Back in 1979 I graduated from HS, and like most 17 year olds I had a simplistic and somewhat naive view of the world. Since I wanted to work for the railroad I figured all I’d have to do was to head down to the hiring office, fill out an application, and wait for them to call me with my start date.
Well…it didn’t work out that way. I showed up at the hiring office, and the clerk there who was taking applications asked what position I would be interested in. I told him “train service”. He told me that would be out of the question as I would not be able to pass the physical. I just about fell over…in HS I was the guy doing laps around the track without evening breaking a sweat. I was lean and muscular…fit to take on the world. “You wear glasses” he said… “and that excludes you from train service”. I wonder if that’s still the case today. Not that I’m considering a career switch…at 45 I’m probably too old to make that kind of a move now, and besides I’m happy with my current lot. Just curious is all…
No these days as long as your sight is corrected to 20/20 you can wear anything, in fact even those not wearing glasses have to wear them now, Safety glasses
Murph, what’s with that icon? Looks like an LP you found in at a garage sale!!! [xx(][xx(][xx(] I mean, that’s supposed to be a herald of one of the finest trains on earth but it looks like it failed the Tom Wolfe Kool-Aid test.
Back to topic …
When I hired out the doc spent all his time checking if I had a bad back and never once checked my vision or especially my color vision – the one thing you absolutely have to have in an operating craft. Apparently he had only done physicals for the engineering department.
There are several old promo films out there that show engineers and trainmen wearing glasses…some from as far back as the 40s…I think you were just given the bums rush simply because he could…
The up side to all of this is that if your vision with glasses can be corrected to 20/20 then you can be hired for train service and the other thing is that I was your age when I hired on the Union Pacific here in Iowa and have been them for almost 10 years now, It was the best decision I ever made I live a dream every time I put my bib overalls on and go to work hope this helps Larry
No, I don’t think so, Eddy, it used to be that way. Those guys wearing glasses that you saw on those old promotional films started wearing glasses later or got through the eye exam by other means. It was like that with the N&W, anyway, I daresay it was like that most places.
Some places, you had to be 21, too, know a retiree who tried to hire out on the B&O, say about 1962 or 3, but they wouldn’t take him, hired out on the NKP instead at 18 and retired from NS.
I guess it could depend on the railroad you’re applying with. I know a few guys who hired out in the 70’s and wore glasses. 45 isn’t too old to hire out, I know guys in their late 50’s who did, I guess it depends on weather you want a career change.
I hired out at 40 years old 6 years ago and need glasses to see, as long as you have 20/30 corrected your fine those are the min requirements set by the fra.
I hired out at 34 no glasses ( yet lol) The physical I had was focused more on like shoulder elbow hip and knee injuries.Real weird machine you had to get on and play with.Also the whole color blind test, I have had that book memorized at one time as we got it every year in the Navy and then every two years for DOT physicals.Never has changed ( except for the one smart aleck doc that took the pages out and switched em around )
I now have to go get a eye exam and hearing test as I just got accepted into the engineer program. I havent had either since I started but the company offers a screening at least. I just was never at work when the testers were there.
Did I mention that my glasses are 8 inches thick? Hahahaha…just kidding. [:D]
Good to hear things have changed over the years…The no glass thing was definitely the rule at CP Rail out of Kamloops, BC in 1979…same with CN. They wouldn’t fire someone already hired who needed glasses…but you had to have perfect 20/20’s to be hired in the first place.
Also, back then the railroad job applications asked “Do you have a relative who is employed by the railroad?”. If you answered “no” your application didn’t get very far…or at least so I’ve heard.
Nowadays regulations are so much better…Employers can nolonger arbitrarily discriminate based on things like gender, glasses or no glasses, race, etc. In fact, the rules may have swung too far the other way.
Some railroads wanted to know if you had relatives working because they would not hire close relatives for the same position on the same seniority district. For example, if Dad was in train service on district A, Junior couldn’t work there in train service, but could hire out on district B. Some were just the opposite and you almost had to have a relative working there. Especially on some short lines.
There was an article in Trains around the mid 1970s about a guy who hired out on the Great Northern shortly before the BN merger. He had tried to get into train service on various midwestern railroads but was disqualified because he wore glasses. The GN changed it’s requirements and he was able to hire out. There probably isn’t a single date when railroads changed their policies. More likely it happened one by one.
I think it depends on the individual railroad, and how desperate they were at the time. In the summer of 1970 I tried to get a job on GTW’s Detroit Division–I knew about 80 percent of the conductors and brakemen (and a couple of trainmasters, a traveling engineer, and a superintendent) who worked on that division, and every one of them would have vouched for me. But I wore glasses, so no dice. I could have gone to work on a section gang, or waited for a clerk job to open.
So, beginning in late 1970, I discovered that C&NW was hiring. I asked whether glasses were a problem: not if I could pass the physical. I passed every test they threw at me, and was hired in early 1971, along with about 15 other people in my weekly training class alone, some of whom would never have made it in the post-Gates era (sorry, Ricky!). However, the fact that I wore glasses made an annual physical a requirement for me for many years thereafter (and those physicals weren’t just vision tests!). The railroad eventually got away from that, and I eventually got away from my glasses. The last time I saw a company physician was after my biking accident in 1987.
In mid 1965 I was asked by the B&OCT to come down to Grand Central (I was working for GTW, 3rd hours at Blue Island Jct) for an interview and physical.
I failed the physical…because I was 6’5", B&O allowed 5’10" as the maximum height. The doctor showed it to me in writing.
So apparently I wasn’t alone…It is sad that some careers were probably quashed by such arbitrary requirements. It really makes one think and feel for those folks who weren’t hired for other reasons… like racial discrimination. In most ways the good old days weren’t so good.