Freight Train Conductor

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

One of my favorite train watching spots is from the Alpine, TX passenger station platform. Alpine is a stop for Amtrak’s Sunset Limited. It also a crew change point for Amtrak and UP. Numerous freight trains roll through Alpine 24/7.

At Alpine an engineer and conductor board the train to replace the crews having brought the it from San Antonio or El Paso.

Having grown up in Altoona, PA, I had a pretty good idea of the role of a freight train conductor in olden times, i.e. 1950s and early 60s. Several of my neighbors were freight train conductors. Times have changed. Therefore, what does the conductor do on modern freight trains? Also, are most conductors also qualified to run the train if the engineer becomes incapacitated?

2

While some Conductors are promoted engineers that have been returned to the Conductors ranks because of a reduced level of business on their territory, by and large most and in many cases all conductors are not qualified engineers.

The freight conductors responsibilities are much as they were a generation ago - they are responsible for the documentation that goes with the train, they are responsible for the on the ground inspections when the train stops for unknown reasons, they are responsible for handling switches on the ground, they are responsible for any switching moves the train may have to make, Some of the reporting that Conductors have to do has been changed from paper reports a generation ago to computerized reports today - but the intent of the reports remains the same.

3

BaltACD,

Thanks for the information regarding freight conductors. I have another question and a comment.

Is there a significant difference between the compensation package for an engineer and a conductor? Which one has the higher compensation package? Whoops, that’s two questions.

It takes the Sunset Limited 3 hours and 44 minutes to run the 219 miles from Alpine to El Paso. Presumably it takes many of the freight trains considerably longer to cover the same distance. If I were in management, I I would organize the train crew’s duties so that they could switch off over the run, i.e the conductor drives the train for part of the distance to relieve the boredom that must set in over such a long distance. This is common in the airline business, where the pilot flies one leg and the co-pilot flies the other leg. What is your reaction?

4

Right off the top, I don’t think that it would be possible. Engineers and conductors are two different job classifications, with a different set of responsibilities. Also, it implies that all conductors would need to be licensed as engineers (legal requirement). Management would have to negotiate with each union (railroads are organized on a craft basis) to allow such a combined job classifications.

The commercial pilot analogy is a poor one, since each pilot has to be fully qualified and licensed on the type of aircraft involved, regardless of which side of the cockpit he sits.

5

The conductor is a hold over from the times when the freight crew was 5 people and switching, loading and unloading was done at many stops along the way. It is an unnecessary position on the freight train, especially now that the “paperwork” is all on line. Unions defend every job (as they should) but eventually the conductor will be eliminated.

Soon thereafter, the engineer will be eliminated and the trains run in remote–much like the remotely piloted vehicles used in the Middle East.

Standing by for the war of words.

6

Had a 20 something daughter who’s first real job interview as an NS job fair for conductors. She was told the conductor would work for a number of years than were expected to advanced to engineer training. The approach for NS is to promote up or out (from my observation.)

The conductor training was 6 weeks with a pay of about $ 500/week. You were expected to pay your own way to a southern training facility. If I can recall correctly, some of the facts about training was 50% to 75% of those who went for training washed out or walked off. There were over 100 folks who showed up for the fair in Harrisburg PA, about 20 made the cut for additional interviews. Of the 100, 4 were ladies, said daughter being the youngest. To end the story, said daughter didn’t pass the written test which were situational and the answers were something like “do you agree with the resolution” or “disagree”, something along these lines.

But, if a RR is having a job fair, do go. The job and life on the RR is gone over in detail. And, you can say you tried. Heck, my first job application out of high-school was for brakeman with the EL in Hoboken NJ. I walked into the HR office in the terminal, dressed in suit, resume in hand and the Secretary said before the door closed “can you see without your glasses”, answer “no”, can’t use ya. Why? Have to work for 90 days without them, afterwards your union and doesn’t matter. But, today, both my daughter and I can say we tried!

7

^Trolling?

Have a train stopped in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night delaying 20 other trains - and then tell me how unnecessary the Conductor’s job is. Mechanical malfunctions on rail cars don’t fix themselves. Don’t hand me the ‘Flying Squad’ crap - if they exist, they are hours away and cannot get to the location over the road.

