I’ve been wanting to get a good understanding of how the crew system works on a class 1 railroad for some time now. It seems real complicated, and doesn’t seem to make much sense.
I understand the very basics. You get hired out and are given a home-terminal and an away-from-home-terminal (AFHT). It seems that you have to bid on this, which I don’t understand, but anyway. You jump on the trains at your home terminal, run them to your AFHT, and then jump on another train and come back to your home-terminal. That’s basically all I got.
Well, until someone wakes up and wants to answer this, suffice to say that it is all about seniority.
It involves extra boards, pools, engineers and conductors. Over-the-road is when you have enough of the “s” word that you can hold those jobs. Overall, the pay is more for OTR but so are the expenses. And you live and die by your phone.
Let’s take a very simple example, the terminal supplies Engineers for 1 Road pool to one Away terminal, it supplies an Engineer to cover one local freight over the same subdivision and a local switch crew. Now the Road pool needs 20 Engineers, the local needs 1 Engineer, and the Switch Crew needs one Engineer. Now if the company decides that they need 30 Engineers at this terminal then 20 will be in the Road Pool, 1 on the Local, 1 on the Switch Crew, and 8 on the Extra Board. Now if all 22 Regular positions go up for bid, the Engineer who became an Engineer the longest time ago, can chose any job he wants and he will get it. The Road Crews will get paid the most money but have constantly changing work schedule, and can get stuck at the away from home terminal. Locals usually pay more than Switch Jobs, but get the advantage of regular starting times, and days. Switch jobs have the best schedules but the lowest pay. The bidding proceeds from oldest (by qualify date, not age) to youngest. The 8 men on the Extra Board receive pay only when they are called to work (filling in for vacations, sick days, work trains, extra trains in busy season, etc.). They do receive Insurance benefits however. A few companies at a few locations have guaranteed Extra Boards were the people are Guaranteed a minimal amount of money in each pay period. Note that all Engineers receive the same pay per hour (with a few contract negotiated exceptions) but because Road Crews can work a lot more hours in a month their take home pay is higher, but so is the grind. As your Seniority builds you may decide to take less pay, for more home life (Mortgage paid off, kids grown up etc.) these guys will bid on and take certain local and switch jobs. Of course you may find junior men working some of these too, if for example the local or switch job only operates one or two days per week, or is based out of a remote location.
Good job Mookie!!! The bidding goes for jobs that are open ( new or vacated by another employee) so lets say we have a job on an extra board open. You place your bid on it and when the notice closes you either get awarded to it or you dont. This goes same with regular jobs( locals and the like) and pool turns.
Pool turns are just what they say. Your in a pool of other employees. Your pool covers a certain terrirtory out of your home terminal.When your turn comes up off you go. Rest at the AFHT and back again.
Extra boards cover any vacancies in the pool,locals,or trains that are specail, on my div we have grain trains that dont fall into the pool,also dog catches and a sundry of other jobs that they need a warm body for.Crew callers dont care it seems that you dont feel qualified or that it wouldnt be safe for you to do said job. SO you do it and do it at a walking pace.
Seniority is the key. You may be the greatest conductor on the local. But if the guy who reads his switchlist upside down, takes 12 hours to get the work done(still leaving some left over cause he takes forever)drives good brakemen off and engineers as well, has time on you and wants it… Well your not going to get it.Never fails you start liking a job, or think that its safe and WHAM. You either get bumped,or the job gets cut.
Seniority also goes for when you want to bid for engineer classes. So lets say your bidding and you miss the bid cause your lower in the S word. No biggie till 5 of those clowns that went through the program roll back to be conductors cause they dont like engine service. Before anyone says thats not possible, yes it is BNSF has a flow back agreement and if you go to a SF job( conductor pool turn or extra board) you can flow back and if not in your 3 year recall as an engineer stay there until you retire.
Thanks for the message the other day on this subject. Like you, I never know I have messages in the center. Galesburg intrigues me because the the number of lines and away terminals. Looking at the map, it seems the trains go:
Chicago via BN line
Chicago via Santa Fe line (including Streator)
Beardstown
West Quincy
Fort Madison(?) or longer via SF
Creston division via BN
LaCrosse Ws up the river line.
Dont know about Peoria, something in my mind tells me that is handled by TPW, but typically how many of those lines is a crewman qualified on? Just one? or several?
Do the old BN employees typically stay on the BN line to Chicago or qualify over on the SF?
Is this entire process handled (managed) well, or are there screwups in calls, such as receiving an assignment for the wrong (unqualified) run?
Also, if there is a “pool” then does that mean that there are certain trains in that pool? In other words, they will determine how many regularly scheduled trains operate say between Chciago and Galesburg then assign a “pool” of crewmen to protect those trains? What about coal trains? Grain trains you indicated are not in the pool.
