My son and the U.P.

[eolafan]

My 22 year old son has expressed interest in working for the Union Pacific Railroad. He is not sure in what capacity or direction he should go. He is a High School graduate with two years of college. He is 6'4" and about 225 lbs. and physically fit. He is intellegent and wants to begin a career that allows him to be somewhat independent of his Mom and me and also "see the country" a bit, and earn a good living. Might any of you have any tips on how he should go about looking into this and perhaps tips for the best route to take with the U.P.? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

You wont see too much of the country as a running trades employee, you will generally see the same stretch or stretches of track over and over and over again.

It's a good career as running trades, as long as you have no family and are willing to pretty much dedicate your life to the railway of choice.

[Anonymous]

Tell your son to finish college. If he applies to the UP with a four year degree he will be elligble for the management training program

[CSXrules4eva]

I agree w/ Mark. Make sure ur son finishes college first. Even if it's a two year college. Personally, I would advise ur son to become a locomotive engineer. UP is indemand for conductors and engineers. The pay is good, along w/ benifits, he'll get to travel alot and "see the country". Since u said ur son weighs 225 lbs and he's 6'4" I'm guessing he's a weight lifter. So he'll be great for lifting heavy 85lbs knuckles, and for walking more than 1 mile over the uneven terrain cheaking the train and coupling the air break lines.

[csxengineer98]

i think that since he is 22 years old..its time for him to start to make some choices about his life for himself.... i understand that you want whats best fro him..but you cant make all his chosise and hold his hand for the rest of his life...if he wants to go work for the railroad...let him go..if he dont like it..he can always quite and go back to college...colllege will always be thier.... the only way he will find out for sure that the railroad was the right or wrong choise is to go out and do it!!!!! myself and other railroaders can preach the good and bad all day long..but untill he is in the "trenches" so to speak he will never realy know what it is all about..... also... the railraods have always worked..regardless of what the economy is doing......and they cant outsorce T&E jobs yet...thier is some job securtiy unlike any office or manufacturing job sectors....
let him go for it... the wrost that can happen is he hates it and quits....
csx engineer

[RudyRockvilleMD]

My advice would be to finish college and get his batchelor's degree since this will give him more options. Then again he may find he may not like railroading after all so he has the capacity to try something else. By the way, in what field is your son majoring in or planning to major in?

[Anonymous]

CSXEnginner98 had the guts to "go against the flow" in this discussion. I have to agree with him.
31 years ago I made the decision to put my college education on hold, and begin my railroad career.
This took lots of guts to do, living in my overly intellectual, and snobbishly clean fingernailed community.
I incurred scorn and wrath from family, fellow churchmembers, former schooltreachers and a headmaster, even fellow members of my local model railroad club.
I have never regretted my decision to begin my career when I did, college education or none.
THAT BEING SAID, I can't say that I think that the above advice to finish college is BAD advice, but I also feel that it is not the only or universal answer.
Working in Train or Engine service, dependably, day after day requires GOOD CHARACTER, and STRONG CONSTITUTION, and they don't neccesarily teach that in universities.

[fuzzybroken]

I didn't go to college, but I don't work for a railroad either. (There, that's my disclaimer.)

Tell him to go for it. He's got two years of college behind him, and two years of not college, so I'm sure he has some idea how much he likes college. Sure, management might be nice, but wouldn't it be better to get some railroad experience first?

Railroading is a hard career choice! The pay is good, but the hours are usually horrible at best. [:O] He might get lucky and end up on a job that has a regular schedule, but chances are he won't. At two hours' notice, he has to go work -- ANY TIME OF THE DAY.

Look in your local/area paper's employment section. UP has been advertising for jobs in some newspapers. Next, check out their website ( http://www.up.com ), there's a link to "Jobs at UP" at the bottom. I just checked it, there's no "train service" (i.e. conductor/engineer) openings listed for Illinois, mostly MOW and the like. Finally, he shouldn't limit himself to UP. If he's in the Chicago area, there are LOTS of railroads to choose from! And they're probably all hiring too...

[2c],
-Mark Hintz
http://www.geocities.com/fuzzybroken

[ValleyX]

Listen, it's very simple, if he wants to railroad, he'll find a way to do it but I'm surprised that he doesn't really know what capacity, there's occupations on the railroad that people don't see a train or hardly know what a train looks like. Usually, if someone wants to railroad specifically, they want to ride trains, which means starting out as a conductor.

He's not going to see the country, as it were, he's going to see the same country over and over and over, as has been expressed by an earlier poster.

It isn't the best way to live, if he becomes a T&E person, wouldn't really recommend it to anyone but he'll soon know if he wants to learn to tolerate it or not. Yeah, and he'll be independent of you and MOM because you may not see him for days on end (or maybe a form sleeping in a bed, getting up to answer the phone).

[Anonymous]

Might as well start by looking at the UNION PACIFIC web site employment page:

http://www.uprr.com/employment/index.shtml

More than 300 jobs are listed