***Does anybody work for the railroad?***

[Munson]

Originally Posted by outhega

Conductor and engineer are considered operations "crafts". In the class one RRs brakemen and switch men are relegated to yard jobs since they did away with five man crews. In the yard there is a foreman and switch an and the engineer runs the engine. Yard jobs typically pay less and you are outside rain or shine building trains and delivering cars to industry. Sooo on the UP conductors are qualified brakemen/switch men and fill in doing whatever is needed depending on what their seniority will allow them to hold.

Road conductors generally get on a train at the home terminal take the train to the away terminal, get rested, then take another train home. You don't have to work your way up to do this but most of the young conductors can't hold this type of job because it pays more, there is less "work" involved like setting out and switching, just get on and get off.

Where I work it is eighty percent road jobs so the pay is good and the work is easy. The con for any conductor job is there is no set schedule. It is almost all "board" work. You get put on a board, or list of other conductors, and wait for you name to go to the top. Then your phone rings and you get assigned a job and you go to work. Road work only gives you five personal days a year. No holidays or weekends off. Yard work gives you two days off a week and holidays but no personal days.

And the last thing you should know is new hires start at seventy five percent pay and increase five
Percent a year for five years before you are making one hundred percent pay. That is specific to UP. The last three years UP have been furloughing conductors pretty regularly, so there is a chance by the time you pass your classroom and ojt trading periods there might not be enough business for them to keep you around. Sounds shitty but it happened in 2008 and 2009. They hire a ton of new guys then cut them all off after they were trained.

Hope that helps. As for liking it I like it alright. It is a job.

Even though you work according to the board, do you generally work 40+ hours a week? About how many hours a week would a newbie conductor get? I would hate to become one, be on call 24/7, only to work something ridiculous like 20 hours a week.