If you have a pool of say 30 trains, do the “pool” crews only protect those trains, or get the coal or grain trains also?
I think Trains, the magazine, could do an article on this. It has always intrigued me.
Ok, thanks to all who have helped so far. It’s beginning to get a little clearer in my mind now.
One question that stands out to me right now, and I believe MP173 asked as well: If a “pool” of crews is assigned to the regular “pool” of trains that come through their territory, do these “pool” crews run those “extra” grain trains and coal trains as they come, or will only the extra board guys get those trains even though there may be a “pool” crew available? Does that make any sense?
When you hire, you establish seniority in a given geographic area called you Seniority District. You can bid on any job within the boundaries of your district. Limited Clear, Big Jim, myself and some of the other ex-Cons, may remember Conrail’s system wide seniority.
Once you are marked up, you can bid for any job within your district your seniority will allow - yard, local, pool turn, extra board. If you seniority allows, you can move between pools, yards, extra boards, at will. My current district encompasses several states.
Yard and local jobs usually have regular schedules, and tend to attract the heavy hitters, with long “whiskers”.
Pool turns have a “pool” of trains to protect, defined by the pool’s agreement. The middle seniority people tend to work the pools. Pools work on a first in, first out basis.
The extra board covers any open assigned positions on yard, or local jobs, or vacant pool turns. As well as, any extra trains not defined in the pool agreement, any recrews needed, or pool trains when the available pool employees have been exhausted. Usually the youngest guys hold the list. All of my company’s extra boards are guaranteed, but the pool turns are not.
This is a really great post. I just recently hired on back in April. After graduating from 5 1/2 weeks of ground school I then went to the REDI Center. The first day was our initial briefings and also drew our SENIORITY.
The process was really simple. We were called out by the Union rep by our names on the local roster by Age. Then we drew a number from a hat. The number determined where we would line up for drawing again for our Seniority. I drew a 10 out of 10 and then drew 2 for seniority.
As far as the Extra boards go, Mookie has it dead on. Seniority determines which jobs are available. For instance if there are 35 open turns on the Yard Extra-board you cannot bid on Y330 if the person has seniority over you. If you get the bid, you risk the chance of being rolled from that bid and may lose a day pay if the next open turn is a scheduled day off.
Ok, let’s use BNSF’s Hauser Yard as an example here, just because I have read up on the operations there and it’s fresh in my mind. Out of Hauser there are basically 3 big runs, Hauser-Whitefish, Hauser-Pasco, and Hauser-Wenatchee.
So let’s suppose you were to get hired out of Hauser as a conductor. There are 3 different runs, so what would determine which one you get put on? Next, suppose you end up running Hauser-Whitefish as a new hire, but you really want to run Hauser-Pasco instead. At what point would you be able to switch runs and get on the Hauser-Pasco run? What would have to happen so that you could switch? Understand that I’m not asking how it would work at Hauser specifically, I’m just using Hauser as an example because it works well.
I would guess it would depend on how strictly the use of pools is enforced and where the pools are assigned to operate to. A pool may be assigned to run to multiple terminals, even if it only normally goes to one terminal.
Using Clinton, Iowa as an example. On the Iowa side, it is the home terminal for the Clinton-Missouri Valley Long Pool. Currently it’s not very large and is almost all Z trains (2 each way). Clinton is also the away from home terminal for the Boone Engineer’s East Pool, the Boone East-West Conductor’s Pool (they can run either east or west out of Boone). It is also the away from home terminal for the Des Moines Engineer’s and Conductor’s North Pools.
The Boone based pools handle just about every thru train going thru/to/from Clinton. The exceptions are the Z trains going to the Long Pool and the Des Moines trains.
The Des Moines pool works to Clinton on trains that come out of Des Moines, usually the MDMPR. They normally work back on the counterpart MPRDM. Sometimes there are other trains that come from/go to Des Moines.
When everything is normal the different pools handle the trains they are supposed to. If there is an extra train going to Des Moines and there is no Des Moines crew for it, it usually will go
Hey mp just got to looking and here are some answers for Galesburg.
Chicago Pool covers both lines Mendota and Chilli. We have like 27 BN turns and 25 SF turns and they cover any pool job going to Chicago.Certain grain trains get assigned to the pool. All coal trains are pool turns except those going to Peoria. Now the XBOARD covers the MTY"s going to Ruff, Ransom , Greenwood and Galva. But I have seen pool turns assigned to those jobs.
Peoria we do the coal loads in mty’s out. The Tip up does the M jobs in and out of there.These trains are covered by the extra boards.
