The Grove - alumini on RMWeb?

[MyRule1]

In the recent thread on the Royal Train   @The Stationmaster    mentioned the use of The Grove as BR's management training college. I spent the autumn of 1974 at that establishment. Are there other alumini on RMWeb?

Edited September 22, 2022 by MyRule1
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[iands]

Yep, I attended a 'management training' course at The Grove, can't quite remember when, but either very late 80s or very early 90s.

[andyman7]

Yes, I was BR Management Trainee 1990-91 and spent many weeks at The Grove. Mrs & myself booked the hotel now there for our anniversary a few years back, quite a difference!

[Titan]

I had a successful interview there, does that count? 🙂

[Oldddudders]

Management Trainee 1973 - Staff Entrant - so had a couple of courses there in the next 18 months. Then in 1989 I helped run an NSE course on Investment Procedures, and in 1990-2 lectured every 4 weeks on a BR Projects course as part of the Touche Ross investment initiative. 

 

Edit - And quite forgot I spent 5 weeks there in 1979 on the Middle Management Course. 

 

 

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Oldddudders

[31A]

I went there for a couple of days for the assessment for the Management Training scheme, which I failed to get on!  Would have been about 1979 / 80 I should think.

[njee20]

Both my parents were there in the late 70s/early 80s. Does that count?!

[Wheatley]

I was also there for a couple of days in 1992 for an assessment as an internal candidate for the Management Training Scheme which I also didn't get on ! 

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Wheatley

[SED Freightman]

I was there on 14 & 15 April 1993 for what my diary notes as 'Performance Review Programme'. I have no recollection of the course, only travelling by taxi from Watford Junction and the lack of any decent beer in the bar (only bottles of Newcastle Brown ?).

[50A55B]

I spent a couple of days there in Spring 1979 being interviewed for a Management Trainee position. Although successful I baled out a year later to go to university. A questionable decision, in hindsight.

[MyRule1]

7 minutes ago, SED Freightman said:

travelling by taxi from Watford Junction

Back in 1974 we could not get expenses for a taxi you were expected to get to Watford Junction in time for the staff "bus" aka a BR Bedford staff carrier

[Oldddudders]

4 minutes ago, 50A55B said:

I spent a couple of days there in Spring 1979 being interviewed for a Management Trainee position. Although successful I baled out a year later to go to university. A questionable decision, in hindsight.

The majority of trainees in my year - about 20% staff entrants, 80% graduates - didn't stay long-term in the industry. Some of us stuck at it, got a few rungs up the ladder. I left in 2004 after 38 years service, feeling utterly out-of-date, although treated with a lot of respect I didn't feel I deserved - but with a decent-enough pension.

 

Your degree, particularly in that era, would have opened a lot of doors, while after 15 years on from being a trainee, privatisation might have done all sorts of things to you, when you would have been about 40-ish, I suppose. Not a good age to find yourself on the street. 

[Titan]

7 minutes ago, MyRule1 said:

Back in 1974 we could not get expenses for a taxi you were expected to get to Watford Junction in time for the staff "bus" aka a BR Bedford staff carrier

 

Pretty sure that was what took me to my interview several years later, although I think it was a Dodge version by then!

[Oldddudders]

1 minute ago, Titan said:

 

Pretty sure that was what took me to my interview several years later, although I think it was a Dodge version by then!

It was the Civil Engineering school at The Grove that justified the staff bus. Some of the students at that school were not the highest-paid, and thus needed a freebie to even be there. 

[50A55B]

35 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

The majority of trainees in my year - about 20% staff entrants, 80% graduates - didn't stay long-term in the industry. Some of us stuck at it, got a few rungs up the ladder. I left in 2004 after 38 years service, feeling utterly out-of-date, although treated with a lot of respect I didn't feel I deserved - but with a decent-enough pension.

 

Your degree, particularly in that era, would have opened a lot of doors, while after 15 years on from being a trainee, privatisation might have done all sorts of things to you, when you would have been about 40-ish, I suppose. Not a good age to find yourself on the street. 

I found myself in a worthy but deadly dull part of the organisation, far removed from the operations side of the railway. I’m sure there would have been plenty of opportunities to move on to something more interesting in due course but I had no patience in those days.

 An obvious annoyance to the powers that be of the time was that trainees completed their courses then jumped across to better paid jobs inthe private sector.

Funnlly enough, whilst going through some old paperwork earlier this year I found the selection process paperwork including the names of the candidates and the BR managers running the show.

[St Enodoc]

3 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Management Trainee 1973 - Staff Entrant - so had a couple of courses there in the next 18 months. Then in 1989 I helped run an NSE course on Investment Procedures, and in 1990-2 lectured every 4 weeks on a BR Projects course as part of the Touche Ross investment initiative. 

 

Edit - And quite forgot I spent 5 weeks there in 1979 on the Middle Management Course. 

 

 

 

You didn't mention your special morning "tea" service.

