Sorry for the intrusion, but a fellow asked me what a Roadmaster is and I couldn’t tell him. Could anyone here plaese fill me in?
Thanks - Ed
I don’t know the excite definition but a roadmaster is the supervisor in charge of all track operations, ( m-of-w, track conditions, train movement over bad track, road rules) and a trainmaster is the supervisor in charge of all train operations, ( crews, setout/pickup, equipment, train rules)
On a major railroad, the title of Roadmaster denotes a division officer in charge of the fixed plant of the division, i.e. track, bridges, etc. He jointly reports to the Superintendent on a divisional level and the Chief Engineer-Maintenance of Way on the system level. On most short lines, the Roadmaster is the person in charge of the fixed plant of the short line.
To give you a more understandable definition of a Road-Master, he or she is 99% of the time, an Engineer on the Rail-Road who is looking to move up in the Company. Usually a unqualified ‘Brown-Noser’ so to speak. Two of the Road-Master’s we have in our district were terrible ‘Hog-Head’s’, one even had a run-away on our Cascade Division due to the fact that they couldn’t control the ‘air’ while on a Mtn. run! Such is the way R.R.'s keep such a high quality of ‘Exempt’ staff to ensure quality performance…Hommie
What kind of railroad do you work for that permits maintenance of way personnel to operate trains?? Even on our little short line, the Roadmaster never operated anything other than his inspection hi-rail pickup truck! Or, is your mind so full of hatred for “management” that you don’t know the difference between a Roadmaster and a Road Foreman of Engines???
I guess I blew that one. As soon as I posted the entry, I realised that the ‘poster’ meant Road-Master. I don’t have a real hatred for my immediate management group, just a disgust for the upper and very distant echelons of the old Santa-Fe group that are ruining the B.N. that I enjoyed working for. It seem’s like the ‘tail is waging the dog’ for us in the Seattle region. We had to adopt their computer system that finally failed, and a few other component’s that have made life a bit more frustrating here…Hommie