Are there any engineers on this website? I’ve wanted to be an engineer since I was 5 years old. Is it as much fun as I (and any other engineer wanabee) envision it being?
Well I am not an engineer, and I am sure the engineers here will chime in… But, from what I have read… it’s like any job, it’s what you make it. Fun? I don’t know, I guess any job can be fun, and any job can be living hell too… But, it is hard work, heavy work, and work that is done out of doors year round… But, let’s let the engineers tell it…
well… i am an engineer…at least that is what they pay me for…but some of my coworkers might aruge that fact…lol… but i digress… to be sort and to the point… i was like you at one point… always thought it was a fun job… so i took the shot and got hired on to the railroad and became one…now i cant stand the job and have started to activly investigate other lines of work to get away from it… the job itself on a fun scale is about a 7…what kind of job do you get to play with high horsepower toys… but the other stuff that goes along with it such as the endless harrasment from managment… the hoops you have to always jump through by the FRA and the company just to make a pay check get old after a while… you are always in a never ending battle with payrole to get claims paided becouse you put in a penilty claim and it always gets turned down or not payed due to “resurching”(aka if we stall it long enought by saying we are resurching it to see if it a valid claim…you might forget about it and we wont have to pay it)… you get on a train and make a hell of a run and hope and pray that you might actuly be able to do something when you get off of work…only to be held out of the terminal untill you go on the law and your whole days is shot becouse there isnt any room to yard your train… the hours are long…and the scheduel…what am i saying…unless your in the yard most of the time there is no scheduel as far as when you are going to be working… you get bumped around and some halfs you dont get jack in a pay check…then other times…you are working every 8 hours and make a killing but are dead tired and just want to sleep… so i guess what im saying is… the actule running the train is fun… but the rest of the “job” sucks…
csx engineer
CSXengineer: Seems that is a constant description of the engineer job rating that one reads or learns in some way from many…
Surely the RR management is totally aware of such conditions existing in the engineer’s work life and would by now, have figured out a way to improve these conditions.
Is it that mangagement doesn’t have the continuity in {personnel}, and hence, don’t really care to try for improvements…or possibly the structure of the contracts between the “Company” and the Union…or just that it’s been done “that way” for decades, and no one group is able or willing to try to change the conditions.
Seems the Company would benefit if conditions could be made more livable…and of course employees as well.
you would think that…but the problem is that the carriers just dont care…you are not a person…you are an employee number… and with that logic…a robot too… the carriers only care about moving the trains… the work force be damned… and that additude is from the top brass down to the trainmasters and road foremans… the only real way any kind of “quility of life” for this transportaion stector job going to have to be through government relguleations becouse the unions havent done crap on our behalf to make things at all better…i have been on the payroll now for comeing up on 10 years… and the working conditions and everyones additueds about everything includeing mine have gotten worse… and to the point that no one cares… now keep in mind…this is at csx…things might be alittle bit better on other roads but if they are…just a marginal amount im sure… but moral where i am at is at an all time low… no one wants to be there…(well that ant totaly true…there are some hard core foamers in the ranks that just love the job no matter how bad it is getting)…th
…Sounds a bit like catch 22. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
yea for the most part is a catch 22… the job is far less glamours from the seat then is from trackside that is for sure…
csx engineer
over on the NS life is wonderfull its never rains the sun is always shining we have the best equipment you even want to run, the dispatching is the best all the blocks are clear trips last no more than 4 hours, and half way thru the trip lunch is served and the railroad is all schedualed so we know when we will go to work, and we never haft to complain about the pay if we find a mistake they money transfer to your account right then, we have a life away from the railroad for what its worth, the only thing is my job is so great i cant wait to get back and do it again,
Now you tell me what 2 statements are true and no cheating.
This is not being written with any attempt at sarcasm.
It seems like every time someone rekindles this topic a high percentage of the answers come from “grizzled, jaded veterans” and are heavy on complaints about the pay, working conditions, hours, time away from home, management practices, hard labor in all kinds of weather, equipment and so on.
In my travels I haven’t met many people who DON’T complain about their jobs – that’s the nature of the beast, and why they call it work. I think the thread originator was looking to hear some of the positives, too.
Lattaslip9, I have three close friends who are engineers. One of them worked the Geneva Sub for Union Pacific and he, too, looked forward to being an engineer since he was 5. He comes from a family of railroaders and so he entered the business with full knowledge of what the job gave – and more importantly, what the job took.
He grumbles a little, too, but he says the job is every bit as rewarding as he anticipated (having railroaders in the family). He recently accepted a job with Amtrak because he always wanted to run a passenger train.
I wanted to be a fireman since I was a kid. There were eight firemen in our family, and I became number nine. Of course I found out the job was nothing like a kid could imagine. We had to do some tough, dangerous things to do, and some were quite grisly and gruesome, to be honest. But after 18 years both full (4) and part time (14) I do feel overall the job was tremendously rewarding.
