Hello! Can a board member offer insight about whether train crews have sufficient time off & rest between their calls to report to work..?? I'm debating (and arguing) with myself whether to apply for a position with a railroad. I'm an ex professional long haul driver and I know firsthand what lack of quality rest does to our bodies. I've heard (unconfirmed though) that NW railroad crews are currently very thinly stretched and are given very little rest. Thank you for your time in responding. It's much appreciated. Brian-Robert
The basic law (US) is that a crew can perform sevice for no more than 12 hours per shift. After that you must recive 8 hours of off time (10 hours if you are on duty 12 hours or more). Understand you can be "on duty" more than 12 hours you just can not do anything after 12 hours. Also you can recive your call before your 8 hours are up. So if you are subjuct to 1 and a half hour call the railroad can call you at 6 and a half hour to be at work on your rest. How much time off you really get depends on where you are working, what job/pool/board you are working, how many trains are running that day, how many other people are layed off, if payday falls on a Friday, a butterfly flaping it's wings in Japan. I am sure many other member will add much more to this, and welcome to Trainboard. Adam
Welcome aboard! As Adam said, the law is 12 hrs. and you can only legally perform service, ie. run a train, do paperwork, etc. for that length of time. The catch is that you may sit around waiting for transportation off a train for as long as it takes a van to find where you're parked and get to you. Always pack a lot of munchies unless you want to forage for bark and twigs. That '6 for 8' call can be a killer too. I've just come off a run of them that went for almost 3 weeks straight. The longest I was home was 15 hrs. and then gone again. It's just barely enough time to grab some sleep, eat, shower, pack, hug the kids and go. It wears you down if it keeps going for too long, particularly since it's rotating between nights and days. It seems to run in streaks, then it may settle down and be fairly predictable for a month or more. Then something happens and away we go again. It just depends on traffic, crew availability, seniority, location and how much you can tolerate. In answer to your question about if it's sufficient rest time...the bottom line is if it keeps up for very long, it's not. You can only turn and burn for just so long before you start making serious mistakes or just flat out collapse. Fatigue is a major problem, especially among guys without enough seniority to hold a scheduled job. If you've been trucking, you know what it's like. The railroad will eat you up if you let them and it takes a pretty stern constitution to not let it happen. It's a good living if you can get through the insanity of how they run the place. Just keep in mind that you have to manage it or it'll manage you.
From one ex-trucker to another,you won't be sorry.Very simalar life style,except your home more(I'm home every day in passenger service) & you'll make more $ & real benifits.
I cant add any more to what has been said by others, except to concur with them. Like Mike, I was working passenger service mostly until I finally was "set up" as an engineer and even then they forced me to the Passenger engineers Extra Board. Passenger service is not for everybody,although I would like to think so. If you are not a "people" person, it is probably not for you. Passenger service is clean,comfortable, regular hours,scheduled time off,you dont spend long hours out in the horrible weather and when you work commuter service, the female scenery is first-rate(LOL). Drawbacks with commuter service is that you may have to work split shift and you dont get some of the arbitraries that the freight guys get but on the positive side, most of the jobs on METRA have built-in overtime with them and a passenger brakeman,conductor or engineer generally earns lots more $$$ than the guys in the yard. Tales from the road... The BNSF/METRA line to Aurora has a 3 person train crew and 1 engineman, as opposed to most of the METRA services with only 2 trainmen and 1 engineman. Since we carried that "extra" trainman, there was always an additional hand around for emergencies and the like. Occasionally the local gentry and commercial motorists would take it to their fancy to "run the crossing" in advance of an approaching train. Sometimes they would damage the crossing gate arms in the process. When this would happen during the "dinky parade", the dispatcher would call the trains nearest the offended crossing and ask that train if they could set out a flagman to protect the crossing until the signal maintainers could repair the gates. This would sometimes cause a row between crews if there was more than one train near the crossing. The dispatcher would have to make the decision as to which crew would get the prize. This was a desirable assignment and would normally rotate among the brakemen on the crews(the conductor was ineligible)ie. I take this one,you get the next one type of thing! By accepting the flagman job, one could timeslip for a flagmans basic day wages,so in effect the crew person would be collecting 2 days wages. This could result in(at that time) a $400+ day. Not bad wages for a days work! An added plus to this was that if your job had a split shift, with a defined respite period, you could possibly go on a continuous time scenario if you were unable to "tie up" your job within