Are bunkhouses still in use or are hotels used instead?
I was going through some famil momentos when I came across some blueprints that my great-grandfather used when he built 4 small bunkhouses. I also found the contract. He was to build each one at a cost of $200 a piece. This was around 1905.
Generally hotels for train crews, some of them may be railroad sponsored, but they are technically hotels.
Bunkhouses are still in use up here in Canada, but not everywhere. The railroad’s expertise is not managing a quasi-hotel, so they are a real corporate nuisance in the hierarchy. Where it can be done, an arrangement is often made with one or more hotels in town to provide the rooms as required. It is good business for the hotel since they are guaranteed a fairly steady revenue stream. They may even be able to rent the room more than once in a 24 hour period since a crew’s rest period starts when they arrive at the “away” terminal.
But hotel accommodation is not always a viable option. Some places the “away” terminal is in a small hamlet with very limited commercial facilities. If it is in a popular tourist destination, the hotel prices keep a bunkhouse significantly more economical. Arrangements are usually made with a local contractor(s) to manage things like laundry, making up rooms, cleaning lounges, kitchens and toilet facilities, maintenance, perhaps running a beanery, all on a 24 hour/day basis.
For lightly used lines, where only one train crew will need to be accommodated, hotels will nearly always be the preferred solution, sometimes including a taxi ride to the nearest center. It is busier terminals where there could be a dozen or more crews laying over where a bunkhouse still can make sense.
If you go back to 1970, though, bunkhouses were still the usual method up here.
John
Thank you everyone for the responses.
I have an aunt who helps manages a hotel that house Union Pacific crews on a daily basis. She says those rooms are the most used and that the crews that stay in their are some of the most respectful and quiet patrons she has experienced.
I just didn’t know if there were a few in the country that the railroads still used. I agree that it is more economical to use hotels because the railroads aren’t in the hospitality business and times have certainly changed.
Interesting, I’ve read memoirs of a couple of engineers and other RR personnel where they said they’d only stay in a RR bunkhouse as a last resort. They preferred a rooming house. One guy noted that railroaders in a bunkhouse tended to be like a bunch of kids and he could never get a decent nights sleep with all the racket and shenanigans.
Could be railroaders are better behaved now??
[swg]
Probably just more tired. With today’s longer crew districts they’ve probably been on the train for 10-11 hours and didn’t really have enough rest at home between trips either. Fatigue has become a major concern, but a compromise between management and union agendas to improve quality of life has mostly been impossible.
John