Say you are an engineer or conductor on a particularly clogged up day, and you go dead on hours sitting on a siding WAY out in the middle of nowhere.
For conveniance, lets say 70 miles from the nearest room and board.
And that you go dead at 7 PM, it takes 2 hours for them to get relief to you, and it takes another hour for you to get settled into the motel for rest, so, at 10 PM you are able to rest.
How soon can they call you back, at minimum? I thinlk NS told me they have an 8 hour turn around, so would that put you back on call at 3 AM or 6 AM the following morning?
After working twelve hours and waiting for tow-in, you’re entitled to ten hours’ rest (and you can specify that it be undisturbed) from the time you tie up at your designated terminal.
Ten hours’ rest is mandatory after twelve hours of service.
H’mmm, maybe the guy who ran the hiring session I attended was just trying to impress us with the demands the RR would be placing on us, but I coulda sworn he said “8”…
He was also suggesting the 2 hour call could eat into the tail end of the rest period…Maybe that is where he got the 8 hour figure?
you get 10 hours of rest if you work the 12 hour maximum. If you work 11hrs 59min., you are only required to have 8 hours of rest. And yes, normally your two hour call is during your rest period.
You’re going to get a lot of different answers but you went to an NS hiring session so you’re looking for an NS answer. Forget about the two hour call, you’ll get an hour-and-a-half call. Forget about rolling for rest, there’s little chance of that happening, either.
You could theoretically be called for 6 AM with the question that you’ve asked. If you showed relieved of responsibility after 11:59 minutes, then you need only eight hours rest at your away-from-home terminal, meaning the phone could ring after 6 1/2 hours, and ten hours undisturbed rest at your home terminal. However, if you showed relieved of responsibility at 12:00 hours, then you will get ten hours rest at your away-from-home terminal, meaning the phone could ring after eight-and-one-half hours but you’re still gonna get ten hours undisturbed rest at your home terminal.
NS established a policy that road crews would get ten hours undisturbed rest at their home terminal several years ago.
General question ? Typically, day in and day out, what share of your work load goes with the “earliest possible call back”? Does that happen infrequently/some/most/all of the time, or does it tend to go in spurts, where it just depends on the customer load of the railroad, but not so often that it’s a constant?
Not that what i think matters, but to me it would seem that if this is just constant and a way for the railroad to minimize crewsize, that would suck. but if it’s just one of those periodic things to cover spikes in business, then it seems more reasonable.
The interviewer made it sound like it was gonna be 10 on, 8 off, 10 on, 8 off, (etc) for months…which sounds a bit overkillish…(fwiw)
10 on 8 off 10 on etc. The problem is the rotating sleep clock enforced on your body. You will go thru one complete “Flip” every 2 or three days. Gonna find yourself eating dinner fare at 8 in the morning sometimes.
Trucking has rules very similar to railroads but it is my experience that they are “Paper tigers” with no real standing in trucking. If the wheels aint turning no one is happy. You drove until the load is delivered then slept a day and pulled together for the next 4 or 5 days of cross country fun.
They come get you when your time’s up and you sleep asap. That phone will ring soon enough calling to duty. You never really are off duty until you are parked in your driveway with a paid vacation or authorized time off.
I think the Union Pacific asks that when the phone rings you need to be AT the job and moving something on the clock within a hour and half of the telephone ringing.
Not everyone can handle the 10 8 10 8 cycle. But those that do… I salute ya for you keep the railroad running.
No, it’s not like that constantly, 8/10, work all the time without end, but it can be that way when business is good or lots of people are on vacation or the weather is bad, causing outlaw relief jobs to proliferate. As for laying off two days each and every week, that would be an attention-getter, too, getting you attention you wouldn’t want.
Should have gone back to another hiring session, Gates, some of these guys have been to more than one before they took them on, then you could be experiencing it for yourself.
The 10/8/10/8 or even 11:59/8/11:59/8 can go on for months at a time and then there might be some respite. Lots of factors get brought into consideration here. There are also those trips where you hog out on the hours of service, wait a couple of hours for the van to show up, spend another hour or more getting to the final terminal and then go to work on your rest. Trip after trip.
