UK Train Driver Psychometric Tests

Candidates describe the two stages on one day or across two, and the order varies between centres. Before each test the assessor reads the instructions and you work through examples, with help if you need it. Once the clock starts, no more questions are allowed and the room is silent. That example round is the real test’s practice; our games go straight to the test after their instructions, so read both instruction pages carefully.

The day is not called OPC testing. The OPC is one of eleven registered assessment centres, and it asks candidates not to use its name for the process. The process belongs to the company you applied to, which may run its own assessment centre or use an independent one.

Every test is passed on its own. You must pass each core test, and a strong result on one does not make up for a weak one on another.

The pass marks are not published. RIS-3751-TOM sets no pass marks. RSSB recommends a national minimum for each test, and each company decides which marks it uses. Some ask for a higher enhanced standard of their own, and there is no single enhanced standard: each company sets its own.

You are never shown a score. Your results go to the company you applied to, usually within 5 to 10 working days, and you hear the outcome from the company. Feedback comes without scores; at The OPC it is verbal, on request within three months. A successful candidate gets no grade at all, because there is none to give.

Missing an enhanced standard is not the end. If you passed the national standard but not a company’s enhanced one, you can apply to a company that uses the national standard without waiting.

Our bands are not pass marks. Our games score each test and place your result in one of three bands: below the national standard, in its range, or in the range of an enhanced standard. Nothing official exists, so for the Group Bourdon, TRP1 and TRP2 the bands come from dated candidate accounts. Candidates do not report marks for the WAFV, TEA-Occ or ATAVT, so those bands are our own estimate. A company’s enhanced standard is its own.

That is the three attempt rule, for anyone who starts the process on or after 7 December 2024. If you sat any part of it before then, the old rule of two attempts still applies to you. A pass from 7 December 2024 is valid for five years, and companies may still let you re-sit only the tests you failed.

Every sitting is on a national record. Results belong to the company you applied to and are kept on the RACF national database, which every registered assessment centre can see. Every company checks it when you apply, so a result follows you to every later application. Some companies count their online tests as attempts too, so ask before you sit them.

One application at a time. RSSB recommends finishing one company’s process before starting another, because the results from one application affect all the others.

2HAND needs the real joysticks. Schuhfried’s two-hand coordination test steers a dot along a track with two joysticks: candidates describe the left one moving the dot left and right and the right one moving it up and down, with the stick’s position setting the dot’s position. They report two practice runs and then ten, a beep in the headphones when you leave the track, and being told that speed and accuracy count equally. A mouse or a touchscreen cannot reproduce that, so we do not offer a stand-in.

The SJE is RSSB’s own, and kept back. RSSB describes it as a computerised measure of behavioural aptitudes designed to be used with the Multi-Modal Interview, and keeps its criteria out of the published standard so that candidates cannot use them for an unfair advantage. Published accounts of its format disagree: some describe rating each response on a five-point scale, others choosing which option you would carry out first. One 2023 candidate counted 21 questions and felt the answers shaped the interview; another said they had no bearing. We could build a plausible judgement test, but not this one, so we do not.

The Multi-Modal Interview is a structured interview. Candidates describe being given six "Describe a time when..." questions in advance with a short form for an example of each, then an interview that probes those examples and adds hypothetical follow-ups. Reported topics include following rules and procedures, an emergency, a time it was important not to make a mistake, keeping going in the face of difficulty, and a task like a driver’s. It is scored by RSSB-certified assessors, and a candidate who fails is told which topic area but not why. Prepare examples in the STAR shape; our guide to answering behavioural interview questions covers it.

The Written Communication Test is optional. Some companies set RSSB’s written test as well, and an assessor marks it. One candidate described writing a report from a picture storyboard.

No official practice material is public. RSSB says the company you applied to sends approved practice materials at least a week before your assessment. Item counts and timings in our games come from dated candidate accounts from 2013 to 2026. Where they disagree or say nothing, the figure is our choice.

The real Group Bourdon is paper. RSSB says a computerised Group Bourdon is not equivalent and is not recommended. Ours teaches the task, the marking rule and the pace, but a screen is not a pencil, so work through your company’s practice material on paper as well.

Our sounds and pictures are made, not recorded. The real TEA-Occ plays recorded tones; ours generates its tones in the browser, so check your sound before you start and turn off a phone’s silent switch. The real ATAVT shows photographs of traffic; ours shows drawn scenes of left-hand UK traffic with our own difficulty steps.

TRP1 uses our own procedures. For years candidates have described the same fictional procedure. We do not copy it: our passages are invented operating procedures of the same kind, and the reading, study and waiting times are our estimates.

WAFV is the full 30 minutes. The real test runs without a break, so leave the page for more than two seconds and the run is void. Set aside the half hour before you start.