Love Trains? Think Twice About Railway Vocational School—An Engineering Degree May Be the Better Route

I was watching an educational television program about a student attending a vocational school specializing in railways.

When a high school student who loves trains thinks, “I want a career in the railway industry,” a railway vocational school can look appealing.

But I would first recommend a conventional university engineering program.

The reason is simple: there is a considerable difference between “someone who loves trains” and “the kind of employee a railway company wants.”

Graduating from a Railway Vocational School Does Not Guarantee a Job at a Railway Company

Vocational school can be a valid choice for someone with a clear goal of working in an operational role, such as station staff, conductor, train driver, or track maintenance worker.

However, railway company employees do not perform all track maintenance and equipment work themselves. The actual work may be handled by group companies, contractors, or local construction firms.

Someone might attend a railway vocational school, feel pleased to have found a job with a railway-related company, and then discover that the actual employer is a construction company contracted to work on railway tracks.

That is fine if it is what the person wants.

But it is a different story if the goal was to join a major railway company and work directly with the trains themselves.

Railway Companies Are Not Looking for “Railway Fans”

Fundamentally, railway companies do not hire people simply because they know a great deal about trains. They hire people to do the work the company needs.

Railway companies have countless businesses that do not involve trains.

In-station shops and kiosks, shopping centers, real estate, hotels, advertising, IT, and development along railway lines: Japanese railway companies and their corporate groups are also enormous diversified businesses.

Even if someone joins because they love rolling stock, they may be told:

“Your next assignment is managing shops inside stations.”

“This time, we need you to work in the group’s real estate business.”

The company has a problem if the response is, “I love trains, so I do not want to work in real estate.”

That is why people who insist too strongly on working only with trains are not necessarily welcomed.

What a railway company wants is not so much someone who “loves trains” as a dependable employee.

If You Truly Want to Work with Railways, Study Engineering

Conversely, if someone wants to work on rolling-stock design, signaling, automated train operation, or traffic management systems, a university engineering program makes even more sense.

What they need is not railway trivia.

They need engineering knowledge in fields such as electrical and electronic engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, control engineering, and civil engineering.

Studying engineering also leaves open the option of working in another industry—automotive, electronics, robotics, IT, or infrastructure—even if the person ultimately does not enter the railway business.

There is no guarantee that what someone loves at eighteen will still be what they love at thirty. While they are young, it is better to keep their options open.

If someone has already decided, “I want to maintain railway tracks,” or “I want to service railway vehicles,” vocational school may be the right choice.

But choosing a railway vocational school simply because “I love trains” is a little risky.

A railway company is not a railway fan club. Getting a job there does not mean spending every day admiring trains.

Precisely because you love trains, you do not have to put your entire life on a single track.

The more switches your career path has, the better.