Mark W Hemphill's last paragraph...

[edblysard]

Dan,
I live in a house full of women, a 4 year old, one 10, and a 16 year old, plus my wife.
How often do you think I get a crack at the washing machine?

RRwife,
Gald both you and your husband take pride in his job, and his commitment to it.
Thats exactally what I was trying to get to, some of us want to do this, no matter what we have to put up with in the process.
But it shouldnt cost you to go to work railroading, the carriers should be activly recruiting guys like your husband, and investing in their training.

But railroads play their personel cost real clost to the vest, and this time around, they goofed.
No one looked at the trends close enough to realize they were going to run out of crews.
And now, they have trains, lots of them, and no one to run them.

The Feds only require you to pass a written test, so a two week cram course works, sorta of.

What it boils down to is railroads are flat out of people.

Checked the dispatcher site this morning, we have 15 grain trains waiting to get into Houston right now, spaced 6 hours apart, and more on the way.

And UP and BNSF dont have crews for half of them.
Right now, all the are looking for is warm bodies.

Dan was correct, it is cost effective to train us correctly at the get go.

I had two weeks book training, two weeks practice in a hands on enviroment, then was assigned to a mentor for 3 months, before I was marked up as a helper, at 75% pay.
At the end of my 3 months, I got my foreman rights, at 80%, next year 85%, you get the point.

But the three months with the mentor was what paid off most.

I learned more from him in that 3 months that I have learned in the past 7 years.

Because he showed me first how to do things, then allowed me to do it under supervision, then alone.
So he built up not only my skill, but my confidence.

He invested time in me, and therefore invested time in our railroad.

Yes, it is different on regionals and short lines, we do seem to take more pride in what we do, but that may be because we, the switchmen and engineers, have to often deal with the customers directly, and have to put up with the gripes in person if we dont do it right.

I havent worked for a class 1, so I cant realisticly speak about pride there, but I do know a few guys from the Santa Fe, and they really liked working there, and took pride in their railroad.
It showed.
Just read this forum, you can find several NS, CSX, BNSF and UP employees who dont like their jobs, or have a gripe with how their railroad is run, or their railroads management...
ever see a Santa Fe employee gripe here?

Dan, I think CNW wasnt mismanaged, it just didnt have any way to grow its business, and with UP and BN on the prowl, and their long association with UP made the purchase inevitable.

Kinda like the Katy, they had no choice, they couldnt get any bigger, and if you cant grow your business, well...you sell it to the guys who can.

Stay Frosty,
Ed

[kenneo]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dharmon

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

Eric,
The reason I wanted to borrow one of yours is because all of mine are in use, or in the washing machine!

Not wait a cotton pickin minute...you work for a switching road......shouldn't be any overnighters...so where are all your socks?[;)]

[#ditto]
Ed, just let me know, and I'll see if I can FedEx you some. Like I said, they ain't washed.

One point in all of the talking about training that has been aluded to but not said straight out, is that the "full crew" of 5 or 6 men trained railroaders far better than any course of books can. Ed, what do think the results would have been for you if your mentoring had been several years in length? There were two reasons for firemen, one official (fire the locomotive and keep the boiler hot) and the other one unofficial (teach and train new locomotive engineers). Same for brakemen and switchmen. I was taught to switch by a snake that went on the road and that man could study a list, put it into his grip, shake the cars out by memory without an error, and do so in about half the time of anyone else because of his economy of moves. You simply can not learn that from a book or from a week or a month of OJC.

I do not pretend to be able to switch as well as this man did, but when I was working as a trainman age 48+, I could switch out a train and get it over the road faster (elapsed time) and get all of the work done and do it at half the speed of the young bucks. When I worked with this man while being an Agent, knowing how he did his work, I could have the train list made up and entered into the computer before he even came to work. That is how accurate and consistant he was. I miss that man.

You simply can't do that sort of training with a two man crew. Really hard even with a 3 man crew.
[soapbox]

(Maybe we need an Icon for putting a sock into ones mouth?)

[edblysard]

And as a added bonus, the fireman often stayed in the same district as he "learned' on, so he had several years experience in the very place he ended up working.

RRwife,
if your husband and you havent realized it yet, there quite a few offical, and unoffical reasons/rules in use at a railroad.

