On The RightTracks.
Six weeks.
One way forward.
Amid a shortage of workers in the railway industry, we peek into the lives of Tony and Jon, two railway engineering trainers, and the adults they train day-to-day for six weeks at ‘RSG’, a government-funded scheme. Some come from the job centre, some from prison; all need a purpose.
The
Project
‘On The Right Tracks’ follows railway engineering trainers Tony Green and Jon Bates as they train adults for careers in the railway industry over a six-week government-funded programme.
The film observes the day-to-day training, the challenges faced by the learners and trainers, and the relationships that form across the course.
Filming took place across Leeds, West Yorkshire, including Holbeck.
‘On The Right Tracks’ is a short observational documentary that offers a snapshot of the lives of two railway engineering trainers and a group of adults fresh from the unemployment sector, whom they train to build careers in the railway industry within six weeks. The documentary serves as an educational, comedic drama, showcasing the training over a period of weeks alongside the various challenges each of them faces in their job.
The concept for this film was two years in the making and became a personal passion project of mine. The idea first came to me when I met the film’s primary contributor, Tony Green, in 2024 while on holiday through mutual friends. He opened up to me about what he did for a job, the unpredictable nature of it, and how he had to train people from broken backgrounds, many of whom had come from prison.
Tony also seemed to share the same philosophy as me: that everyone has their own way of learning, and that people are often failed by society and the education system when they are taught in a way that only works for a handful of the population. This was something he noticed especially in his time teaching learners. He felt many of them were in the positions they were in because they had not been given the right chances in life, and that this often starts at school.
That first conversation with Tony left an impact on me. It made me think a lot about my own time at school and how I had often felt misunderstood growing up. Tony also talked about the entertainment that can come from teaching a group as unpredictable as the learners he works with. That planted the seeds for what the documentary would become.
My vision for the documentary was to use run-and-gun filmmaking to capture in-the-moment storytelling: observing the relationships and personal dynamics formed between trainers Tony Green and Jon Bates, and showing who these people are in their truest form, unfiltered. In a sense, this is my first attempt at what could be classified as low-budget reality television.
