A FRESH intake of graduates are starting work for a rail company, including at its Basingstoke base.

Four new graduates began their careers in the transport industry last week as they joined FirstGroup’s training programme with South Western Railway.

The cohort is based across the Wessex network including Basingstoke, Salisbury, London, and Bournemouth.

The graduates, recruited from all over the UK, have already begun a comprehensive workplace training programme that will see them gain experience in multiple locations across the transport operator’s rail and bus operations.

Among the four of the new intake was Isobel Tully, South Western Railway’s new rail operations graduate who lives in Basingstoke.

She said: “The FirstGroup programme appealed to me as it is an organisation that really cares about its employees.

"The graduate programme with SWR is very hands-on which is exactly what I was after. I’m able to learn on the job every day and contribute to the development of the operations side of the business.

“Initially I’ll be based at Clapham Junction and Waterloo stations but will need to learn the SWR route from top to bottom. I’m originally from Dudley in the West Midlands and studied geology at the University of Plymouth so everything will be very new for me.

"I can’t wait to get started.”

A total of 2,796 applications were received for this year’s programme.