Truck rate vs Train rate

Sounds like Dagney Taggert needs to come in and straighten out the railroad.

 

Yes, that is still something that happens, relieving a train and not moving your entire shift or only getting a couple of sidings further. Some things can be really odd, but good. I was forced to a dogcatch job when I was a new engineer and sitting on the extra board getting paid full guarantee, and had one month that I only worked one hour. Too bad I was in the middle of nowhere midwest. The other 5 months I was forced I was living in locomotives though.

 

How comfy are those locomotives? Any amenities?

 

They have a toilet, refrigerator and three seats. Not meant to be slept in really.

 

Multiple cameras and other nanny tools as well

 

Yeah there isn't a single detail that isn't recorded in that cab and every single control except the climate controls are recorded as well. I left as they were rolling out the inward facing camera as those are kind of new. A lot of conductors slept the entire trip, things are different for them now!

 

Coworker went through the Engineer program in late 2017/early 2018, after 7 months he came back driving truck. He was 3rd in a class of 15, when getting assignments after training, they screwed him nine ways to Sunday, they wanted him to take over as engineer running a switching operation, that would have required him to make a 90 minute commute, to work a 12 hr shift 10 pm to 10 am 3 days per week and be on call on the 4th day. Despite another guy in the class actually living 30 minutes from the switching yard. He commented about the cameras and other nanny tools, but also about how so many crews ignored the rules and did what they wanted.

 

Yeah the RR isn't all it is cracked up to be. The on call nature of the job is by far the worst part. You traded in your health for the money, flipping your sleep schedule almost daily, then all the other stuff just makes it worse.

When I got my engineer card, I was the lowest seniority engineer in my very large district until the next class graduated after me six months later. I was forced all over the place as they can do that in reverse seniority to fill positions, but a lot of times I would drive 8 hours away and be bumped off the job right before it would start then get reforced back to the terminal I just left. This can leave some people not making money, I was extremely lucky and ended up being constantly forced to a real money making job, which was pure luck and rarely ever happens.

Once I got okay seniority there's also plenty of times that I was minutes from getting called to go out on a good job and I get bumped by someone sharpshooting for good jobs. This is borderline stealing money from coworkers as it can be days before you are next in line to get called for another job.

 

One of my uncles was a heavy diesel mechanic who worked on train engines . He said that the company often had the locomotive break down outside of the yard because it could be rebuilt 10 times faster and way cheaper without all the union rules in the way AKA a issue behind some wires cannot be touched by mechanic until a electrical engineer moved wires out of the way which took two days to schedule in . Same thing for pipes etc .

 

That doesn't sound true from what I saw at BNSF. My first terminal was were the largest BNSF maintenance facility was located and I knew quite a few people that either transferred from mechanical to work as a conductor or vice versa and they said it was amazing how quickly they could do basically any task to repair or maintain the locomotives.

You can easily die by touching anything electrical in the locomotives so I'm sure that any company will have rules about only having electricians touch it. After talking to an ex electrician about how dangerous the electrical system was I was terrified to throw the massive battery knife switch which was the only electrical thing an engineer would ever mess with when we would troubleshoot mechanical issues.

I found that everything negative I heard about unions before hiring out on the RR to be completely false. The presence of a union just made the company extremely hostile towards union labor. Once they hire you they literally spend the rest of your career trying to fire you. Company officials literally will set you up for a test and hide in the weeds and try to fail you. They try and build a trail of failures for each worker so they can fire you whenever they want. They have four big books full of rules you have to memorize and they constantly get changed and modified so that basically everyone will break a rule because it's impossible to keep up 100% on them. Also if a conductor is two miles away at the end of a train and tells the engineer on the head end to back up and they go over a derail, the engineer can still get in trouble. Also say you miss three phone calls over a twenty nine year career, well they can fire you over that third missed phone call for work. Unless you work a yard job you will be called in to work everytime they need you, so you better not ever leave your cellphone in another room, let the batteries die, forget to take it out of airplane mode etc. You can get called into work twice in one day so your entire career you are paranoid about missing a call or going somewhere that doesn't get service.

It was basically a hostile work environment and since everything is recorded, the union can't really do much for you other than keep the company honest about what you are getting in trouble for.

The massive amount of rules we had did mean that we could do things slower to be safe and be 100% rules compliant, but the company wanted that anyways and the place was so poorly run that being slow on our end didn't really affect anything. I ran my train as fast as I could still because I always wanted to have as short a day as possible but it rarely ever mattered. I'd get stuck on the train for 12-18 hours no matter how fast I went.