Any info on the training Irish Rail drivers get?

They uses sims alright. As far as I now training takes about 2 years with theory, sim time and route knowledge training. A friend of mine that I have not talked to in a long time is a 29k driver. He spent years checking tickets at Connolly before he could even begin training. He was passed on the Dundalk to Bray route first but wanted more after a year or so and was hoping to get some Maynooth line training in the coming months for more variation.

In Irish Rail you can't apply for train driving unless you are already within the company working in another position first.

Training for mainline takes 18 months, lots of training due diversity of equipment and network

Dart is 18 weeks due being basically a single type with a consistent infrastructure

No direct entry must be IE staff first, male and female candidates.

Medical and a pass on the strange bourdon dot test required

traindude wrote: »

Also, do manuals exist for the 22/29000?

Yes they exist but are not in the public domain.

I did see a manual for both the 141/181 and 071 class pop up on ebay a few months back. They were well worn needless to say.

Never understood the rationale for that. I could understand a train guard having to be a station clerk first since it would give a good grounding in ticketing and dealing with the public. Instead you're training someone into a post while they are aspiring to leave that post for an utterly different one as a driver.

Drivers, to my mind, should be direct entry as they are in the airlines, since they interact with the public to roughly the same degree.

dowlingm wrote: »

Never understood the rationale for that. I could understand a train guard having to be a station clerk first since it would give a good grounding in ticketing and dealing with the public. Instead you're training someone into a post while they are aspiring to leave that post for an utterly different one as a driver.

Drivers, to my mind, should be direct entry as they are in the airlines, since they interact with the public to roughly the same degree.

Like most companies, they will advertise a position internally and if their is no takers, do it outside.

BTW a certain Irish airline doesn't do very much external advertising and if you don't know somebody in them you haven't much hope.

dowlingm wrote: »

In the airline industry these days you pretty much have to roll up fully trained at your own expense. By 29 Oct 2018 all drivers must hold licences under directive 2007/59/EC. The European Railway Authority is busy pushing convergence among European railway operations to allow interoperability. Perhaps one day IE will have no choice but to hire direct entry drivers, especially if third party TOCs hit the rails without such byzantine hiring practices.

That proposed licence is more so a centralised registration system than anything. It is not a driving licence or a skills passport for train operation.