Steam Wages

[diningcar]

The jobs which required the most seniority in 1956 -57 on the 202 mile First Dist. of Santa Fe's Colorado Division were from La Junta to Dodge City.

Fast Mail #8 left LaJunta at 7:15 AM and with three stops arrived at Dodge City at 10:45. Then time for lunch and Fast Mail #7 leaving Dodge City at 1:30 with no stops to La Junta arriving at 4:35. Then off for two days and do it again. Four days pay after being away from home for about 12 hours.

[BaltACD]

kenny dorham

Thanks everybody, looks like things  "varied"  more than i thought.

Although.....in my defense.....i think i have forgotten How MANY different rail roads there were back then.

Thanks Again

In the late1990's I happened upon some CSX files detailing the corproate lineage of the C and the S in CSX.  As I recall there were approximately 500+ corporate identities that through mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcy reorganizations formed the Chessie System up to CSX formation day.  There were also about 400+ that were identified on the Seaboard side of the corporation.   These were in the days prior CSX's acquisition of its portion of ConRail.  I can only imagine the corporate lineage of those former ConRail properties.

[tree68]

kenny dorham

.i think i have forgotten How MANY different rail roads there were back then.

I have a 1957 Official Guide - it's easily two inches thick, on flimsy paper.  The major lines might have a dozen pages or so.  But there were also pages with several railroads on them.  There were a lot of railroads.

[BEAUSABRE]

Back around the turn of the century, a division was about 100-150 miles, which was the area a crew was expected to operate within. Due to train speeds back then, that was a full day's work for a crew. As an example, when my dad was firing for the L&A out of Hunt Yard in Greenville, Texas in the late Thirties, his crew district was west to Dallas (tieing up in the ATSF yard) from Greenville and from Greenville east to Shreveport. Other L&A divisions ran from Shreveport to Hope, Arkansas and New Orleans. Dallas - Greenville is about 50 miles and Greenville - Shreveport is about 135-140 miles. Total distance Dallas - Shreveport is about 185-190 miles, but I am not sure if a crew was expected to go the full distance. A crew out of Dallas might come off in Greenville and another then might take her to Shreveport. That way a crew went Home to Division end, then Division end to Home the next day, rather than ping-ponging between Dallas and Shreveport and never getting home to Greenville. 

il_794xN.2179991178_7osf.jpg (794×759) (etsystatic.com)

 

[kenny dorham]

Thanks everybody, looks like things  "varied"  more than i thought.

Although.....in my defense.....i think i have forgotten How MANY different rail roads there were back then.

Thanks Again

[jeffhergert]

I noticed there was a footnote that the pay was for Eastern District railroads.  For both trainmen and enginemen.

The 100 mile freight/150 mile passenger day is a minimum, not a maximum.  It doesn't mention it, but for miles over the basic 100/150, the rate changes due to "overmiles."  Most runs weren't exactly 100 or 150 miles.  Some were less and the minimum payment applied.  Most were over and the overmiles would kick in to the equation.  Also many times on the fast passenger trains, the runs would be interdivisional.  That is, over two crew districts.

I have rules and rates of pay for Rock Island engineers and brakemen/conductors ffor a few dates, the oldest being 1943.  (Each union had it's own set of rules and rates of pay.  Before the UTU was formed, there could be up to four unions representing each craft.)  I checked the basic 8 hour day for freight service from the 1966 schedule to what it is today.  It was pretty close, when figured for inflation.  The 1929 schedule (I used the engineer's numbers - the rate that reflected the heaviest weight on drivers.) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjusted for today is way low for the unionized carriers.

They must have had some gains that were better than inflation between 1929 and 1966.

Jeff

[tree68]

Plugging in the minumum pay for a passenger conductor ($7.50 per day) to an inflation calculator gives us a minumum pay of $118.07 in today's dollars.  

Conductors were paid by the mile, according to the linked document.  The minumum is based on a 150 mile day, plus a little.

That $118.07, if applied to an eight hour day, works out to about $14.75 an hour.  

Variables do apply - like how long it took for a conductor's train to cover that 150 miles.  If it was a name train, he could potentially be done for the day in three hours...

[timz]

FWIW

https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bls_0476_1929.pdf

I saw an online book of SP pay rates for 1941 recently, but haven't refound it yet.

[kenny dorham]

I realize it could vary from SP to Rio Grand to Norfolk, but.............. generally speaking, circa 1935, what kind of pay difference was there between a Fireman and Engineer.?

Thank You