So – there’s gotta be some positives about running trains. Let’s ask the engineers here why they haven’t quit their jobs.
the only reason why i havent quit comes down to 2 reasons… money and benifits… if i can find a job that is compairable to the pay im making now…and has some kind of health insurance benifits…im gone… also you have to keep in mind…that the job wasnt always as bad as it has become now…granted it was never that great…but the overall work enviroment has gone down hill as far as treatment of employees and even the amount of money we make… i have been on the railroad almost 10 years now… every year i get my statment from the railroad retirement board showing how much money i have made and payed into the system… the total wages have gone down every year but yet i seem to work more then i have when i started… i made more money as an engineer trainee back in 98-99 then i am making now… i am not one to lay off very often and my senority keeps me from getting bumped all over the place…so im secure in making a steady payckeck…so figer that one out…
but i will give a few positives that the job dose have i guess… its not sitting in an office or in a factory doing the same thing day after day… every day on the road is always differnt… even if it is the same run all the time… differnt power…differt weather…see something differnt every time your at work… the actual “work” isnt very physicaly demanding… and you spend on average at least part of the day sitting still not doing anything becoues of train meets…waiting to yard the train… or waiting for paper work… just to name a few things… but like i said… the actule befor…the running of the train is fun… it is a neat job in that respect…
but all the behind the seens stuff that goes along with it is what takes the fun out of it… and that stuff is the larger part of the job then just running the train… seeing an engineer at work as he blasts by you on the main is all you see track side…you dont see all the crap he has to do befor he even gets on the train…and all the crap he has to do in the cab to get rea
It isn’t fun, it’s a job like any other job but with many demands to be exact in your work. You are subject to constant scrutiny of what you do, there are many ways to see if you did what you were supposed to do, with recording devices aboard the locomotives and trackside analyzers that pick up data from your locomotive and send it to a central location, as well as units equipped with GPS devices.
Yes, I like to run a train but it isn’t much fun when as little as violating speed as little as 1 MPH could conceivably get you into trouble, when blowing the whistle a couple of seconds too long or not long enough could get you into trouble, when throttle adjustment might be deemed too fast or too much by somebody who may not have ever run a train in his life.
Not only that, but if you think you would like to have a normal life with normal activities, you don’t want to work on the railroad. I know it’s an attractive job because of the money that can be made but read what CSX engineer wrote about his pay going down but his work hours going up, it’s true, and you really trade off your personal life for the job, if you work on the road.
Ditto to the above posts. Rr work is not fun. Its a job, its treated as such, it involves working w/miserable equipment, miserable management, some miserable co workers, miserable rules & standards that only those who worke in the rr would know. Every pay half, I have to fight for my correct pay w/time keeping. Gets old after awhile. I’m 44, started on the rr at 35 only because I was able to double my wages from my pre rr job. Back long time ago, my dream job in life was to get into radio broadcasting, either on air or off air. Just never did apply myself to make the effort, that was my fault totally. The rr provides a roof over my head and food on the table, thats about the only thing i can say on it. CSX hang in there, I’m with ya.
Scrutiny is an understatement. They have been pulling Hostler tapes now ( rut ro) and the whole well you were one miniscule of a tenth of a flea hair short in blowing yor crossing warning so we are going to pull you from service ( only on paper cause we dont have enough engineers right now and never will)
You will get memos from people in suits that THINK they can railroad. Never rode a train never switched and never rode a car! I love the suits telling me how to ride a tank and when you say " What about slack action?" they say " whats that?"
If you want to be an engineer by all means go for it!! You only get one go round in life so make the best of it. I have been a goundskeeper,factory worker,forklift operator,truck driver,painter of industrial machines,emt,firefighter,phlebotomist,Memeber of the Greatest Navy in the world,and now I am a railroader. Will I be something else someday? Never know I refuse to be locked into something that is going to make me miserable.Ask my first wife about that lol.
Also I finally ( after 30 years of waiting) got my first tattoo! Wasnt as bad as I thought it would be. But I would rather say " Yeah I did it" then sit there old and withered saying " I wish I had!"
Thats also kind of my point, when I say to my children (someday) “I used to run those things” when we get stopped at a crossing gate. Just to say I did.
Like the others, I also wanted to be an engineer. I cannot remember a time as a kid when I did not want to be one.
I started on the CNW when I was 18; went into Engine service when I was 19; I was qualified for both freight and passenger before I was 20.
Worked there for 20 years. Operating a locomotive is (for me) the coolest job I could ever hope to aspire to. It was a wonderful opportunity for someone who only had a high-school diploma to make a very good living.
Or so I thought. The long, tedious, late-night hours on duty; the answering the call to report to work at all hours with no possibility of a schedule, thus making plans with friends became impossible; the realization that, in some neighborhoods, you are a target; and like csxengineer said, the disrespect from management towards contract workers, as well as the possibility of the eye of Big Brother (FRA) watching your every move (lets see know, did I start ringing that bell exactly 1/4 mile from the crossing?? Gee, I sure hope no one saw me…). The stress created by the above conditions wears on one real fast and quickly becomes tedious.
And speaking of stress, let’s not forget the lasting impressions and engineer gets each time he is involved in an accident involving a pedestrian, tresspasser, or vehicle. Crawling around under your train trying to comply with the Coroner’s request to find all of the body parts of the person your train just ran over, or seeing the face of a person just as they realize that they are about to die…a few of those experinces will take their toll on the engineer’s life.
However, operating a train, in the middle of a nice day, with 15000 horsepower at your command, having 12000 tons of freight strung along over a mile and a half of track behind you, tearing along at 50mph, laying on the horn as you blast through towns, creating such an impressive display of power and speed that you see people liter