The analogy to RPV’s is bogus - RPV’s aren’t carrying 100 tons of someone’s property per vehicle, that they expect to be delivered to them. If a RPV breaks down - well it’s only money that was lost and not necessarily the fault of the RPV operator.

Getting 9000+ feet of freight train over the road is somewhat analogous to herding cats. It can be done with enough effort.

8

Wow,

Glad to know someone realizes my job is a holdover from the old days and I am not needed.

Guess that engineer will do all the planning, check the train for compliance, do the double overs and walk set air test on his own, along with doing all the set outs and pickups along the way, plus lining all the switches ahead of and behind the movement.

Pretty sure he will have an easy time replacing the knuckle 30 or 40 cars deep in the train, releasing all the hand brakes, and my favorite, watching his own rear point while he shoves a 120 car train in a yard track…of course, all he really has to do is set his super-duper GPS based car counter and he will know exactly where to stop with the rear end in the clear, all that “hold over useless” stuff like that.

Man, it’s really good to read what a professional railroader like petitnj knows, without his input, I would have gone on thinking I served a real purpose in my role as a hold over conductor.

Oh, here is the “hold over from the old days” responsibilities of the crew members, from that old book of un necessary rules and such…

Any one wants a link to this old, no longer needed rule book, its…

http://www.utu1904.com/files/Download/GCOR_6th_ed.pdf

From the GCOR…

1.47 Duties of Crew Members

The conductor and the engineer are responsible for the safety and protection of their train and

observance of the rules. They must ensure that their subordinates are familiar with their duties, determine

the extent of their experience and knowledge of the rules. They must instruct them, when necessary, how

to perform their work properly and safely. If any conditions are not covered by the rules, they must take

precautions to provide protection.

A. Conductor Responsibilities

  1. The conductor supervises the operation and administration of the train (if trains are combined

with more than one conductor on board, the conductor wi

9

Having all crewmembers dual qualified is something that will probably happen eventually. Some small railroads already do this. Our pre-1985 conductors can’t be forced to engine service. I think they would have to all be gone before they tried to do this on our railroad. (Post 1985 conductors can be forced to engine service, but haven’t been as long as younger available men have filled engine class vacancies. We haven’t had an engineer’s class in my area for a few years now. I think the last class or two we had, once they were qualified as engineers they were immediately furloughed. Didn’t even have enough work for them as conductors, let alone engineers.)

You’ll probably still see separate positions of engineer and conductor, but when calling a crew, the senior person (or maybe the person first out) will get first choice at which position they want to work on that crew. I suppose that you might see thru-freight pools with permanent assigned positions, e.g., a dual qualified person could bid either the engineer or conductor slot on a pool turn. The extra board could go to one dual board instead of an engineer’s and conductor’s extra board. It would have to be negotiated between the RRs and the two unions.

Even if nothing would change as far as craft separation/work rules, having everyone dual qualified would mean you would almost always have an engineer available. Engineer’s board shot? Just call a qualified man off the conductor’s board for emergency service. (They already do this to some extent, but sometimes they have to go deep on a board to find a set-back man. If you’re not first out, you don’t have to answer the phone. If you do they have you, but if you don’t answer they can’t penalize you.)

Jeff

10

Agree 100% that the duties you list are important and yes it is difficult to do most of those with just a single person crew. All of the “restriction” duties will soon be provided by PTC. Repair of the train would be impossible, but this would motivate the railroad to figure how to make knuckles stronger. (Such as x-ray inspection of castings. Every broken knuckle I have seen has a clear flaw that would be caught with x-rays. The rest of the structural steel would benefit from NDT. Jeeze, we x-ray your suitcase at the airport, why not a knuckle?. )

Unfortunately, economics will prevail and system changes will eventually allow railroads to run with a single crew. Once the railroads spend $20B on PTC they are going to ask why the conductor is there to read the screen to the engineer.

Technology will soon replace us all!

11

Then obviously you have not seen all that many.

Not all come aparts are due to the knuckle breaking.

You almost have a futuremodal tone about you, I think that BaltACD is correct in his assessment of you being a troll.

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Dont feed the trolls…

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And certainly don’t bring facts into the discussion. Attack people!

14

In theory, building a train that would be free of any mechanical problems might be possible, but the added costs would dwarf the money saved by eliminating a crew member. RL

15

Let’s test the hypothesis: having a conductor is less expensive than lost time due to train failures.

