Boxing day tube strikes

dave0102

Rossy. wrote: »

I currently work for London busses as a controller managing 27 bus routes accross certain areas of London. that includes over 600 busses shared between 3 people.

I hold a PCV/HGV category but stay in this job as like you say the money is good.

What skills do you have that many don't.. Please state rather then continually try to portray train/tube drivers as a specialist breed of a human being.

anyone can learn to fly a plane, same goes for driving a train.

You are right. If you have they money you can pay for your own flying lessons to fly a plane and eventually work up to getting commerical pilots licence. But of course there are very tough exams to pass. Assuming you did all that and had the money you could buy your own jet and fly it.

In a similar way you can pay to get PCV/HGV driving lessons although the exam parts of these are I think a lot easier. Then you could buy a lorry or a bus or a coach and drive it around on a public road.

Now whilst you can pay to get a train driving experience on a heritage railway, you will be limited to 25 mph and with a minder watching you.

What I am saying is you cannot BUY your way into the tube or train driving profession. You have to be selected when there there is a vacancy (which are few and far between and which of course attract hundreds of candidates). In England at least you can't just take driving lessons, buy your own train and drive it on network rail lines - or the tube for that matter :rotfl:

skoodle

I'm not going to comment about the strike but about train drivers. I have to mirror other's comments, if you don't know about the job, don't complain. I am probably going to get a backlash for this but I don't care, it seems it just jealousy from a lot of people. Yes train drivers get paid a lot, but as others have said, it's open when the jobs are available. Apply for it, do it, go for it! Don't moan that they're overpaid, how can you know if they're overpaid until you've done the job yourself?

About soldiers going to god knows where and getting limbs blown up for pittance? They know the risks, they know the wage it was their choice. When people go into jobs they know the wage and what they're up for.

Train drivers get paid for what they know not what they do, same as pilots but in no way can you compare the two, they're totally different jobs. I personally believe pilots should be paid a hell of a lot more than they doQ

Why do train drivers get paid for what they do? (Mainline here). Some can say it's just pulling a lever, but knowing why you're "pulling the lever". Train drivers have a duty to the passengers to keep to time as much as possible. How many other jobs are you required to know your route inside out and able to memorise EVERY little part of it. Not just stations and signals, but speeds, gradients, bends etc. All those signal numbers are usually memorised on a route because if you're stopped at one and need to report to the signaller, you have to tell them the signal you're stopped at, try doing that in thick fog. Also with fog, drivers need to know exactly where they are on the route at any given time, to enable correct braking distances for stations or signals ahead. A lot of drivers can know where they are just by the sounds they can hear in the cab, ie points/aws magnets, tunnels.

In how many other jobs could you drive at maximum permissable speed in thick fog, not being able to see 15 feet in front of you? That's where the training comes in. Route learning is a big factor of driving trains.

Also with the assessments, you can only ever take them twice in the UK. If you fail the first, you are given one more chance, after that you have no hope whatsoever of getting in. How many times could I retake a PCV / HGV license test? How many times can I keep taking an ATPL test? As many as I can afford!

Only until you've done a job do you have the right to complain that they're overpaid.