a given period of time after the scheduled beginning of your respite period. This would likely result in your having to be replaced midway through your job or you would violate H.O.S. by remaining on the job until its sheduled end. So you would hope and pray and beg the signal maintainers to "drag the anchor" so that you could go on continuous time(remember you had to stay on duty until the maintainer and dispatcher released you)and get an "early quit" It is a wonderfully satisfying and pleasant feeling to go home early from the job knowing that you have just earned a bundle of cash. I should also add that we were required to rejoin our job, if at all possible,to either complete the day or be relieved, When I would catch a flagging job in the summer and there was a franchise coffee house near the crossing, I would celebrate my good fortune by buying some cold drinks for my crew(all 4 of us) if I was returning to my job on one of its other trips. Needless to say, I became quite popular with the crews for doing this and my conductor used to boast that his brakemen would buy refresments for the crew after a flagging assignment. Unfortunately it just ain't like that ALL the time, and I have had to flag in some extremely crappy weather with little or no shelter. I carried a spare heavy mil contractor trash bag with a hole cut in the end which I would drape over myself as an added rain protector. I also had a large bag to put my grip in to keep it dry. There are ways to make good money on the RR!! CT
Man, don't get me started. I got a call from the Road Foreman at 9:20 PM Thursday and later took a call to work at 12:45 AM. Got to my destination with about an hour & 1/2 left, based on my on-duty point of the RFE calling me. Didn't have time to make setoff, terminal powers-to-be not happy. Investigation pending.
First off... NW? N&W? what line do you refer to? Everyone I know who has worked for the railroad made decent money and hated their job the whole time they did it. Mostly because of the way the top brass runs things. I had a friend who worked for UP and they used change the slogan We Can Handle It, to **** it!, which they claimed was the true slogan of the workers. BnO Rick. Sorry to hear about the pending doom and gloom. Nothing worse than getting a write up.
A twist in the HoS laws requires 10 off for 12+ on but only 8 off for 11:59 on. On my railroad it is against the rules to claim more than 11:59 if you are at your terminal at the magic hour. A simply fix would be to tie the number of hours on with the number of hours required to be off, minimum of 8. The down side would be for crews at away from home terminals having to stay away a bit longer. Greed will also come into play in that there are many employees that want to work 7 days a week (more when they can). A maximum number of hours worked per week would also help, but again the greed factor comes into play. I recall there was a pilot program planned for a division of a major carrier that would balance work/rest with assigned work times and days off for everyone. Since the majority of the people would earn equal or better pay, but three or four would earn less the whole contingent voted the plan down. Sounds like greed to me!
this was covered in a thread on another board of this site. What you have said is basically what I was saying. CT
hi im from the uk and need some help i drive trains for a company called central trains i drive diesel and electric passenger trains and work in the yard aswell im trying to imagrate to the usa to live in chicago but need to find a company that will sponsor over seas applicants ive got 7 years experience on the railway and 4 years of that is as a driver can you help steve my email is steven.thompson@blueyonder.co.uk
Problem with 8 hours off is that you really don't have 8 hours of total rest. Example, co worker yarded his train and went off duty at 400pm. Drove homearriving at 530pm (rush hour traffic), had dinner with the family and went to bed at 700pm. Phone rang at 1000pm calling him for a midnight train, so he got up, showered, fixed a meal to go and drove back to the yard. Sure, he was "off duty" for 8 hours but how much rest did he get? Money is good, life style sucks.
Here in Alliance, NE two of the three of the pools have the option of taking 8, 10, 12 or 14 hours off. To me this seems to be a pretty good setup. If you want to turn and burn you can or you can have a little more time off. Adam
I belive you mean NS, You have already been given the skinny on how they work the Hours of Operation and it's a bear! What they don't tell you stright out is you will for the first year make only 70% of your pay and after taxes, and union dues you will probably take home about 300 bucks a week, work all the crappy jobs and crazy hours, do a lot of walking on ballest in all kinds of weather. Now if you can handle struggling for a year and show you do good railroad it's an excellent income. The attrition rate is about 1 in 5 make it in train service, They invest a lot of money in training you if you go to McDonnah, GA. So they want to recope some of that investment. If your a single guy with no bills or a wife that also works it's doable. I know alot of people on NS and CSX and I worked track gang for UP in the 70's. Harrisburg, PA is screaming for people they work one week and quit. So if your up to it go for it, Go in with open eyes. Good Luck!
Unanimous against the program. The brotherhood stuck together on that one. And the brotherhood reps had input in the design.