We need:

  1. Daily cost of a crew: $300/day-crew member X 6 crew-members (3 engineers, 3 conductors) or $2000/day

  2. Daily cost of a train (maintenance, lease, …) $3000

  3. Total cost of a train with conductor $5000/day, without conductor $4000/day

  4. Lost time due to a failure: let’s assume 4 trains are delayed 3 hours for a full 12 hours of lost time (1/2 train day)

  5. Cost of that lost time: $2500 - $2000 (let’s use $2500 for conservative estimate)

  6. Now a good guess for how many times a train delays due to something the conductor can repair. Let’s just estimate 5% of all train days have this sort of failure. (Here others may have some better ideas; how many days a month does your train experience something the conductor can fix? )

So we take a hypothetical month of 30 days and compare with and without a conductor.

Without a conductor the train costs (30 X $4,000/day) =$120,000/month and %5 of the days (2 days) we experience a delay the conductor could have prevented with a cost of 2 days x $2500/day = $5000. Without the conductor the train costs $125,000/month even with delays.

Removing the conductor saves $25,000/month per train. (Psst, don’t show this to management and please don’t show on-line education to my dean!)

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Your making your own numbers - AND YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG! When you want to come into touch with reality let a working railroader know.

17

My perspective, admittedly that of an amateur, at least with respect to hands-on railroad experience, is that both persons in the cab would be fully qualified to operate the engine(s) and perform all other duties. The names of the positions might be changed to engineer and co-engineer, although I think driver and co-driver would be a better term. I suppose this bias stems from the years I spent in Australia, where the term driver is used. It is more descriptive than engineer, although changing the title would be difficult given its long history.

Those who study job satisfaction have found that diversity of tasks helps relieve boredom, which I understand is a problem for trains crews on long runs, such as the run from Alpine to El Paso. Moreover, organizations that are allowed to employ creative staffing do better in the long run. And so too, according to the researchers, do the employees. If done correctly flexibility producers winners all around.

Duties, pay practices, etc. would have to be re-designed. And inertia would have to be overcome. Doing it would be a challenge, i.e. most of us resist change whilst protesting that we are all for it. If my experience is any indicator, convincing the unions that there may be a better way is tough. I worked with unions

18

Please correct my numbers. All of these estimations have to use some assumptions and I am more than willing to hear others who may have better numbers. I would be happy to provide more detail on my numbers.

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petitnj,

One question for you. When the engineer only 10,000 ft freight train has a separation,goes into emergency, has every crossing blocked in town and the police or emergency vehicles can’t respond due to the blockage and everyone is waiting on a utility person who is two or more hours away then what do you think a government will do?

They will do what many states have already done. Require two people in the controlling unit whenever a train travels over any public grade crossing.

You may think conductors and engineers are outdated and no longer useful and you have that right. But that doesn’t mean your idea is great or makes logical sense from a business and/or public perspective. The last time I checked, US Railroad companies are in business to make a profit. Unless we are all going to be replaced by R2-D2 and CP30 it will take human beings to ensure commitments are made to our customers, shareholders and stakeholders (which includes the public). I have seen brakemen cut off locals only to have them added again as customer service faltered. You may not think a conductor’s position is important however, I bet you would think otherwise if you understood the value they bring to the company by being one yourself.

TBG

20

Sam,

To answer your question, there is about a 5% difference, with engineers earning the higher rate…the reason is because the engineers position is considered to be more of a skilled position than conductor, although I don’t agree, but then, an engineer wouldn’t consider a conductors job more skilled than his either…the amount will vary between railroads and between local unions on arbitraries, but the basic rate is part of the national contract.

As for cross training conductors to be engineers, not really, they are 2 separate crafts on purpose, but a lot of Class 1 roads force promote conductors to engineers, if you take the training, you may go “back to the ground” for a year or two, but you will end up running the locomotive…a lot of roads don’t allow you to refuse, either take the “promotion” or leave.

My railroad, due to its size and number of employees, has voluntary engineers training based on seniority, if the class doesn’t fill, they can and did force the youngest person off the conductors extra board.

While it isn’t often explained, the conductor is the trains “boss” he bears the responsibility of the rest of the crews actions, plans the work, and manages the way it’s done, but the conductor and engineer share some responsibilities and duties, safety wise and such.