Do conductors ever sneak a try at running the train?
You bet they do!
Why?
Because they want to learn how its done, and why things work the way they do.
Quite a few want to be engineers, I know I pestered my engineer to let me try when I worked on a "road" job.

It aint anywhere near as easy as it looks.

And the good engineers make it look real easy, real easy.

Do the railroad know this unoffical tryouts go on?

Sure, they turn a blind eye to it, unless something goes wrong, because, like Eric said, thats where the real training goes on, and when they have a engineers class, they expect the conductors to have some time under their belt.

It weeds out the really bad or indifferent ones ahead of time, because a engineers who lets a conductor give it a try will not allow him to run it again if he dosnt pay attention, or beats the train up.

Now, offically, this never happens, for liability reasons, but unoffically, it goes on all the time.

One thing I have noticed is crews dont seem to stay together like they did when I first signed on.
Even here at a small terminal road, where you would think most crews would stay pretty much the same, because of seniority, it dosnt happen nearly as often as it did.

I am lucky, my number one helper and I have worked the same jobs together for several years, he can predict what I am going to do, and I can count on him being where he needs to be, without looking to check if he is.

The number two helper seems to change every few months, but I have noticed the same small group of guys back again and again.

I would guess on a large road, the same large group of guys would tend to stay together, but only as a group, not as a fixed crew.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
Stay Frosty,
Ed

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the input.
Kevin, If I remember correctly you are under 20-right? You are right that my husband is lucky to have me....but I am also lucky to have someone like him
My husband is 33, I am somewhat older...(?).....I just want you to know that he was a trainee for the 1st year and worked in the yard too.
Kevin....You are young...I am not knocking that by a long shot. That you are young but still have a clear goal in mind is rare. When you have worked 30 years you will still be young enough to enjoy retirement. Travel, fish, camp. sleep ,drink beer.... whatever.
Remind your GF that guys like you are NOT a dime a dozen You will probably replace her a dozen times before you find the right one (at least you should) and you will find one that appreciates a man (not a boy) that takes care of business. Nuf said.

Ed...Why are you having to fight for the washer?.... All those females and no laundress?

My husband does work for a Class 1 . ..You are correct in saying that alot of people are unhappy with how things are within some of the the railroads, but it is worse and more cut throat in the 'civilian world'. The RR life is pretty sheltered in some aspects. And what company is going to have 100% satisfaction anyway. Let the complainers go out to civilian job hunt. It would be a real eye opener with little or no benefits.

Kevin...by the way...what nickname did the old heads give you?

[Mookie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dharmon

I don't mean to change the subject or anything...but the last three posts, check the times.....

Yeah! You wait until Mookie goes home to talk!

[V]

[Mookie]

[soapbox] Mookie pulls out her soapbox, turns it over and sits in it!

I had to contain myself while I read all the postings. Years ago - my ex-brother-in-law hired out on BN - took two student trips and was a fireman. But he had several years training with the engineers before he became an engineer. Gee - that is so simple, wonder why the railroads ever let that go!

Mookie

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

As far as setting up a major railroad along the lines of Jet Blue or Southwest Airlines, there are several factors to consider. Most of these carriers are mostly non-union, many are underfinanced. Jet Blue and Southwest have been successful, but keep in mind that Vanguard, Midway, National and many others failed.
Airlines also don't have to supply their own right-of-way so they can pick and choose their routes. Southwest has pulled out of several cities that weren't profitable or affected their on-time performance (Denver). A railroad doesn't have this option.

[Anonymous]

coco the clown was one of them, there are many more, the ones that are uttered behind my back are the worst ones, but still,

I rememebr there was one old head who was hell bent on making my life a living hell, I was teamed up with him the first ngiht, It was sunday, And we were about to do the 12 o'clock milk run, I had just gotten out of Church, from 12 o'clock on That entire 60 minutes he never had anythign nice to say, he would alwasy adress my in manners like, Hey toddler, or hey brat, and would tell me i'd never get anywhere and you know the usual routine.. I never responded believeing in the Honest Abe approach. Well we got off the Train, he got in his car, I got in mine, he had a heart attack and colided with a cement barriere on his way to lunch.

Sure i still went to his funeral, I disliked his behavior, I didn't Dislike him, Deep down i could see he was insecure about his job, and he was ultimately worried that i'd do a better job then him, so all his goals were was to make me feel bad so I would ultimately do a terrible job. Well, I probobly owe that guy the biggest thanks of my life.

