The Way to the Trains

Lukáš Salenka has worked for the railroad all his life. "Right after graduating from the University of Žilina, I was offered a job by one of the transport companies. Then I worked for various companies as a dispatcher and later as a railway transport technologist.” But he fell in love with railroads while still at school. "In my first year of electrical engineering, I became interested in trains. We were not taught that, so I studied all sorts of things on my own. It was actually my second high school," Lukáš Salenka says with a smile.

🧡 A Good Team Is Essential

And how did he come to work for Leo Express? "I have been working on the Bratislava – Komárno line for several years. This line is very close to my heart," says Lukáš Salenka. So it was logical that Leo Express approached him because he knows the operation on the line very well.

However, before the first Leo Express connections could depart, administrative issues had to be resolved. Lukáš Salenka spent the last few months preparing documents for safety certificates and drawing up timetables. He also had to put together a team of people to operate the trains. This, he says, is the most important thing. It is important to have a good team at work, to make the relationships between people work. "Working in a team is probably the best part of my job," he says.

The operations manager has overall responsibility for train operations. Still, it is a steadier job than that of a dispatcher, which Lukáš Salenka used to do. "Yes, now I am responsible for more things and I have to be able to make quick decisions. But as a dispatcher, I sometimes had to make decisions from one second to the next." And how often does he travel by train himself? "Every day. Really. I always take the train to work," Lukáš Salenka concludes the interview with a smile on his face.