Where did this nickname come from as it sounds slightly insulting.
I was told once that on our property the engineers all worked 7 days and wanted all the money they could make . I am sure there are other reasons as well . I have been a engineer for 10 years now and still don’t know really .
Can’t really remember, but I believe engineers were called hoggers back in the day of the steam engines. I’m sure some of our railroad employees can give us the correct answer. And I’m not really sure why the people started calling them hoggers.
From the Railroad Language Dictionary:
**HOG-**Any large locomotive, usually freight. An engineer may be called a hogger, hoghead, hogmaster, hoggineer, hog jockey, hog eye, grunt, pig-mauler, etc. Some few engineers object to such designations as disrespectful, which they rarely are. For meaning of hog law see dogcatchers. Hoghead is said to have originated on the Denver & Rio Grande in 1887, being used to label a brakeman’s caricature of an engineer.
Well if you think the nickname “Hogger” is slightly insulting, please consider that in these modern times some railroaders assign nicknames to locomotive engineers by gender, i.e., “hogheads” and “sowheads.” And engineers-in-training are known affectionately as “piglets!”
Is the TM known as “Eyeore?”
I enjoy getting called a hogger, I have earned that being it is an old term.
Rodney
Hogger BNSF
I’ve worked with many engineers - but not all of them I consider hoggers…
no…the TM is “tigger” with a bad additued…lol
csx engineer