Hello!

I am looking for input from those of you out there who work with volunteers who undergo extensive, long term, skills based training programs. Our volunteers operate our historic, interpretive railway and come to us with varying levels of experience. 

We are lucky to have a volunteer run operations leadership team which oversees qualified trainers and proficiency standards. Our issue is that access to training gets gummed up - volunteers remain on wait lists for long periods of time and advancement is slow. The reasons include: having a limited number of qualified trainers, the fact that our train runs seasonally (meaning limited access to hands on training during the off season), moving "up" the training program requires increasing levels of knowledge, experience, and skills (the process gets slower the more you advance), and that our system now includes time based, as well as skills based standards. 

I would love to hear from you if you have had experience streamlining a highly skilled training program. I would be happy to supply additional information. Ideally, I would love to see a program that is continuously accepting and graduating folks, allowing us to grow our volunteer base, increase the number of qualified trainers, and eventually to have too many qualified volunteers to know what to do with ;)

Thanks in advance for any input! 

Elizabeth Rudrud
Volunteer and Events Coordinator
Northwest Railway Museum
www.trainmuseum.org

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