Following an award-winning recruitment campaign, one in three new train driver recruits at train operator Avanti West Coast are now women.

The campaign honoured Avanti’s first female train driver, Karen Harrison, in a mural at London Euston Station.

It attracted 1,000 applications, an increase of nearly 60% in the number of trainee drivers who are female and is on track to increase the percentage of new female trainees to 50 per cent by 2030.

The mural depicting Karen Harrison measures 8 x 5 metres and was painted by artist Akse.

It celebrates Karen, who in 1979 was at the forefront of a drive for female train drivers.

One of the new driver recruits inspired by Karen is Marta Filipiuk, who was working at a warehouse in Milton Keynes, near her home in Bletchley, when she saw the Karen Harrison campaign.

Marta had previously driven a minicab for eight years, but chatting with a train driver instructor from Glasgow, who was her passenger, sparked her interest in the railway.

That was when the world of railways opened up to her, and when she saw the Karen Harrison mural and read that Avanti West Coast was recruiting female train drivers, she knew that now was her moment and went for it.

Marta started her training in April 2024 and has completed three-quarters of her course.

Once she is a fully qualified train driver, she will have accomplished a huge goal and aspiration in her life and she hopes more women will follow in her footsteps.

She is so glad she took the jump because it has been the best working year of her life, and she considers herself the luckiest person alive as every day she’s living her dream job as a train driver.

Avanti’s recruitment campaign featured the railway industry’s first use of a recruitment chatbot designed to be a light-hearted way to engage with potential applicants about what it takes to be a train driver.

The campaign also attracted over 9,000 applications from men.

Last year, Govia Thameslink Railway recruited five new female train drivers through its partnership with the Career Returners organisation which looks for talent among people taking extended career breaks. South Western Railway also ran a campaign to attract more women as trainee train drivers.

“This was about starting a movement towards having equality across our new train driver recruits, and we are really pleased that we achieved what we set out to do and more. We’re on track to hit our target of 50% female trainee driver recruits by 2030 and we are really proud and overjoyed that this campaign played a huge part.”

Jo MacPhail, People Director at Avanti West Coast