[andyman7]

50 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

The majority of trainees in my year - about 20% staff entrants, 80% graduates - didn't stay long-term in the industry. Some of us stuck at it, got a few rungs up the ladder. I left in 2004 after 38 years service, feeling utterly out-of-date, although treated with a lot of respect I didn't feel I deserved - but with a decent-enough pension.

 

Your degree, particularly in that era, would have opened a lot of doors, while after 15 years on from being a trainee, privatisation might have done all sorts of things to you, when you would have been about 40-ish, I suppose. Not a good age to find yourself on the street. 

I was a staff entrant - ironically, one of my first jobs was as a clerk at Watford Junction so quite often had to direct people to The Grove staff bus. However, privatisation opened up a competitive job market for the skills I had developed so from a career progression point of view it was very good.

[TEAMYAKIMA]

I got married there in 2015, does that count? 

[newbryford]

Ah oops - wrong Grove.......

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

One of the several things that caused me to leave BR, and join LT is that I didn’t attend The Grove.

 

Having joined-up as a Student Engineering Technician, a sort of halfway house between an apprentice and a graduate engineering trainee, some years on I believed I needed and was ready for formal management training, but BR seemed to think it had spent enough on educating me already.
 

LT were far better at supporting “continuing development”, and within less than a year I was packed off to attend the rather nerve racking “assessment centre” at their equivalent, Flagstaff House near Weybridge, and passed, leading to pretty intensive course at an external business school.

 

 

 

 

[Oldddudders]

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

You didn't mention your special morning "tea" service.

Ah. You obviously refer to the morning I came down to breakfast in the company of a young lady, whose father you knew.....

[Wheatley]

10 hours ago, MyRule1 said:

Back in 1974 we could not get expenses for a taxi you were expected to get to Watford Junction in time for the staff "bus" aka a BR Bedford staff carrier

By the time I went there it was a hired minibus, and on the day of departure the one which turned up was clearly not going to be big enough to take us all in one trip. There was only one other staff candidate on the assessment with me, a TOPS clerk from somewhere on the SR, he looked at the queue of bright young things and their excess luggage in front of us, said "Follow me", muttered something about giving them all a lesson in practical problem solving and proceeded to break into the bus via the emergency exit. 

 

Whilst I have worked for some excellent ex-Management Trainees, your first posting would have been a tough one as they were universally mistrusted amongst operators as being useless if not actually dangerous. The general view of them was the sort who turn up in Vietnam war movies as the ex-college football jock Lieutenant and either make it by sticking close to their hairy-***ed sergeant and doing exactly as they're told, or get fragged halfway through the film.  My own experience of the useless type was as a signalman, being ordered by an MT trainee Controller to put single line working in around a failed train. My lengthy and increasingly frustrated protestation that this was going to be difficult on a single line was met with "Do it signalman or I shall report you to the Area Operations Manager for insubordination". I reported myself and the problem was eventually put in charge of a Red Star office somewhere after a few similar complaints. 

 

A few years later a colleague and I were quizzing our new boss on her background, between us we had come to the conclusion that she was some sort of ex-HR adminey type person as she had the HR air of ruthless efficiency about her, but we were slightly puzzled as she also seemed to be competent. (This was long before just looking someone up on LinkedIn or FB). 

 

"I was a management trainee then Ops Supervisor in Scotland."

"Nice !"

"It was awful". 

"Why ?"

"I'm English, I'm a woman, and I'm a Management Trainee. That's three reasons to not speak to me before I've even got out of the bl***y van".  

 

[40F]

There in the late 70s on a TOPS course

[St Enodoc]

4 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Ah. You obviously refer to the morning I came down to breakfast in the company of a young lady, whose father you knew.....

I didn't know I knew her father! PM me...

 

D Lloyd-George

[The Stationmaster]

Some time in the '70s but can't remember which year although I've still got the course tie (designed by LH who has previously been mentioned on here).  S*d the minibus - in typical railway fashion I found it much simpler and quicker to drive there from home.  The only time I ever went there was on the Middle Management Course.

 

By way of contrast over several years I was part of a small group (the Train Planning Group) which ran, and I regularly lectured on, one of the courses at Webb House at Crewe.   I also attended several courses at Derby School of Transport before it became wholly devoted to engineering subjects so anyone who attended a course there will no doubt be familiar with the 'sociable' evening trip to Ripley and I later lectured there on a couple of occasions on TOPS courses.

 

As far as being an ex-Management Trainee settling-in it could sometimes be difficult although it seemed ok in South Wales wherever I worked in early jobs but being able to pick-up the reins and run usually helped.  When I went back to England the fact that I grabbed a shunting pole and got on with a (relatively simple but had to be carefully timed) uncoupling of wagon which was being drawn led to an early invitation from various of the yard staff to join their annual race day outing to Ascot; Management Trainee origins quickly set aside (although I had been a staff entrant anyway).