Northern engineers recognised for maintaining region’s trains

They took home three prizes after being praised during the Modern Railways Golden Spanners Awards earlier this month.

Northern’s engineers work to maintain and enhance 345 trains, which are used to run 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across the North of England.

Northern’s Newton Heath and Neville Hill TrainCare Centres won the award for maintaining the most reliable Class 150 fleet, in the Wildcard category.

The Neville Hill TrainCare Centre also won the Silver Spanner award for their work on the Class 323 fleet, in the First Generation New EMU category.

And in the Ex-BR EMU category, the Allerton TrainCare Centre won the Silver Spanner award for maintaining the Class 323 fleet.

Jack Commandeur, engineering director at Northern, said: “It’s fantastic to see our teams have been recognised for their outstanding work at the Golden Spanner Awards.

“They work round the clock and respond to a wide range of challenges to ensure Northern can run a safe and reliable service for tens of millions of passengers every year.”

The annual Golden Spanner awards are held by Modern Railways magazine to acknowledge the industry’s best engineering teams.

Judges recognise improvements in maintenance practices and analyse the latest fleet reliability data, looking a miles per technical incident.

It comes as Northern is expanding its team of engineers who are tasked with maintaining 11 different types of trains, including diesel, electric and hybrid units.

Northern is currently recruiting maintenance engineers at Newton Heath TrainCare Centre in Greater Manchester, offering a starting salary of £49,681 a year.

There are also engineer roles on offer at Allerton TrainCare Centre in Merseyside. Salaries start at £37,740, but rise to £50,320 following a the completing of a training course.

In West Yorkshire, the train operator is looking to fill engineer roles at the Neville Hill TrainCare Centre in Leeds. They come with a salary of £49,879.

All applicants must also be over 18, with a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) Level 3 in Engineering and live within a 45-minute drive of the depot they want to work at.

Anyone interested in a career with Northern can register for job alerts here: https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/careers