Mark W Hemphill's last paragraph...

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Well now Mark,
Read you’r editorial in febuary 2004 issue of Trains…
now you have gone and let the cat out of the bag.
The next to last paragraph, where you let the secret out, about people no longer needing to work for a railroad.
To quote
“Worse, railroads have frittered away most of the know how and loyalty they need and -some will not get this- it will never come back without a complete cultural change.
No one needs to work for a railroad anymore.
But they might want to.”

You know better that to tell the truth out where railroad management can read it!.
Now they are going to know we work here because we want to, not because we have to!

And all this time we were using their ignorance against them, and they never knew we were having fun.

As soon as they can, trainmasters will try to take all the fun out of work…great, just what I needed, another boring job.
I am going to miss picking on trainmasters…

Seriously, you hit the spike on the head.

No one needs to works for a railroad anymore, its not that high paying a career anymore, my UPS driver earns more per hour than I do, and works less!

I railroad because it is what I want to do, not because it is the only job I could find, after all, I left a job with my state’s Attorney General’s Office to go switching.

And most of the folks I work with could find better paying, 9 to 5 jobs.

It would startle most people to know how many college degrees are running locomotives and pulling pins.

Every railroads upper management needs to read that paragraph over and over to themselves a few times, and let it sink in.

Skilled and experienced railroaders are here because we want to be, not because we have to.

Loyalty to “your” railroad is just about gone, they are driving the knowledgable guys away in droves.

And it is going to come back and bite them

2

Ed, I don’t want to say it, for much the same reason you probably didn’t want to write it, but I am afraid that you are right. Bad dispatching, bad observance of the rules, inexpert train handling … … …

3

I generally find Mark Hemphill’s editorials extremely constructive even when very critical. One more reason I hope I can always be a Trains subscriber.

4

Railroading isn’t alone concerning crew shortage. Long-haul trucking is running into a similar problem and the new hours-of-service rules won’t help.
I wouldn’t venture a guess on offering a solution but one quality-of-life issue may be a sticking point for either railroading or trucking: the fact that you spend a lot of time away from home and family unless you’re in local service.

5

Well yes and No

I love my Job, plain and simple. If there was a sudden Transit strike, I would find an engineer, and we would have the only Train running on time. Why? I hate unions, And I hate Strikes, All I want to do is what I do best. WORK. and no strike/storm/ or anyhting else is foinf to stop me from working… holding up a picket sign, what good does that do other then inconvienience the passengers? I’ve worked on that job now for a few years, and for those people who have said that that will wear of, and you’ll be wanting a strike so you don’t have to do any work… Heres a news flash… it hasn’t worn off, and I still love my work and the people.

I hate statements like that. They are so general. If i could disagree anymore, I WOULD. Conductors will always be needed on the passenger service to keep the People inline, and to keep the journey rolling along smoothly and safely.

People up in Canada have a NEED to work for the Railway, perhaps we are the only nation who realizes it’s true value. We realize up here, that my watch will be maximum 5 to 10 minutes different from yours (not including time change) yeah, you can that the Railraod for Standerdizing time. Perhaps we Realize that The Railroad Built Canada, and Not Canada built the Railroad. 80% of the population of Canada is located withing 20 - 50 miles of a major Railway except where major Cities have developed, Yeah we can thank them for that.

The Railraod started us off,

perhaps, and asuming you DON’T know your history, Mr. Hemphill, June 1st 1872, was a historic Date for Canada. The Canadian Pacific Railraod act was passed and a member of the house of commons, Sir Georges Etienne Cartier stood up and yelled “ALL Aboard for the WEST!” that was one of the few times, no matter what you where, liberal, or a Torie, you stood up and aplauded. Since

6

Very nicely put, Ed!

Right now, I’m with you…an older head who still looks forward (most of the time) to going to work and being at work. (And I still say that I won’t retire when I become eligible to.) But it never gets any better, does it?

7

From my detached point of view, it would seem that no one needs to work for the railroads these days…

Why in the world would you even consider it? It’s a dirty, hard life that is full of rules and can be rather unforgiving of complacency…Instead you can go to college or even a trade school and work in the IT field or any of the other service fields and be in a nice cushy office. It’s not like the years past when the RR may have been the only job around.

I tend to think that you have to want to do it. Becasue that’s what you want to do becasue you enjoy it or are driven to it. It’s like being in the military or even flying. Nobody made me do it. I didn’t do it becasue I’m an ultranationalist or war junky or something like that. I did it because it’s what I wanted to do and enjoy it…most the time, and as such I have agreed to put up with the parts I don’t like to enjoy the parts I do.

