As part of National Careers Week we were delighted to take a group of budding engineers from Year 11 to Year 13 to Eastcroft Maintenance Depot in Nottingham. We are very grateful to Alexandra Greig-Cooper, Fleet Development Manager at East Midlands Railway and alumna of Shrewsbury High School GDST, for this incredible opportunity to  look at engineering roles in the rail sector and to visit a depot. 

Sporting our bright orange high vis vests, we were greeted by the Depot Manager, Keith and colleague, Scott. The EMR team shared an overview of how the Eastcroft Depot works which was then followed by an insightful tour around the depot, walking along the green walkways and learning about the mechanical apparatus managed by the depot on a daily basis. 

 

 

Alexandra then shared with us her career journey from school to becoming Fleet Development Manager at East Midlands Railway. Her passion for working as a female railway engineer allowed the perfect opportunity for our students to ask insightful questions about her day-to-day role, the university course she took, and her future career opportunities.  

The students gave lots of positive feedback about the visit and what they learned, and they were also inspired by Alexandra’s career journey. It’s always so good to hear first-hand about the opportunities available and the many paths you can take to reach them:

“Personally I enjoyed the visit as I was enticed by the day-to-day lives of engineers. I was particularly fascinated by the ‘downstairs’ underneath the trains, along with the amount of work and precautions in the train to ensure the absolute safest travel possible.”

 

 

“ I enjoyed learning about Alexander Greig-Cooper’s journey into her field of work, especially how it might not always be a straight line to get there. I also enjoyed learning about her placement within the army. The visit widened my perspective into what types of engineering I would like to do and whether certain degrees might be more enjoyable and worthwhile for me, such as mechanical engineering.”

“The East Midlands Rail trip was very interesting for me as I discovered many cool facts about trains that I didn’t know, like how there are airbags under the trains and how sand is sometimes used. However, the thing I enjoyed most was going into the train driver’s section and learning about all the controls and what they do. I believe that the trip allowed me to see the opportunities in railways and engineering in general, and let me know that it’s a possible route I could go down for a future career. For me the experience was very helpful and useful, and I enjoyed learning about the career path that Alexandra went down in order to get where she is today.”

 

 

“The visit definitely helped me with my future plans as it showed that being an engineer does not necessarily have to be one track, and that you can combine several types of engineering together for a particular job. I realised that the type of engineering you do is not set in stone and that widening my options would be a really good idea.” 

I loved the tour and learning about what goes on behind the scenes along with Alexandra’s career.”

This has been a great start to National Careers Week, helping to support and shape the future engineering careers of our students here at NGHS, and encouraging more women into STEM roles. We always say our alumnae network is our superpower and we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to visit Eastcroft Depot and learn more about mechanical engineering and the railway industry.

 “At the end, it was really inspiring to see such an impressive progression in Alexandra’s career, especially in such a short space of time and as a woman in such a male dominated industry. Being at the heart of where everything happens is really insightful and helps decide whether this could be a possible future interest.”