Believe it or not, he taught me what the Railraod was about, and I know Ed has said this before in a reply to a girl called Lisa, he told her that the Railroad was about Cheap shots and one up man-ship (Rememebr that ED?) , how you always have to be better then the people around you. Well I met a guy, or they paired me up wiht Robert, an Engineer whose about 23. I like working with him, we call each other names for the fun of it, we rush if theres a Hockey Game on, and our Train has never been more then 30 secondes late.

That really isn't much of a problem, except for exceptions, people aren't that possesive over their job enough to make new people feel terrible. Threr aren't that many new heads around, and my suggestion that we hire the hooters girls for conductors... well.. that one is still in the works.,

If I may, a quick storry, You know Ed was right, Good engineers make the job look like a sinch, I know that it is not, Even thoguh i could be an engineer, I would never be. Not fer me, I can't sit down like that, I can jsut see myself getting out of shape, I like the freedom to walk up and down the train to go and talk to trhe passengers. Sometimes, if theres more then 8 cars, we have the theird Conductor, and normally that makes times even better.

[zardoz]

Regarding the "Employee Owned" CNW.

I was working there when the option to "buy in" to the company was offered. The middle & upper management people were the ones that did most of the purchasing. The 'workers' (those that pull pins, fix track, drive trains) had such low confidence in the company, that very few union people would decide to risk what they had saved to buy the fupped-duck railroad.

Ahh, but the managers knew what was going on, and chose not to disseminate that information to those 'beneath' them. Many managers mortgaged their houses, took out loans, and did what they could to buy all the stock they could.

Surprise, surprise! Soon after the initial offering, the stock split 60-to-1!!!!!!! About a year later, it split again, this time 4-to-1.

Just think how much money all those managers made.
Just think what a morale-booster that was to the rank-and-file.
Just think what it did for productivity.

It wasn't that the managers made lots of money, it was that they chose to not share their information with the "employees". Most of us felt very betrayed, and it fostered an attitude of downright "F***-em-whenever-you-get-a-chance attitude.

I was too young (20) to care, plus I had no money to invest anyway. And I really liked working for the CNW, after all, they actually hired me!!. I was still in the so-happy-to-be-doing-what-I-always-wanted-to-do mode that I found the bad attitude of my fellow rails a bit depressing. Now, 30 years later, I understand their feelings.

Anyway, to get to the point, the idea that the CNW was "Employee-Owned" was rather a bit misleading. Granted, it was employees that owned it, but it was a very select group of employees, and those employees (and their business decisions) were mostly the reason the railroad was in the shape it was in anyway. In another post someone had thought that the employees could buy their railroad, and fire the CEO or other managers if they felt it neccessary. With the CNW, the owners were the ones that needed the firing.

[dharmon]

QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH

As far as setting up a major railroad along the lines of Jet Blue or Southwest Airlines, there are several factors to consider. Most of these carriers are mostly non-union, many are underfinanced. Jet Blue and Southwest have been successful, but keep in mind that Vanguard, Midway, National and many others failed.
Airlines also don't have to supply their own right-of-way so they can pick and choose their routes. Southwest has pulled out of several cities that weren't profitable or affected their on-time performance (Denver). A railroad doesn't have this option.

Yes they are non union......but in that vain....has that been a bad thing? I don't want to start a Union vs no union argument, becasue I'm pretty neutral on the subject, but in the airlines case, the union were a contributing problem (pilots, mechanics, attendents)when it came to the demise of some of the airlines. Airlines don't supply their own ROW but, can't just turn routes on and off without approval. And in some cases are required to maintain less profitble routes to smaller markets. They have infrastructure issues also, though rails are not one of them.

I have to admit I was not knowledgable of the CNW issues. But after since being on these forums, the common thread seems to be how messed up and unresponsive management is...Okay, that's a common complaint in just about every business.....So either you live with it, you change careers or you try to change it. You and 2500 of your closesest freinds each buy x amount of stack and go to the share holder meetings and vote your block of shares. Sounds idealistic.....but if you don't like the government, vote it out. Corporations live and die by the control of shares. Sound ludricroius.....stranger things have happened. Block A of shares thinks we should reduce the dividend and reinvest more capital into maintenance and training......if you get it on the agenda, it has to be voted on...... I have 100 shares of CSX. You can have my proxy if you can pull it off. Its on the table......It only takes one share to get a vote.