I could have gone and done a nice, safe, clean 9-5 job and quite frankly, I would have been bored to tears and after almost 15 years, I am starting to come to the realization that it will be over soon and I’ll have to get a real JOB. Who knows maybe, I will go to the railroads…heck I don’t know what it’s like not to live out of a bag. Maybe the airlines (but like the RRs they aren’t what they used to be either), maybe go be a small town sheriff or a school teacher (they get to carry guns don’t they?). I think that RR folks are probably the same way.

It seems that with all the tech and service and etc jobs out there…driving the economy, the only folks that work for the RRs have got to be folks that want to do it.

So that being said…why don’t the RR folks take the next step and go the Jet Blue or Southwest route. Collectively buy a big chunk of the RR and put employees in the driver seat, as shareholders and employees. Make your RR one “the top ten places to work in America” …Don’t like the CEO…ditch em, get a new one…promote

8

dharmon: CNW tried it, didn’t work.

Unihead: Could not agree with you more.(!)

MarkH.: Kneiling rubbed off on you? Amen!

From MudChicken’s Point of View: How come senior (mis-)management, the Wall Street Trash (The fast buck artists) and the (lack-of) management consultants never:

(1) admit they made a mistake?
(2) learn from their mistakes?
(3) figured out that the difference between “lean and mean” and “starving and stupid” is very small and that the latter wipes out any long term viability of any company.

Since 1995, the engineering and maintenance side of the industry has been making noise about the lack of training and new people being infused into the pipeline. The generation gap in people working out on line has been visible since I went to work on the railroad in 1980 and has only gotten worse. As the rest of the old heads retire in the next 5-10 years, the loss of institutional memory is going to cost railroads severely.

Mudchicken[banghead]

9

I have to admit that I have not read Mark’s writings yet…

MC - did CNW fail because of employee “mismanagement” or was it a case of existing unprofitability? I ask because a company like Southwest created and maintains its own market, even in times of airline downturn. JetBlue, another company which has large employee share is doing well too, while the “majors”, which share many of the issues that the major RRs suffer, seem to be having problems, even after merging and remerging to try and increase efficiency. Again, remember, I trying to look at this from an outside perspective, not as a railfan or railroader. It’s not an emotional issue for me.

Similiarly, who will train the new generation…well, you will. You will do it by showing them how its done. This is a topic which presents itself both in avaition and military all the time…when all the guys that fought in the last war are gone, who will be training the new guys…every squadron I’ve been in it’s been the same, the guys learn and then they do, and they make mistakes and learn from them and go on. And often times the new guys comes in with fresh new blood and ask us old guys why we do things the way we do and why don’t we do it this way instead…and sometimes they are right too. We the “experienced” ones don’t always have the corner on the “right way to do it market” The RRs are no different from the service in that respect. There will always be the generation that is us, saying who is going to teach the new guys, look at them, they know nothing…who is going to maintain that core professional knowledge of time and experience. We do and we we have to pass it on, becasue in ten years the guy that was following you around asking the whys is going to be the guy with some newbie following him around…and he’s going to asking his peers…“who’s going to teach these guys…”

And will there will have to be a huge change in RR culture, the answer is yes. Twelve years ago, my squadron

10

All this Buzz about new this and New that

For some of you I suspect, you probobly thought i’m about 45, been working For the Railraod for about 20 of those years now, and have a Girlfriend who is 18, making our Age gap only… now let’s see 4 take the 1 place it beside the 8 making that 15, Subtract 8, thats 7 then taking the reamining 3 minus the one… thats… 27! 27 years apart from each other!

For those of you who thoguht this, you havn’t checked my profile, and you obviously havn’t been paying attention. For those of you who knew this already, I’m 19, been a conductor for 2 years. i’m 1 year older then My Girlfriend. not 27.

Why the hell am i Spewing this out, simple some of you appear to have some sort of problem with Training new people for the job, look at me i’ve been trained well, I’ve only hit 6 people, not my Quota maximum of 10 a year!

see i’m better off then some other Engineers out there already!

and what do you mean, Teenagers can’t do the job? You know, most of you must be right, so who votes i should take a hammer, swing it to my lower jaw so my top teeth hang over my lower jaw, and begin talking in incomplete sentances and using the wrong words, That don’t work! i’m a teenager I probobly should be out at a party getting drunk of getting laid… Yeah rock on, man

I hate to burst anyones bubble, but not all teenagers are like that. I have the skill and the maturity, wich some of you seem to have a hard time understanding that some teenagers ACTUALLY do have a tad bit of maturity in them… I KNOW! i couldn’t believe it either, actually I just saw it on the 5 o clock news.

