Resource library

Every test, written up once and properly.

One guide per test: what it measures, how it runs, the method that holds up under the clock, and the mistakes that quietly cost people a sitting. Each one ends at the drill that trains it. And ahead of all of them, the route into the job itself — who can apply, how the vacancies work, and what happens after you pass.

Getting in

The route into the job itself: who can apply, how vacancies work, what the training and the licence are, and what it pays.

standard All stages

How to become a train driver in the UK

The whole route in seven steps: eligibility, finding the vacancy, the form, the assessment centre, the interview, the medical, and the eighteen months of training that follow.

12 min read
standard All stages

Can you actually apply?

Age — now 18 — education, eyesight, colour vision, hearing and depot distance. What the law requires, what operators add, and which common worries are not disqualifying at all.

9 min read
gold All stages

Applying: windows, forms and the attempts you get

How vacancies open and close, what the form screens for, the national database behind it, and the three-attempt rule with a five-year gap almost nobody knows about.

9 min read
standard All stages

Your CV for a trainee driver application

What the recruiter is reading it for, a layout that survives the recruitment system, how to turn an ordinary job into driver evidence, and how to handle gaps, short jobs and the things you are worried about.

9 min read
gold All stages

Training, licensing and what the job pays

Rules school, traction and route learning, the ORR licence against the employer's certificate, the medicals that never stop, and honest numbers on trainee and qualified pay.

9 min read

The process

What the day is, which tests your operator is likely to use, and where these notes come from.

standard All stages

The assessment day, start to finish

What actually happens between arriving at the centre and being sent home — the order, the breaks, and the bits nobody warns you about.

8 min read
standard All stages

Which tests will you actually sit?

Operators pick from the same short menu. How to find out what yours uses, and what RAAT, SCAAT and the Vienna battery mean when they appear in your invite.

6 min read
standard All stages

Where this comes from

The published material, forum accounts and open-source simulators these notes were built against — and what we deliberately do not claim to know.

4 min read

Stage 1 — the paper and screen battery

Concentration, attention, rules and fault finding. Mostly timed papers, marked for speed and error together.

standard Stage 1

Group Bourdon: the dot groups

Mark every group of exactly four dots, five parts, a minute each. The test that fails more candidates than any other, and why it is nearly always pace rather than eyesight.

7 min read
gold Stage 1

TEA-Occ: counting, searching, and doing both

Three parts that build to one question — how much of your accuracy survives when a second job arrives on top of the first.

8 min read
gold Stage 1

TRP1b: reading rules once and keeping them

Three minutes with a passage of procedure, then it is taken away. How to read a rule so it is still there eighteen questions later.

8 min read
gold Stage 1

TRP2: the order you check things in

Dials, arrows and backgrounds that set priority. A rule you can hold in one line, applied forty-three times without drifting.

6 min read
gold Stage 1

DFFT: fault finding against a guide

A panel of indications, a fault finder guide, and one correct first action. The only Stage 1 test where slowing down scores better.

7 min read

Stage 2 — the Vienna tests

Perception, vigilance and co-ordination, run on a computer with a response panel. Nothing to write.

standard Stage 2

Visual search: dot sequences and letter columns

Two search papers and then both at once. What the combined part is really measuring, and why your score on it drops.

6 min read
gold Stage 2

WAFV: thirty minutes of nearly nothing

A grey square, a rare change, and half an hour of it. The test is not the response — it is what your response looks like in minute twenty-six.

7 min read
gold Stage 2

ATAVT: one second of a road

A traffic scene flashes up and is gone. A looking pattern that beats staring, and the reason guessing is punished less than you think.

7 min read
gold Stage 2

2HAND: co-ordination under a moving line

Two controls, one dot, one narrow channel. Smoothness beats speed, and the fix for most people is grip and breathing.

6 min read
platinum Stage 2

The Determination Test: pressure on purpose

Colours, tones, pedals and a pace that speeds up until you drop things. What adaptive means here, and how to stop it spiralling.

8 min read

Judgement and the interview

The situational exercises and the structured interview that follows the tests.

gold Stage 2

Situational judgement: ranking and rating

Four answers to put in order, or five points to rate against. The safety-first hierarchy that decides almost every item.

9 min read
platinum Interview

The interviews: MMI and DMI

Two interviews that want different things: the multi-modal interview at the assessment centre, with its form and six probed examples, and the drivers' manager interview that usually decides the offer.

11 min read

Preparing

How to spend the weeks before, and how to read your own scores.

platinum All stages

A four-week plan that does not burn you out

What to practise on which day, when to stop practising, and the sittings that are worth doing under full exam conditions.

9 min read
platinum All stages

Reading your own scores

Speed against error, what a percentile means, the attempts rule as it stands since December 2024, and how to tell a bad sitting from a real weakness.

8 min read
Every guide here is written against published descriptions of the tests, candidate accounts and the open material listed in where this comes from. None of it reproduces a licensed test, and none of it claims to know a pass mark your operator has not published.