In your opinion, what is the best RR to work for and why?
I’ve heard it isn’t NS!
Sure as heck ain’t CN.
Is this the list to choose from?
Amtrak
BNSF
CN
CP
KCS
UP
CSX
NS
CONRAIL
Boy, that’s a tough question, and the answer will vary depending on your motivations.
Are you looking for employment? All of the largest, Class 1 carriers seem to be doing well right now. If you’re seeking clerical positions, stay close to headquarters because that’s where the most jobs are. For BNSF that’s in Fort Worth, Tex. CSXT it’s Jacksonville, Fla. NS think about either Norfolk, VA or Atlanta, GA. UP at Omaha, Nebr.
If switchmen/trainmen positions appeal to you, that’s a seniority situation meaning that, depending on the size of the seniority district, you’ll likely be confined to a limited geographic area. Choose carefully and consider where you’d like to live long-term. We all have “home towns” that we became comfortable with, but your hometown, or railroad terminals found close by, may not be the best place to start a railroad career.
The same criteria about location applies to the mechanical and car department crafts as well.
Whereas all of the Class 1 railroads have brought in strong, first-quarter financial results, all but one have to keep the requirements of the investment community in mind as they make decisions about where to make capital expenditures and how much of a dividend they can afford to pay. The lucky carrier who is the exception is BNSF. BNSF management reports to only one stockholder, Berkshire-Hathaway, a conglomerate whose two top officers are well known for letting their operating companies generously re-invest earnings to build their various businesses for the future. Because BNSF senior management can now redirect its focus away from pleasing Wall Street quarter-by-quart
Short answer?
They all suck.
I was going to suggest that most of the authoritative answers (those by actual RR employees) would be “any railroad but the one I work for.” Zugs answer is a little more comprehensive.
Just out of curiosity, why are commuter and transit agencies usually absent from these discussions?
Hard to get into?
Not hiring?
Civil service restrictions?
Not considered real railroading?
Kevin
Well, in that case I might surprise you, Larry–I don’t mind working for UP. It has its bad points and its good. And sometimes they do strange things operationally, but I haven’t had any problems getting paid what I’m due. I think the people who have complaints in that department are those who are in it to get every possible buck out of the company–they know their contracts very well, and get frustrated when the railroad knows its part of the contract, too.
Working for UP has been different than working for the Chicago & North Western. Especially toward the end of CNW, it seemed more like a family operation. There was a long time when CNW didn’t have money to do much of anything, but we all made do. When CNW started making money, things improved for everyone. And UP got interested. They wanted to do the railroading their way, though–and, as it turned out, this was the arrogant bunch off the Missouri Pacific that had the power. I think things have improved since some of those guys have gone away. One problem is that each little incident brings out more rules and practices on top of the old ones, when enforcement of the existing rules would take care of the problems.
As far as esprit de corps, it would be hard to find a better railroad than UP (with the probable exception of BNSF). On the corporate level, its decisions have been financially sound–expansion of infrastructure, though slowed in the economic conditions, has not disappeared. When the economic conditions warrant, UP will be in a position to expand operations, with people, equipment, and infrastructure to handle it. But it won’t do that until it really has to. From what I’ve heard, NS and CN would not be good companies to work for. I’ve also heard plenty of bad things about CSX, but that seems to be more about ineptitude than about any conscious effort to put working conditions well behind operating profitability, or to use strong-arm tactics to present an improved safety record, trying to intimidate employe
Interesting what CShaveRR says about the inherited Missouri Pacific people. I heard something similar about the same group from a retired WP engineer in Portola, California!
Are these pretty much the same people who bungled the simple end-to-end merger of CNW with UP, then graduated to the spectacular UP+SP meltdown?
From what I heard, they even bungled the merger with the Katy! Their way was the only way to run a railroad (they couldn’t even fathom what it meant to have to deal with other railroads around Chicago).
Someone else on another forum has as his motto or signature something to the effect of, ‘‘Railroading - the worst job I’ve ever loved !’’.