I’m not a big partier, I always know who’s sleeping beside me, and the latest i’ve ever shown up for wark is 25 minutes early.

Oh and my training, some of you are fussing about Training, mine was simple.

My best guess, is that some of you, jsut can;'t picture a younger person taking your job, and it’s hard

11

Ed
I have a friend who retired from railroading.I sent him pics and that. He said that he is happy that Matt and I are enjoying trains but he has seen enough of them in his life.charles roberts in his east end book asks “why is it that men and women with the most dirtiest hardest and most dangerous jobs weather it be rider brakeman soilder trackman garbageman or cop always get the lowest pay?”(i will add fireman too) it should be the other way around.just my two cents
stay safe
Joe

12

Hey, Kevin — ease up, lad. When I would go off the deep end about some subject or another, after waiting for me to stop for a breath, he’d say “Put a sock in it! Let your mouth rest a bit and your ears do some work for a change.” So listen a minute, please.

You have your opinion and we can see that it is strongly held. That is OK, because change does not come from milquetoast. However, change or even the simple acceptance of your opinion by others comes much quicker when one uses the “humble approach”. With that method, I get up on my soap box and say my peice and then get down, you, then, get up on your soap box and say your piece and then get down. I listen to you and you listen to me, whether or not we agree, we do it as gentlemen. Then, being the gentlemen we are, we go off together to railroad, you run the engine and I’ll take the tickets - TOGETHER we will make the train run.

Now, I’ll be quiet and you can take the sock out, having wearied your ears listening to an old fart who has been around more barns, yards and wrecks in my 60 years than you even know exist.

I’ll sit back, now, and listen to you and consider your thoughts. My sock has been inserted.

13

Hi Kevin,

Dude, I think you missed Marks point, or I didnt express it in quite the manner he intended…

He wasnt asking “do we need railroads?”
I think he was asking, “do railroads know how badly they need us?”

What he was trying to get across was that, at one point in time, almost every small town and city in America and Canada had one major employeer, a railroad.
The railroad brought the people who built the towns, and employeed most of the population.

If you needed a job, you almost had to ask the railroad for work.

You needed to work for the railroad, because there wasnt any other jobs around.

And railroads could be picky about who they hired, you almost had to have a relative working there to get on.

Now, things have changed…

there are many other jobs, blue collar jobs, that pay better than railroading.

And railroads cant be picky anymore, they are out of people.

People no longer need to work for a railroad to make a decent living.

What he was pointing out was that some people, me, you, wabash, kenno and mudchicken, work for railroads because we want to, not because we have to.

No one doubts you love your job, myself, I almost cant remember the last jobs I had before railroading.

Dan, your right, the young guys will learn by trial and error, but like flying, they have to have the basics taught to them, you dont turn a rookie loose in a F11 to practice first, someone, like you, teaches them the basics over and over till they can do it in their sleep, then let them solo.

Sadly, the railroads dont think it is necessary anymore.

So we have two week wonders, (instead of 90 day wonders), as conductors on big, dangerous trains.

Here is a scary though.

Unlike the military, where boot camps, be it Navy, Army or Airforce, even the Marines, are all pretty muck alike, railro

14

Ed,

Your right, we don’t stick"em a plane and go “off you go”. But there is a huge difference between teaching someone to fly and making them a pilot and making them a combat pilot. That’s like high school, college and masters difference. What I was trying to say is that … I was the young dude in a world of Desert Storm veterens…and they went…who’s gonnna teach this guy…he knows nothing … he and his buddies just want to chase tail, drink beer and mess around…they can barely fly the plane much less fight the plane, and they want to change the way we do things…a whole three years later, I’m leaving the unit, going, who they hell is going to teach these guys how to stay out of trouble…and less than a year later, I hear my old co-pilot is doing the things that I did…only better! What I was getting at was they are there (Naval Aviation or Union Pacific) because they want to be…it’s not the pay or the bennies, it’s the lifestyle, the camraderie, the thrill, etc. Every generation, heck every few years the guys say the same thing… The military goes through rich and lean years…some years we can fly the wings off the planes, some years we’re killing each other to get a couple of hours…it doesn’t matter. the old dudes train the new ones regardless, and sometimes the new dudes ask us why we do it a certain way, and we suddenly realize that because we’ve always done it this way isn;t the right answer. When guys start talkin bout …the new guys it starts to rub me…So if if takes awhile to to train a new dude or one from UP or BNSF to run PTRA, you do it. It helps you and it helps him, so it helps you. They don’t learn sometimes unless you do it.

