“È un lavoro illogico”: perché guidare un treno non è così comodo come potrebbe sembrare
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/11/its-an-illogical-job-why-driving-a-train-isnt-as-cushy-as-it-might-seem
di F0urLeafCl0ver
“È un lavoro illogico”: perché guidare un treno non è così comodo come potrebbe sembrare
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/11/its-an-illogical-job-why-driving-a-train-isnt-as-cushy-as-it-might-seem
di F0urLeafCl0ver
24 commenti
Womp womp. You earn a huge wage for arguably a lower skilled job vs others of a similar wage. Always on strike or late to your own trains. Countless times I’ve seen the drivers stroll onto a train 5 minutes late.
No one said it was cushy.
People ask why a train driver is paid more than a headteacher or doctor and why we ignore the skill difference.
No job like this should be paid 85% more than a junior doctor.
Shameful
I can’t think of many jobs that pay that well after a few years and don’t require a degree. Not to mention free rail travel for your whole family.
The reason the job isn’t great in the article is ‘shift work’ and ‘you have to read a big book’
That could also apply to countless other jobs that pay far less.
Nowadays you can have cars that can self-drive on the roads with all the chaos that’s out there with other road users and pedestrians doing unpredictable things.
Surely it will be a lot simpler to automate trains than cars, no other traffic and pedestrians fenced off. So why haven’t we done it?
Cheaper and no chance of driver error.
Then we can put the guards (at a reasonable rate of pay ) back in with the passengers, they can check tickets and manage if there is a breakdown or something.
It would save the country a small fortune.
Why? Simple, someone walks out in front of a train or their vehicle is stopped on a level crossing then you will almost certainly kill them and realistically there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Either they get out of the way or you hit and kill them.
From a government report: [The number of suicide attempts (including fatalities and injuries) on the railways has remained around 280 to 360 per year since 2011-12](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10078/)
Let me guess, a lot of people angry that anyone dare earn a lot of money for doing a job they think they could do with a weeks training?
There are plenty of high paid jobs that don’t require 10 years of training/education/experience to earn a lot. Train drivers get the most flack for some reason (definitely not the media bias against unions!).
For all the brain dead redditors out there, the reason pay is so high is:
– takes extensive training (not everyone could do it to a required level)
– is socially isolating and extremely dull
– has a lot of responsibility (you can go to prison for fucking up)
– have to maintain long periods of concentration whilst standing in the same position staring out a window, if you fuck up 100s of people could die/get seriously injured
One reason train drivers are well paid is they are heavily unionised which when added to their being low on numbers gives them considerable bargaining power.
Junior doctors might be deserving of higher pay and might now be in a position to get it given their willingness to strike in the past year.
There are a lot of jobs which pay well but only up to a point, and train drivers are an example. I don’t know what career progression there is but without additional responsibilities I don’t see how they can add to their salary. Doctors though have the potential to make very good money, although I accept that route is complex and not guaranteed.
Wait what’s in this psychometric test? I’m concerned either it’s improbably hard or there’s a lot of people applying who shouldn’t be in charge of anything.
Forward. Back. Brake. Accelerate. It can’t be that complicated, the train only goes one way. A computer could replace the driver.
Mate of mine got in and drove for about 5 years. He did freight out of Eastleigh in the 80s.
He quit.
He said he got really really bored of the same tracks every day of the week.
Aren’t TFL train drivers the highest paid train drivers in the world. Well done to the RMT union for that but please cry me a river if you want to to believe you have anything less than a great gig going on there
Surely, in a market economy, the value of a worker isn’t how important the job is, or how difficult it is, it’s a simple matter of supply and demand.
If train operators want to pay train drivers less, they need to recruit far more of them and pay for the training of far more people to drive trains. Of course, they might find they can’t recruit people to accept that level of responsibility, those hours and that level of training, and that a high attrition rate costs them money if they try to reduce wages.
Train drivers are paid what they’re worth according to the market.
It’s lapses of concentration that catches Drivers out. Our networks have plenty of safety procedures that’ll stop serious accidents, but triggering them will still get the Driver in trouble.
It’s the need to stay focused on what is very routine that is the hard part.
why do i have to wait until i’m 21 to drive a train when these people with clearly no passion for it can
The also get everything the have demanded. no job like it, that i can think of, great pay, alone in your own space.
In Japan – the country with probably the best trains, largest network in the developed world etc, according to Google, their average salary is 6 million Yen per year which is…….£31 k.
I could say more but this is Reddit….
This article is extremely disingenuous as it makes out trains are still like something out of Thomas the Tank Engine, just much faster.
They’re not and most have significant controls from automated computer based systems.
Furthermore, many drivers can opt out of shifts they do not want to do such is the ridiculous nature of their unionisation.
i dont understand why train drivers arent allowed to listen to podcasts while driving. even just one ear pod/bud in, so the other ear can hear the outside noise.
would even help stop drivers zoning/trancing out
I’m a train driver, we do get paid well but it’s hardly an easy job. The job can become so mundane but we have to try and stay switched on for 7-8 hours a day because of the massive responsibility. Imagine driving a car up and down the same long road with no one to talk to and no radio whilst maintaining 100% concentration. I also think rather than us being overpaid a lot of jobs in the UK are massively underpaid.
Edit: reading some of the comments you can tell a lot of people have mostly got their talking points from news stories and the media rather than any sort of actual knowledge of the role.
That salary is illogical too.
Cry it with that salary FFS
Can’t think of many other jobs that are 3 months training, almost £70,000 after a few years, all for just 30 hours a week and more days off than most jobs.
I don’t think they’re struggling.
I think I’d rather drive a train than write for the Guardian…
Trains are on tracks, so what exactly does driving them entail? Surely it’s inherently easier than lorry driving for example?