Northern Trains is looking for 16 young people who wish to become engineering apprentices with its teams that maintain and enhance its fleet of trains.

The apprentices will be based at one of Northern’s five ‘TrainCare Centres’ across the North of England, located at Heaton in Newcastle, Botanic Gardens in Hull, Neville Hill in Leeds, Newton Heath in Manchester, and Allerton in Liverpool.

Starting salary for the apprenticeships is £15,817 per annum, rising to £18,963 per annum during their apprenticeship, and come with benefits including free train travel on Northern’s network.

The vacancies are open to everyone, but Northern is targeting its recruitment campaign at school and college-leavers between ages 16 and 22 who have a minimum of five GCSEs including English, maths and science.

In focussing on young people, the company hopes to encourage the encourage the next generation of railway engineers and engineering leaders.

For more information and details of how to apply, go to Northern’s website at https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/careers. The closing date for applications is Sunday, 11th December.

Jack Commandeur, engineering director at Northern, said: “These roles are a great opportunity for anyone interested in engineering to join a team of experts maintaining and developing our diverse fleet of trains. These roles will help develop the talents of budding engineers across the North of England who are looking for a career that speaks to their passion for science and technology.”

Alexandra Widdop, one of Northern’s engineering apprentices at their Neville Hill depot in West Yorkshire, said: “I’m in the third year of my apprenticeship and I love it. I’ve learnt so much from the team and I’ve had chance to work on trains across the fleet. If you’re interested in solving problems and embracing new technology – this is a great industry to work in.”

Northern’s engineering team recently unveiled a concept train for its Intelligent Trains programme, which aims to make journeys by rail safer and more efficient using the same LIDAR horizon scanning cameras used by autonomous driving road vehicles and which NASA used to map the moon’s surface.

Northern is the UK’s second-largest train operator. Every day it operates nearly 2,000 services o more than 500 stations across the North of England.