Thomas 9011 Be careful what you wish for though.I was like you wanting to be a engineer.Once I was out on the road on the mainline for a few weeks I saw things alot different.I was working all shifts usually at night and my life was a mess.I couldn't plan events or travel very far as you never knew when you would get that phone call to be on a train.I was happy to have worked for the railroad but probably wouldn't do it again. A good job to have as a engineer is working a switch engine in a yard or picking up cars around town. They have set schedules and it is more like a normal job.
Be careful what you wish for though.I was like you wanting to be a engineer.Once I was out on the road on the mainline for a few weeks I saw things alot different.I was working all shifts usually at night and my life was a mess.I couldn't plan events or travel very far as you never knew when you would get that phone call to be on a train.I was happy to have worked for the railroad but probably wouldn't do it again. A good job to have as a engineer is working a switch engine in a yard or picking up cars around town. They have set schedules and it is more like a normal job.
Perhaps the best places to have locomotive engineer seniority today - other than MBTA, Metro-North, Long Island, NJ Transit, SEPTA, VRE, Chicago Metra, DART, SCRRA (Los Angeles Basin) and the Cal-Trans Peninsula Commuter Service - would be on the Q's BNSF's "Aurora Raceway" or any of the C.& N.W. Union Pacific Chicago suburban lines. At least with these operations you'll have some real variety including locals, through-freights, switch engines, and their respective commuter pools.
Amtrak operated commuter services or short haul corridors like Chicago-Milwaukee, Chicago-Carbondale, Chicago-Saint Louis, Chicago-southeastern Michigan, Oakland-Sacramento, or Los Angeles-San Diego offer similar advantages.
As you get older in age, the attactiveness of regular hours, fewer midnights, and regular days off begins to look better and better.
It isn't common practice but I every now and then I will get a engineer that will ask me if I would like to run the locomotive while moving cars around in a yard or maybe a short run a few miles down the road.If engineers know you have a love for trains and want to be a engineer they will sometimes let you operate the locomotive.It is of course against the rules but so is pissing off the side of the locomotive going 60mph down the mainline.I have also been on trains with many locomotives(many of them older) and told the engineer that I have always wanted to throttle up a SD40T-2(or whatever) and asked if I could start the train the next time we stopped.I have always gotten a yes on these request as he can just sit in the seat while I move the throttle lever up a few notches.
One time I was working a shift around 4am going down the mainline at 50mph with a long stack train.I noticed the engineer was falling asleep and waking up about ever two minutes or so.He said he could hardly stay awake and we might have to park the train on a siding while he either gets a hour or so sleep or calls for a new crew.I knew the route pretty well and it was on a flat grade.I told him I could take his place as a engineer by blowing the horn and keeping the train under the speed limit just by moving the throttle down or up.I also told him I would wake him up and throttle down if I saw a signal other than clear.He didn't like the idea but was too tired to argue.He got a little nap and I got promoted to engineer for the day.
With the risk of a public outcry here...
It's not uncommon that an engineer will let the conductor run if he needs to use the bathroom, etc. It's not feasible to stop when you're expected to cover X amount of miles, or do X amount of work while on a road-freight.
As long as the weed-weasels can't see into the cab, and there's no major operating challenges, I don't have a problem with it.
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also to i was wondering if it is common for the engineers to give the conductors a drive?
[/quote] [quote user="tery84_trainee"]
what are you asking? do they drive to work together? does the engineer have the conductor run the engines?
It will depend on how big the railroad is.If you are working for a big Class 1 railroad you should be a engineer in under 4 years.When I started working for the Union pacific in Seattle I was transfered from a Conductor to a Hostler after working there for about 6 months.Hostlers move locomotives from the fueling station to the train.Even though I never went to engineer school I was able to move locomotives from place to place(sometimes moving them several miles)as long as I had a qualified Hostler in the cab with me to supervise.So in a way I was a engineer even though I was never driving a train but sometimes moved up to 12 locomotives at once.
A huge part of getting promoted is the older people retiring.If you have a lot of people retiring your chances of getting promoted is faster as those positions are typically filled by employees as the job opens.Since most of the bigger Class 1 railroads have remote control locomotives.Your chances of driving trains by remote control are pretty good even if you haven't been there for years.
Be careful what you wish for though.I was like you wanting to be a engineer.Once I was out on the road on the mainline for a few weeks I saw things alot different.I was working all shifts usually at night and my life was a mess.I couldn't plan events or travel very far as you never knew when you would get that phone call to be on a train.I was happy to have worked for the railroad but probably wouldn't do it again.A good job to have as a engineer is working a switch engine in a yard or picking up cars around town.They have set scheduels and it is more like a normal job.
Depends mostly on how many men are ahead of you on the seniority list and how many men are retiring.
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How long on average dose it take to become an engineer from a new start conductor
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