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Two sets of rules apply to you. The first is the law — the Train Driving Licences and Certificates Regulations 2010, which set the conditions the Office of Rail and Road needs before it will issue anyone a train driving licence. The second is your operator's own recruitment policy, which can be stricter and usually is.

The legal list is short and surprises people by how little it asks for. The operator list is where most applications actually end.

Age — and the change that happened in 2026

The minimum age for a mainline train driving licence in Great Britain was 20 for many years. The Train Driving Licences and Certificates (Amendment) Regulations 2026 lowered it to 18, in force from 30 June 2026, after a Department for Transport consultation and an RSSB review which concluded that experience rather than age predicts driving performance.

Some consequences worth knowing:

• Nothing else was relaxed. The same medical, psychological and professional knowledge requirements apply at 18 as at 40.
• The rail industry's implementation plan brings the minimum apprenticeship entry age down to 17 and a half, since training runs for many months before a licence is needed.
• It applies to the GB mainline. Heritage railways, metros, tramways and other light rail run under their own rules and their own age limits.
• Operators may still set a higher minimum of their own, and several advertise one. Read the advert rather than the law.

There is no upper age limit. People qualify in their fifties. The practical constraint is that training is long and pension arithmetic starts to matter, not that anyone will turn you away.

Education — far less than the internet tells you

The legal requirement is completion of at least nine years of primary and secondary education, or vocational training equivalent to level 3. That is it. There is no legal requirement for GCSEs, A levels or a degree, and the industry's own candidate guidance describes train driving as one of very few UK roles with minimum pre-requisites this low.

What operators ask for on top varies:

• Many want maths and English at GCSE grade 4 / C or equivalent, or a functional skills level 2. Some do not ask at all and rely on the assessment battery instead.
• The Level 3 train driver apprenticeship route requires level 2 maths and English, but you can usually study for them alongside the apprenticeship rather than before it.
• No operator requires rail experience. It helps you understand the job; it is not a gate.

If your qualifications are thin, the thing to understand is that the assessment centre does not care. It measures attention, memory, reasoning, perception, co-ordination and judgement directly. That is the point of it.

The medical — the gate you cannot revise for

The regulations set out what a train driver medical must establish. The headline requirement is general: you must not have a condition, or be taking anything, likely to cause sudden loss of consciousness, reduced attention or concentration, sudden incapacity, loss of balance or co-ordination, or significant limitation of mobility.

Vision

The legal schedule states the standard in decimal acuity: 1.0 overall, with at least 0.5 in the weaker eye, aided or unaided, with corrective lenses limited to hypermetropia of +5 and myopia of −8. A full field of vision is required, no progressive eye disease, and you must be able to recognise colour signals and cope with dazzle. GB rail medical practice usually expresses the same thing in Snellen terms — commonly quoted as 6/9 in the better eye and 6/12 in the other, corrected, with a floor on how poor your uncorrected sight may be.

Glasses and contact lenses are fine within those limits. Laser correction is generally fine once healed and stable, but tell them, and expect to be asked for the surgeon's report.

Colour vision

Normal colour vision is required, and this one is absolute: a driver who cannot reliably read colour signals will not be certified, whatever else is true of them. Testing has historically started with Ishihara plates, with the industry standard for colour vision assessment having been revised in recent years on the back of RSSB research into better methods.

Get this checked privately before you apply. Around one man in twelve has some degree of colour vision deficiency and a meaningful share of them do not know. An optician will test you in minutes. It is the cheapest piece of preparation available and it is the one that saves whole months.

Hearing

You must be able to hold a phone conversation and hear warning tones and radio messages. The schedule puts numbers on it: a deficiency not exceeding 40 dB at 500 and 1000 Hz, and not exceeding 45 dB at 2000 Hz in the worse ear. Hearing aids are assessed case by case rather than being an automatic bar.

Everything else

• Drugs and alcohol screening. Standard, and repeated randomly throughout your career. The railway's threshold is far below the road one.
• Blood pressure, BMI and general fitness. Assessed. Being overweight is not by itself disqualifying; uncontrolled hypertension or sleep apnoea may be until treated.
• Diabetes, epilepsy, heart conditions, mental health history. Handled individually against the standards, not by a blanket ban. Insulin-treated diabetes and a history of unprovoked seizures are the two that most often end it. Declare everything: a condition discovered later, after you concealed it, ends your career rather than your application.
• Medicals continue. Once licensed, at least every three years up to age 55 and every year after that.

Occupational psychological fitness

This is the legal name for the assessment centre. The regulations require operators to establish that you have no occupational psychological deficiency in the aptitudes the job needs, and the rail industry standard RIS-3751-TOM sets out the tests used to establish it. It is a gate like the medical — you either meet it or you do not — but unlike the medical, it is a skill, and practice moves it.

Where you live

Almost every operator sets a maximum travelling time between your home and the depot you would book on at, commonly under an hour. They check it, and they rarely fund relocation. This is not bureaucracy: you will be booking on at times when no train, bus or taxi is running, so you have to be able to get there under your own steam in the middle of the night.

Apply to depots you can actually reach. An application to a depot ninety minutes away is a wasted attempt at tests you only get a few goes at.

Background, references and right to work

• Right to work in the UK. Required. There is no nationality requirement beyond that, and English not being your first language is not a bar — verbal communication is assessed as part of the process.
• Employment history. Expect to account for the last three to five years continuously, with referees. Unexplained gaps are a common reason for rejection at form stage; explained gaps are usually fine.
• Criminal record. Checked. A conviction is not automatically disqualifying and is considered against the role; dishonesty on the form is fatal.
• Safety and disciplinary record. If you have worked in the industry before, it follows you.

Things people wrongly believe will stop them

• Not having a car driving licence. Not required. You will be asked for photo ID, and a passport does that job.
• Wearing glasses. Fine, within the correction limits.
• Having no rail experience, no degree, or a patchy school record. None of these is a legal bar and most operators do not screen on them.
• Being 50. There is no upper age limit.
• Being colour blind "only a bit". This one, unfortunately, is not a myth. Check it properly before you invest months in the process.

Do this before you fill in anything

1. Get an eye test, and ask specifically for a colour vision check.
2. Map the depots within a comfortable travel time and list the operators that use them.
3. Write out your last five years of employment with dates, so the form takes an evening rather than a fortnight.
4. Read how the application and its windows work — because the advert you are waiting for may only be open for a day.