Hello everyone, I am doing some research on how rule compliance is handled by trainmasters on the various class 1 railroads. I am looking for any feedback from train service personel who have been working in the field for the past 10 years only please. Having been previously employed by one of the most strict class one railroads out there, I am looking for examples from others on the various ways the trainmasters with your railroad have caught rule violators (Example, my previous employer hid raw eggs in the switches in the yards to see if the points were being checked for obstructions before lining the switches) and how violations are dealt with (My employer hand a method called S.T.A.R.T. which the minimum punishment was 15 days on the street without pay) Please keep this clean, Do not use names of trainmasters but do tell me your postion (engineer / conductor) and which railroad you work for: Union Pacific, CSX, BNSF, Kansas City Southern or CN/IC
Thanks in advance for your contributions to my research
The Conductor 03: Please read the private message I sent you and get back to me. Click on the conversations button to the right of your post, 5 lines above the box that says control panel.
I didn’t have as many problems with the discipline from rules violations as I did with some of the rules themselves. For example. I don’t know if CSX still does this, but when I was there we were required to keep a log of signal indications, including speed, track, direction and time. It really was a waste of time and a big distraction. Most of the time I would just only write down any change in tracks or a restrictive indication, then fill in the rest in the hotel. There were some other dumb ones as well. I can only imagine what new rules have been written in the last seven years since I left.
Why worry about discipline. Sign up for derail insurance and look forward to a two week paid vacation next time you make an order of “scrambled switch points”.
Wow okay, quite a suspicious bunch we have here. The railroad was Norfolk Southern. Yes I was a conductor with them. I quit on my own volition (the company I left to work for the railroad offered me a handsome amount of money to come back and take over my original position after they had a number of walk outs shortly after I quit. I am working on a story however, a fictional story, but I want it based on some reality so I need to know if other railroads are similar. The egg story was just a rumor I had heard. I’m not even sure they really do that.
You must not have worked for the railroad very long if you do not understand why we are suspicious. Esp.when you just join and ask such a loaded question. Any rules violations I’ve had are between me and the managers that discovered said violation. I would caution any RRer about publicly disclosing any specific information. You never know who is watching…
Considering the paranoia people have developed since 9/11 you are correct in that there may be people lurking just to discover if the posters are perhaps one of their employees.
I’m not a ‘rail’ but the attitude toward ‘security’ bugs me.
Well the way I see it, if the man is no longer in the business, then he no longer has a need to know.
Besides, did you notice how the original posted morphed from “I want examples of how Trainmaster dealt with safety violations and rules violators” to “I’m writing a fictional book”.
Thanks Rick, when we were in school in Georgia, we were at a waffle house and we were approached by a guy from CSX who told us he thought that they were too strict and wanted to know if NS was hiring. I don’t remeber what craft he told us he was in, But we told him that obviously he didn’t know about NS legendary commitment to safety. It does make me wonder why he thought they were too strict there. What you mentioed above doesn’t seem that bad
Hey Jeff, I do not know who was responsible for the egg test. There were actually a couple of tactics supposedly employed to catch railroaders making violations. I never actually saw this or any of the tricks rumored to catch people breaking rules. I never understood why a company would pay so much to hire a persson and then spend so much time trying to get rid of them. I was there only a short while. 3 months to be exact. Nearing the end of the third month my previous employer called me and asked if I would be willing to come back. It was nights and weekends off and more money than when I left. So I took it.
The Great Lakes Division Manager once told a group of us employees that each injury cost the railroad an average of $200,000, and that their goal was to reduce the number of injuries of all seventies. Large companies do cost benefit analysis of every aspect of their operation and feel that the payback from certain rules outweigh the loss of productivity. The railroad industry, being governed by the archaic FELA instead of no fault workers compensation, has a greater paranoia about injuries that any other industry.
I do remember being told that in event of a locomotive fire the crew was not permitted to fight that fire with the extinguishers on board, but was to stop the movement, get away and let it burn. Their rationale was that because railroaders were not trained in the proper use of extinguishers the railroad would be liable if an employee was injured fighting a fire. The extinguishers are there in compliance with FRA regulations, but are not to be used in any circumstance. Certainly flies in the face of common sense.
Whew! I wonder how that would fly on a Navy vessel, or on an Air Force tanker, or in the turret of a main battle tank. We were trained to fight fires in the military because the burning objects were considered to be valued property, and essential to the success of the mission.