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Rail Crew Tests

East Midlands Railway senior conductor assessment

London St Pancras to Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby and Lincoln

East Midlands Railway recruits Train Managers and Senior Conductors, with the entry route currently advertised as a Train Manager apprenticeship. It publishes more detail than most, and one detail is worth knowing before you write anything: applications are blind-screened, and EMR asks you to strip personal details from your CV.

After the application come online tests, then an assessment day of group and individual tasks with a competency interview in the afternoon for some candidates. For customer-facing grades the online stage is a suite of interactive, gamified assessments, and EMR offers practice tests for them.

In order

The East Midlands Railway selection stages

This is not an official East Midlands Railway process description. Your invitation letter is the authority for your own.

  1. 01Online application with a CV, blind-screened — EMR asks you to remove personal details
  2. 02Online tests — for customer-facing grades, a suite of interactive, gamified assessments, with practice tests offered
  3. 03Video interview, at some grades
  4. 04Assessment day — group and individual tasks, with a competency interview in the afternoon for some candidates
  5. 05An immediate vacancy, or a talent pool for a maximum of twelve months
  6. 06Safety-critical medical and drug screening, including a railway-standard colour vision test

Detail

Worth knowing about East Midlands Railway

Practice

What to practise for East Midlands Railway

Matched to the stages above. Every demo is free and needs no account.

What we do not cover

  • The group tasks on the assessment day are not written tests and are not practised on this site.
  • The gamified online assessment is a behavioural instrument rather than an ability test. EMR offers its own practice for it, which is the right place to get familiar with the format.

Every process on this list ends in a competency interview. Our guide to the interview and the role play covers the competencies operators assess and how to structure an answer, and the process guide sets out every stage across the sector.

Before you apply elsewhere

Not every operator has an on-board grade

If you are comparing operators, these run driver-only services and have no conductor or guard job to apply for:

c2c
Driver-only operation on the London, Tilbury and Southend route. No conductor or guard grade.
Elizabeth line
Driver-only operation. The concession changed hands in May 2025 and is now run by GTS Rail Operations; its frontline grades are customer and revenue roles, not a conductor grade.
London Overground
Driver-only. The concession passed to First Rail London in May 2026, but the brand and the six named lines are unchanged, and the frontline grades are station and revenue roles.
Heathrow Express
Driver-only, and run by GWR under a management contract, so its train crew hiring goes through GWR rather than Heathrow Express itself.
Thameslink and Great Northern
No conductor or guard grade — these run driver-only. Both do advertise a Passenger Host grade, which is revenue, customer and security work without door or dispatch duties. Southern, in the same group, is different — see its page.
Freight operators
Freight trains have not carried guards since single-manning in the 1980s. Note the naming trap: GB Railfreight advertises “Train Manager” and “Trainee Train Manager” vacancies that are train driver roles, and asks for a driver psychometric pass within the last five years.

Compare

Other operators that employ on-board crew

Compiled from publicly posted applicant accounts and operator job adverts, September 2026. Processes change without notice — your invitation letter is the only authority on what you will sit.