Did you ever consider being a conductor?

No it will be just the conductor and the engineer on the train. There's no time for a spouse on there. You work a 12 hour shift and then you get a minimum of 10hours off. When it's busy you will be getting called to work exactly when your rest period is up. There's a reason BNSF stands for Better Not Start A Family.
You will get furloughed. They will call you back even if it's for a week and then furlough you again. They don't care about you or your family. Seniority is awful when you are stuck at the bottom with no other incoming new hires. I was unlucky enough to be in one of the last hiring classes at my terminal.
There's no one riding along with you usually. Although management sometimes will stop the train and get on or ride along. They are starting to install inward cameras on the engines. Theres also have cell phone detection on board.
All engines have a chemical toilet on them. You eat when you can. I used to bring enough food for 2 days on my trips and I also had a jetboil I would bring so I could heat stuff up. In the winter you get creative with cooking using the sidewall heater or even the engine block to heat food.
If you get hired as a conductor you will work as a conductor. They train you very well. Next step up would be engineer. If you take the engine program it is pass or fired. You sign your job away saying you will pass, if you don't pass they will fire you.

 

After watching some many videos doing paperwork then waiting a week to get trained I decided not to take it plus the pay sucked it was like 12 cpm.I texted him and told him why I'm not taking the job.He says I don't blame you the company sucks.I don't know what happened with him and managemant but he is no longer employed there.

 

They train you very well huh?


Well choo choo choo !!!!!

 

Their HOS works like this: if you operate or are at the controls of a train up to 11.59 minutes you can be called to work again so that you arrive 8 hours after you logged off the previous job. (So if you get off at 0800 they could call you to be back at 1600) If you work 12 hours (the maximum) you then can be called so that you are signing in 10 hours from when you previously signed off. (report off at 0800 and then called back for 1800). The call time depends on the notice you get, some it's 1 hour, Amtrak used to allow up to 3 hour call.

The 12 hours is time operating equipment, does not include being deadheaded from a train tied down somewhere because you ran out of HOS. So it is possible to have a 15-hour timecard with 12 hours "on-duty", the rest time starts when that timecard closes, which theoretically is when you're walking out the door to go home. It is also possible, in times when the track may be washed away and there is no possible way to retrieve you in a remote location, to have a much longer timecard.

When I worked the road, I'd get a call at any hour with 2 hours notice (most are shorter calls now), be at that location slightly ahead of sign-in time, take a train to another location. In some cases they would put us up in a hotel for our rest and then we'd go back on another train, or they could deadhead us back to the original terminal. Hotels varied, often the sheets and room didn't look clean.

If we rested in the hotel it made sense to claim 11:59 on duty and be "rested" early to get an earlier train back. When we got to the home terminal it made sense to claim 12:00 and take 10 for rest, of which 6 hours might be actual sleep. But some diehards would take 8 all the way around, over and over. Zombies.

Typically I was gone for 2.5 to 3 days then home for 6-10 hours. Repeat for 30 years with frequent unpredictable long layoffs in your first 2-3 years. I guarantee you that anything family you will miss, it's like they're waiting for you to just try it and the phone rings. That's why people leave, being tethered to that diabolical phone forever.

The old guys get paid a full trip for a deadhead back, new guys get only time consumed so maybe 3 hours. So if you work with an older employee they might make twice or more than you ever will, they voted to give your perks away so they could keep them. New hires now are terminated if they're laid off for more than 3 months, they have to rehire.

The van drivers who are deadheading you are underpaid and do not have HOS, they often haven't slept for a long time (days), which makes the deadheading part the most dangerous. I rode with a driver one night who did not realise that the driver's side front tire had a blowout; he kept wrestling the wheel, at speed on an interstate going down a mountain in a storm at night. He did not know how to change the bald tire. We couldn't tell him because he could not understand english, it was hard enough to get him to pull over. We changed it so we could get home. You can look on CL in most cities with railroad terminals and see ads for van drivers, even higher turnover than the megas.

By now you can see why I'm on a trucking forum. :^)

 

Speedy where you with Amtrak? Sounds like their HOS were different then ours were.

 

Not to hijack the OP's thread but; Amtrak: Another company that I have placed numerous applications online to for both the Assistant Passenger Conductor and Locomotive Engineer positions both in local areas and abroad in the United States and for each one I get denied. You would like to think that after 15 years driving a commercial vehicle combined with customer service skills that I would at least get an invite attention some point. On the other hand, a recent article in a local Maine magazine had a fellow hired on by Amtrak as a conductor on the Downeaster train in which he said that he was a chef previously to being hired on. So, I just do not understand what the HR department managers are looking for.

 

Everyone on the train, around the train, in the railroad property etc ALL of very specific jobs. The conductor might blow the whistle but he cannot touch the engineers controls. But in the old days there were brake men and conductor who was boss of the whole train under bigger bosses for the whole line. Nothing moved without someone knowing about it. And it better be good. You don't want to say run a red signal.

Some of you thinking to take a railroad job, it is a a sort of a caste system. If I was successful with Union Pacific app, interview then holster in the NLR yard under extreme supervision moving engines and only specific engines. You have no freedom essentially. That comes later when your duties expand on promotion. It would have been a certianty that a Union of some sort will be required (That's ok.. for once... despite my own attitudes and knowledge of some history) and so on.

 

Railroad HOS is very specific. They use what they call dog catchers in vans to collect the crew wherever the engine is stopped at the minute to the hour end of work day. There is no fudge or free wheeling three states all night because of no parking in trains. Your train is stopped wherever it is and YOU are literally dead on the hog law hours you cannot do even 30 seconds of anymore work.

 

Hi Cessna, Never worked for them, but ran freight on two of their lines and was qualified on their rules. HOS is the same for all far as I know. I have worked under all the US rulebooks. Which are mostly the same because they are based on CFR. Different railroads and terminals in the US do things differently and it can appear that they aren't following regs sometimes.

JV, Amtrak's HR are terrible, seem to be mostly nepotism and EEO appointments. Get to know someone who works there and can help you break through. At one point, even though their HR peeps didn't hire me, the local road foreman (who knew my road foreman, so knew how I actually worked) approached and asked if I wanted to come over. (at that point in time, UP was offering a 250k bonus to move to one of their terminals and run trains for 2 years, plus relo costs) It's a gov-mint agency, like the post office it's who you know.

 

We had to be off the train and tied up off duty within 12hours. We would start hounding dispatch at 6 hours on duty since we had 90min call out and at least a 2-1/2 hour can ride for the dog catch crew to get us. If it was getting near the end of dispatching shift you hoped a van and crew were ordered or you were sitting dead online for a long time