It ain’t a pretty lifestyle at times. Only after you try it will you know if you really can do the work. It was easier when I was under 50 yrs old than it is now that I have passed 50.
Thanks for the well wishes, and you never know, I just might try again.
The “opportunity” to go to work twice on each calandar day did play a factor in dampening my enthusiasm, just being honest.
Not that I mind work and long hours, my last job was salaried and 12 hour days, for 4straight years,…but, the weekends were dependably there, which made it liveable. I could do the things I needed to do.
Sounds to me like the “time off” you have to look forward with the RR is what most other folks call ‘layed off’, just without the formality.
Going home and not knowing when the next time the phone would ring would suck too.
Not that the job doesn’t have it’s perks too, but that aspect of “when we stop making your life a living 4ell with the phonecalls every 8 hours is when you can plant your garden, take out your boat, or watch TV” is a bit intimidating
And I thought the trucking industry had some bizarre practices. I know there are Federal rules { some use them like guidelines: total 15 hrs on, and 8 off for a total of 80 per week, since have been changed}. You basically were ready to go when the trailer was empty and slept catch as catch can. In some ways railroad rules are better but still pound the devil out of an individual’s biorythems.
I don’t know which railroad you were looking at, AntiGates, but you might be lucky enough to catch a job in a yard, where you begin work at roughly the same time every day.
Of course, that’s only after you get enough seniority to get off the extra board and onto a regular job. Still, most of the yard jobs strat work within a certain couple of hours, three tricks per day (you could get calls for jobs starting between 0630 and 0759, 1430 and 1559, and 2230-2359). These jobs usually work only eight hours. In our yard, there are also possibilities to catch transfer runs that will do 12-and-tow, but most of the time you’ll be working eight hours or thereabouts. Generally, you’ll have a bit of time to rest in the middle of the week, but you might be called out on your rest on the weekends.
It really doesn’t take too long before you’re able to hold a regular job–eight hours or so per day, five days a week (the days off aren’t often on the rest of civilization’s weekend, but you do get a couple of days of breathing time).
Well, maybe I’ve been unclear about that, but having tuesday and wednesday off instead of saturday and sunday wouldn’t bother me a bit.
And it wouldn’t bother me to have the days float week to week either, Nor would it bother me to not get a weekend, every now and then, when business is strong.
But, a day or two off each week (to do laundry, shop for groceries, mow the lawn, etc) is what living is all about, yanno?
And the way everyone makes it sound , it would be 10/8/18/8… for 3-4 weeks solid, followed by aperiod where the phone just doesn’t ring…And I’m not sure i can be that flexible.
The guy running the hiring session said it was typically 5 years to get off the extra board, and into some routine.
Gates, don’t sweat it! There are options. Don’t burn any bridges at yer ole job. If it sucks go back. The RR blows at first, then it still blows, but, you will work it out and find time. You figure it out…trust me. I wouldn’t be so worried about my schedule as much as if I would be able to hold and what I would be able to hold over the winter. As far as turnin’ and burnin’ you will get to the point that you become a little greedy and want to turn. We have an option on the computer at work (remote too) to see what kinda pay we have accumulated for the half. When you see that little number start growing, you don’t wanna stop. Pretty soon at the end of the half, you’ll want to get called on duty before 00:00 to get one more ticket on that half. You don’t wanna make a habit of it (don’t know what N.S. attendance policy is like), you can layoff. If you are on a guarenteed board, it will affect your guarentee. I say screw it…go for it! If you are gonna take the plunge, do it now and get your seniority established. It’s all we got out here.
Thanks for the positive thoughts,…yeah, I can be greedy too, so that is a definite UP side… [:)]
And, working a train could be a fun job .
i think they got some kind of agreement with the employees here locally where they pay you by the trip and not by the hour, which sounds “dangerous”… like I could be spending an extra 4 hours/day sitting in clogged sidings not getting paid for it. Cause I’m sure the “trip pay” is factored on a 8 hour shift, and if you spend 12 that’s just tough for you,…which…again is one of those things that wouldn’t be unmanageable in limited doses, but as soon as it became a regular bit, it would get annoying.