In a nut shell our turns cover trains going to whatever terminal. Any kind of work extra,local or whatever is all assigned to either extra board guys or local crews. Like MTY’s to Creston they are covered by the Creston pool.
What are our guys qualified on out of Galesburg? Well I am qualified ( somewhat shaky but they say I am qualified) as a hostler in the yard, Creston,Lacrosse,Chicago ( both sides) W Quincy, Peoria, The Barstow jobs,Blue island,Barr Yard,and Glenn Yard.Most of our extra board guys go all ways.Guys in the pools that are not going to be moved ( IE OLD HEADS) usually are just qualified for whatever job they are doing.
Screw ups in calling.Too many to count. Called me as an engineer once off the Hostler xboard when they were putting in their new calling system. Before I could accept they called me saying sorry our bad.Ya think? LOL
As stated in above posts, seniority is everything on the rr. When new hire condrs mark up for service, they go where the senority will allow them to work. This could be any type of xtra bd , even a pool turn in some cases or a regular job such as a local or yd job. On BNSF, condr seniority is based on three sets of rosters, these are the pre merger rosters consisting of all the rrs that make up the current BNSF. Behind that list is the New Hire roster which goes from Sep 1995 to Dec 1998, followed by New Hire 99 roster that starts Jan 99 and goes up to the current. I have system seniority on all former SF, Frisco and CB&Q lines and i have used it quite well. If i wanted to say mark up in Minot, I would have to go to the bottom of the roster and while working there my current number would not apply. All bidding, placing a bump and even layoff requests is now done either on the company computer or on the automated phone w/out not talking to a live human. There is tons of more details any railroader could share on this issue but I’ll close my thoughts down for now.
When you get hired on the railroad you start your seniority on the date of hire. Bidding used to be done and might still be done with paper forms handed in and if you had the seniority you would be awarded the job and you work that job until you get bumped off by an employee with more seniority! Today bidding on a job is done over the phone at least on CSX by way of an automated menu that gives you a selection of jobs you can hold according to your seniority! Road trains starting at your home terminal can be regular assigned road jobs with an engineer and conductor that work with one another all the time again unless employees with more seniority bump them from that position. You are on a rotating list to be called for trains if not on a regular assigned job that might leave about the same time every day or at least be the same train each day. Say you go out of your home terminal make your trip to your away from home termnal you are then put in a hotel or possibly taxied back to your home terminal. Either way when you reach your destination you are required to get 8 hours rest. While you are resting the crew that had a train before you has been called back out to work. You now wait your turn for the phone to ring and get a call from crew management telling you your next assignment and when to be at work for the next train. It is a bit complicated but think of it as a revolving door one crew comes in one goes out and it just keeps on spinning. You can work on road trains or in yard service again all dependent on seniority! Regular assigned yard crews go to work at the same time every day switching cars out or building up trains. When you are a new hire most likely you work the extra list. This is that rotating door again when a man calls out sick or is on his off day you will get a call from the crew dispatcher telling you what job you will be working and some days you get a choice if more than one job is available.
After reading all this I think the real moral of the story is that it all depends on the railroad that you work for and what location you work from.
Another question…Suppose you are working the extra list out of a home terminal where the tracks split and trains run north and east from the terminal. Would there be two extra lists (one for the north run, one for the east run), or just one extra list that would cover both? In other words, if you were working that extra list would you be set to only making the north run or the east run, or would you be making both runs?
BNSF @ La Junta has two condr xtrra bds. Bd 6 covers east towards Newton while bd 12 is the south run to Amarillo. However, you can still be called to work both sides if one bd is out of condrs. When this happens, it is a extra day of pay for working off assignment. Ching, ching! At Newton, KS BNSF has a seperate condr & brkmn xtra bd. Every train running south and east of Newton w/a Newton crew, runs with a brakie, regardless of the train called. This is the crew consist agreement in effect there. If you’re on the brkmn bd and get called as condr or vise versa, it is an extra day of pay, but you are responsible for filling out the spcl claim and to follow up to see that it gets paid.
Ok here’s a question. What if a person on the extra board gets called and lands at the AFHT. Does the said person always go back to the home terminal or is it possible to find oneself heading in another direction?
One point mentioned only slightly so far, is that you are qualified for the run you are to make. As a newbie on a territory you ride along as an observer for 3-5 trips before you are considered qualified, thereafter you must make a certain number of trips within a rolling 6 month period to remain qualified on the territory. The larger the area covered the harder it is to remain qualified on all the possible runs. Especially for crews on the Extra Boards. The Galesburg situation is a good example. With many possible routes and Destinations, you have to make several trips to almost everyone of them, every 6 months.