as I joined network rail Jackie Bean supported me with learning difficulties I was having and as soon as I joined depot they offered me help with any problems I had and supported me well:)

when working towards the qualification the lecturers we had supplied us with all the correct notes we needed to complete the assignments and any problems we had assisted us to the best of there abilities but some of the lecturers didn't help us at all so this is a mixed experience for me

to a certain extent some of things we learnt helped us to perform better where it taught us hand skills we never had before but on the other hand the qualification doesn't help us at all in some aspects because well never use the equations we had to do in electrical principles.

not really at my depot we do social evenings with our teams on leaving do's and Christmas do's but other than that we don't normally socialize outside of work, id like to do my sports activates with depot and have been informed they did this before I joined the depot

Yes

for me its the best decision I've ever made its made me become more independent and grown up, I've met some great people and this has given me a career I can be proud of and also to make m parents proud of me too, I 100% recommend network rail to anyone

to take the job seriously because of how safety critical the company is and also to do your assignments as soon as you get them as the lecturers can help you if you are struggling with assignments, also if you are considering a job with network rail work hard and make a good career for your self