Just by coincidence, last night I was skimming through Part 1 of Fred Frailey’s 2-part article -
River Wars 1: Life along the Mississippi
Trains, May 1988 page 26
Competition and cooperation between UP and SP (MP and SSW)
( “FRAILEY, FRED W.”, OPERATION, SP, TRACKAGE, UP, TRN )
I was a little surprised to see how many of the names mentioned in there were common to the UP’s screw-ups in the 1990’s, and how much the same happened to the MoPac and Cotton Belt in the late 1970’s when traffic boomed - perhaps they never did learn. Also, most of the UP’s melt-downs happened when Drew Lewis was CEO - he of the early Reagan-era ‘‘Let’s fire all the Air Traffic Controllers’’ fame. If ever there was an incompetent in charge of a railroad . . . he couldn’t really ‘run’ it, though. [sigh]
- Paul North.
Funny about the RR biz… seems like you ask most railroaders about their job and they say don’t get into it… yet there are thousands of us railfans that would die to get in…
Someone else on another forum has as his motto or signature something to the effect of, ‘‘Railroading - the worst job I’ve ever loved !’’.
Just by coincidence, last night I was skimming through Part 1 of Fred Frailey’s 2-part article -
River Wars 1: Life along the Mississippi
Trains, May 1988 page 26
Competition and cooperation between UP and SP (MP and SSW)
( “FRAILEY, FRED W.”, OPERATION, SP, TRACKAGE, UP, TRN )
I was a little surprised to see how many of the names mentioned in there were common to the UP’s screw-ups in the 1990’s, and how much the same happened to the MoPac and Cotton Belt in the late 1970’s when traffic boomed - perhaps they never did learn. Also, most of the UP’s melt-downs happened when Drew Lewis was CEO - he of the early Reagan-era ‘‘Let’s fire all the Air Traffic Controllers’’ fame. If ever there was an
"Was it not a fact that when the deal was done between the Union Pacific and the Missouri Pacific; Technically it was the Missouri Pacific that had emerged as the Corporate entity that was, in fact, the Lead Corporation in the merger??
The preceeding being the reason, that in the aftermath of the UP+MP merger, there were locomotives painted in the UPRR’s armour yellow and grey paint, but with their lettering saying Missouri Pacific, on their long hoods?"
Don’t know - I wasn’t privy to the technical details of that one. It’s possible - mergers sometimes are structured as ‘‘a guppy swallowing a whale’’ kind of a thing such as that, followed immediately by a name change from ‘‘Guppy’’ to ‘‘Whale’’, so that from the outside you’d never know it ,unless you were an insider or otherwise involved.
An alternative reason - and equally plausible, to me anyway - might have been an equipment trust, lease, bond indenture, or other such equipment financing arrangement and obligation that required those locomotives to clearly retain their identity as MoPac equ
I was told once that at the time of the MP acquisition a buyout was made available to some in the managerial ranks. The thinking was that it would be mostly MP people who would take it. Instead, it was mostly original UP people who took it, leaving mostly MP people in charge or coming up on the ladder. I don’t know how true that was, but that’s what I was told.
Didn’t the MP last into the 1990s, at least on paper? I seem to recall hearing the MP was finally, and completely merged into the UP sometime in the mid 90s.
Jeff
If you are looking at working for a RR from a railfans perspective…you will be disappointed in all of them. They are transportation business and make decisions for business reasons and business reasons alone.
Depending on the job type that you hire in on, your perceptions will vary. Many jobs will have the ‘job cashe’ of working for a insurance company…shuffling papers all the live long day. Hire into a field based craft and it is a whole different kettle of fish…and as with fish, you have to get over the smell.
Your mileage may vary.
Pardon me if I don’t grieve for PATCO. If you sign an agreement not to strike, and your union prez (Poli) convinces you to “hit the bricks” anyway, be ready for the consequences.
Regardless, Drew Lewis didn’t cover himself with glory at UP, but wasn’t Dick Davidson the CEO for most of the 1990s? I associate Davidson with the UP+SP debacle (for which he wasn’t fired), and with lesser screw-ups. On his watch we also saw the management failures in the early 2000s such that Uncle Pete could hardly make money even during an enormous traffic boom, plus that mindless failed assault on calendar publishers and model-train manufacturers. Davidson (former MoPac man) was a disaster for the Union Pacific.
Sad part is that I used to enjoy this job. I still don’t mind the work. It’s just the fact that they refuse to hire anyone to even run the regular trains (much less cover extra boards). And it’s somehow our fault that they don’t have enough people.
And we’re supposed to bend over backwards because the morons in charge refuse to spend the money to, you know, like, have enough people to run the damned trains?