Ed, I’m really not fightin , honest…but you said…so I’m going to use it againt you…

"And the culture of railroading is almost beyond the understanding of someone outside the industry looking in…throw out almost every business practice and guidline you

15

Ed, I have a whole drawer full of them! And you can call me Eric. I can send you a few, but they have already been used.[:-,]

And I don’t need to stay frosty tonight. It is 16 degrees and blowing a blizzard. We are supposed to have a foot of snow tonight. Oh, how I hope that weatherman is wrong. I got to work ahead of the plows. [sigh]

16

Ed, you really got it right in answering Kevin, and think you are really on the ball. Note that Mark is not afraid to point out that GM mentions EMD’s part in their organization and profit structure only in a footnotein their Annual Report. Everyone interesting the future of the rail industry should work together, and usually I find inspiration in TRAINS on how that can be accomplished. That, together with the nostalgia and the technical articles and the armchair experience of being on the property make it extremely worthwhile. When I get each issue, I am almost distracted from important matters that I must do because I find the material both interesting and enjoyable reading. Sometimes Mark makes a point very subtly that others of us would make by lashing out. He ran a story about a couple who like to live a car-free existance, and this made the point in an enjoyable and noncombatitive way that owning a car should, in a civilized country, be an option and not a necessity. He showed a 1960’s era photo of a streetcar on St. Charles in New Orleans (a beautiful ride, by the way, I recommend it if you are there, and it was once a steam railway), which made the point that there was no real good reason for any large USA city to scrap its streetcar network, and we all know why most cities were forced to do so and who was to blame. The reporting on the relationship between the Government and the Industry is important. And it is also obvious that he thinks highly of Canadians and Canadian railways, and that Canadian’s happiness is of concern to him just as citizens of the USA. When Israelis and Europeans ask me “What is your favorite American City?” I almost always reply, “My favorite USA city happens to be in Canada, Toronto.” Then: "Yes, because it is the only American city that decided that people were more important the automobiles. It kept its streetcars, not because there were tunnels or subways or huge stretches of rapid-transit-like right-of-way, but just ordinary streetcars, sharing the street w

17

Eric,
The reason I wanted to borrow one of yours is because all of mine are in use, or in the washing machine!

Dan, your right on the mark, military life is, like railroading, a closed society,
with it own code of behaviour and unwritten rules.

You already know why I correct people when they call me Mister Blysard, I tell them no, thats my father.

And yes, old heads, be it pilots or conductors, do teach and train the new guys, as a matter of self preseveration, if for no other reason.

None of us want to see a new guy get hurt, or killed.
Neither do we want to see one of our friends killed, or ourselves be hurt or killed because no one taught the new guy what to do, and what not to do.

My point was that railroads are counting on that, instead providing a basic boot camp first, they are just going through the motions, and counting on us to fill in the missing parts.

Now, I am by no means a old head, I have been railroading only 7 years, but came to this industry at age 38, a little older and more mature than most “new” guys, and had already discovered I am not bullet proof.

The new crop of trainees are almost all kids, ( no offense intended Kevin) so you already know their attitude.

I can teach a baboon to pull pins and line switches, but I cant teach one to use their judgement, nor can I give them skill at this, any more than you can give a skill to a fighter pilot, you can teach him to fly, and fly reallly well, but the skill to be the best is something he has to develope on his own.

I, and you, can nuture the “skill”, if it is already present, but we cant give or teach it to someone.

My beef was that the basics, how to safely get on and off a moving railcar, why a handbrake tied to tight is useless, what sounds should you listen for, why we dont take chances with this stuff, isnt being taught by the carriers.

And it is true, your pay, even as a combat p

18

Ed, I understand this attitude, this problem you speak of, does not exist on some of the regional and short line carriers, where there still is genuine pride in being part of the whole outfit. Would you advise a young aspiring railroader to get his first experience on one of the those railroads? Dave

19

See personally, I can’t imagoine 2 week wonders ruling the Railroad, my Training took 1 year, and another 6 months of taking various Engineer Tests.

Two weeks sounds like a breeze, but how can they compact a one year course (what I got) into Two weeks, or are there important things being left out?

I can’t imagine learning that quickly in two weeks. It would be impossible for me, I’m a fast learner but not two wekks fast learner.

20

Just a thought, but could the percieved lack of “pride in the RR” have a lot to do with the dim view the RR takes of fans? i.e. I don’t want to labelled as a foamer so I’ll pretend to not care.