Train driver recruitment

"I come from a family of railway employees. From a young age, I’ve always loved trains, my favourite TV show as a child was Thomas the Tank Engine. I had a Thomas the Tank Engine hat, gloves, and lunchbox! Whereas most of the other children my age had Barbie dolls and aspirations of becoming singers, I always wanted to drive trains!"

"I first joined the railway in 2012 as a conductor at West Midlands Trains, where I worked my way up to be a senior conductor. This was a rewarding role where I was very public-facing and took care of passengers.

In 2019 I successfully applied for a driving position based at Crewe. I went through a series of interviews, psychometric tests and then a medical check. When a position then became available at TPE for Liverpool, I didn’t hesitate to apply!"

"A lot of route learning. As a driver, you need to know every speed change, every gradient, different signal aspects and every station location on the route, even if you don’t stop there. You need to be able to drive a train doing speeds of 100mph in thick fog and still know where you are at all times."

"Every day as a driver is a new day. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been on the job for four months or 40 years, no two days are ever the same. I also love the scenery, since joining TPE I’ve been absolutely spoilt for the views of the Pennines. When the sun is shining it’s stunning, like a Bob Ross painting. When it’s misty and the top of the hills disappear into the clouds, it’s like driving through Jurassic Park. It’s an absolutely fascinating route to drive through.

Finally, I love shift work and getting to experience the TPE routes at different times of the day. I could never work in a standard 9-5 pattern again."

"It’s a brilliant career! You are treated as equals on the railway. Whatever your gender, you get the same fair wage, a fantastic pension, and equal opportunities. Joining the railway was the best decision I’ve ever made; I hope to continue and have a successful career at TPE for many years to come."

Our online application is simple and easy to navigate. It shouldn’t take longer than 20 minutes to complete.

Give yourself plenty of time to complete and submit your application before the deadline. Make sure you give us information about yourself that's relevant to the role. More detail in your application helps us with reviewing and scoring.

At the end of your application, you’ll be asked to submit a CV. Make sure this is up to date and remove all personal information so we can operate blind CV screening when shortlisting. Once we’ve shortlisted, we’ll send you an email to inform you of the outcome. Unfortunately, due to the high numbers of applications we receive for roles at TPE, we are unable to give individual feedback.

Alongside your online application, you’ll be asked to do two online tests.

The first one is a situational judgement test. Designed for trainee train drivers, this presents real-life work situations and asks you to choose the best response. It’s not timed, so you can carefully consider your answers.

The second test is about error checking. This looks at your concentration and attention to detail - two key skills required from a trainee train driver. This test is timed and takes approximately ten minutes to complete.

If you’re successful in both tests, your application will go for shortlisting.

If your application is shortlisted, you may be invited to sit psychometric testing. These could be online tests, or we might invite you to one of our testing sessions.

If you’ve applied for a trainee driver role, you’ll be invited to sit train driver testing, administered by the Occupational Psychology Centre (OPC). Practise materials will be sent to you at least 7 days prior to the testing session. You can find out more about these tests here: The OPC - Assessment - Practice Tests.

Applicants who reach the required TransPennine Express standard for these tests will be invited to attend an interview.

Upon successful completion of the psychometric testing, you’ll be invited to an interview.

This is a great opportunity for you to ask us questions about the role and TransPennine Express as an organisation. We’ll also ask you some questions to find out more about you and your desire to be a train driver.

Some of our questions are competency based. For these we’ll be seeing how your past behaviours and skills align to our core values. You’ll also be asked behavioural based questions - use experience from your past employment or education to answer these.

To make sure you’re giving a detailed response to these questions, we’d advise you use the STAR technique when structuring your responses.

S: Situation – Describe the situation YOU were in
T: Tasks – What tasks did YOU identify that were necessary to be done?
A: Action – What action did YOU take? How and why?
R: Result – What was the outcome?

For trainee train drivers, this is the last stage in the recruitment process. If you’re successful, we’ll contact you to make you an offer for the role, or let you know what the next stage in the process is. If you’re unsuccessful at this stage, we’ll let you know and you’ll have the opportunity to request feedback.