Young people urged to consider careers in rail as first Rail Week begins

Network Rail is taking part in the first ever Rail Week (27 June-3 July), an industry-wide initiative to showcase career opportunities in rail.

Young Rail Professionals created the Rail Week project so that young people, parents, teachers and careers advisors can see first-hand the exciting projects and facilities and range of jobs in rail.

A programme of activities will take place in schools, colleges and universities, led by rail industry ambassadors including from Network Rail.

Among the events, there will be school visits from people working within the rail industry and tours for students of places that play a key role in the smooth running of the railway.

On Tuesday 28 June there will be a series of interactive stalls and the Network Rail Safety Bus at Reading station to demonstrate and share some of the opportunities across the rail industry. There will be experts across a host of disciplines within Network Rail as well as Great Western Railway, AMCO, Balfour Beatty Rail to help with any questions.

Rail Week will also be celebrated on social media all week – including Network Rail’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – including other events we’ll be hosting.

You can follow all the goings on using #railweek, and existing apprentices, graduates and young professionals in the rail industry are being invited to share photos or selfies of their work to showcase ‘My Career in Rail’ using the #mycareerinrail hashtag.

Young Rail Professionals and Network Rail hope that this week’s events will help attract more young people into careers in rail, not only addressing the skills shortage in rail-related roles, but also inspiring a generation of young people into exciting and dynamic careers.

About Network Rail

Network Rail owns, manages and develops Britain’s railway – the 20,000 miles of track, 40,000 bridges and viaducts, and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations (the largest of which we also run). In partnership with train operators we help people take more than 1.6bn journeys by rail every year - double the number of 1996 - and move hundreds of millions of tonnes of freight, saving almost 8m lorry journeys. We’re investing £38bn in the railway by 2019 to deliver more frequent, more reliable, safer services and brighter and better stations.