I will assume most, if not all, have read the lead article in the current issue (Trains October 2008).
While the overall subject was discussed fairly well, I have a quibble with the primary focus.
There are more jobs than just the Operating Department. Yes, I know, there were mentions of Signal and Track positions among others, but the author spent his year and a half on the railroad running trains.
Granted, being in the cab watching the engineer control a train over a demanding territory in bad weather is cause for great respect. I seriously doubt I would be able to do it well enough.
But visit my world sometime. I'm responsible for everything from the top of rail down and all of the people and equipment needed to give that engineer the best chance at a safe run.
I do it, and have been for 35+ years, because it is FUN! Sure there are ups and downs, terrible bosses, bad weather, calls in the middle of the night to go to a derailment, long hours, etc. But every job has it's own variations on those themes. The secret is finding what makes it enjoyable in spite of all of that.
For me, it is the ability to take the, sometimes meager, resources being provided and getting the job done safely and on time anyway. That is the challenge. That means you have to get others to see how can we get this done as opposed to telling you why it can't be done.
It is rebuilding the railroad in the summer of 93 and watching the faces on your people when the flood repair work they have just completed is wiped out by the next record flood two weeks later and marveling at their willingsness to go right back and rebuild it again. It is developing a partnership relation with a construction company who first helps you solve the problem of a pier dropping 17" as you build new piers without causing a slow order, before asking for more money. It is being able to point to 30 or 40 new bridges you have built and watching trains run over them. It is seeing the fruits of the safety program you helped create result in a Harriman Gold after you leave that company.
It is the people who work with you and for you that make all the difference. And it is how you can inspire them to work well and safely.
To close out this rant, it is also about recognition. The Operating Department (and those who focus mostly on operating issues) too often give insufficient respect to the other departments who make it possible for them to run safely. Sometimes you have to teach the basic lesson that the guy with the red flag owns the railroad. They just loan it to the operating people for most of the day.
Thanks for listening.
PigFarmer1 wrote:Right on, my brother. For some reason we are the redheaded stepchildren of the railroad. I don't understand it, but we sure are the forgotten railroaders. They sure aren't going to run their trains without us.
Kind of like building a skyscraper. When they "top out" nobody remembers the people who handled the foundation, either.
It sounds like you have found the secret to happiness in your career...it is called a passion and enjoyment for what you do.
ed
Besides the enginer,conductor,and the other jobs in the article what about the workers in the yards getting these trains put together,maintaning the locomotives,fixing badorder cars,and shop jobs.
Some of this jobs might be for me but not for others who want to be on the mainline. I'm going to apply for this jobs in the next couple of months. I would like to be running the mainline but do not want to be away from home for days or weeks at a time.
Every one has there dreams working for the railroad but for diffirent areas of the job.
I'm just as baffled as the rest of you why all articles on "working for the railroad" promote the idea that the only good jobs are in TY&E service. I have spent an entire career in marketing, engineering, mechanical, strategic planning, service design, and dispatching, and am looking forward to at least another decade before old age catches me. I'm not taking away from our brothers and sisters who work the rotten hours to guide the pointy end of the train and switch the sidings, but there are other ways to have just as much (or more) fun.
RWM
Because the public perceives the "railroader" as the guys they see waving at the crossing.
They rarely if ever interact with a MOW crew, nor do they often see them at work, and if they do manage to get a glimpse, it is in passing only.
Same applies to air traffic...you look up and see a 747 flying over, and think about the pilot and the stews...but you never think about the fuel truck guys, or the baggage handlers, or the ground crew, because you never meet and rarely see them.
Take a ship at sea...if you see one moving, you think of the captain, maybe some of the bridge crew...but who thinks about the poor guy down in engineering who is trying to get the port side rudder hydraulics to work as well as the starboard side, or the ships cook trying to feed a crew?
Signal maintainer?
How often does Joe Public even see a wayside signal?
The only signals he ever sees are the ones at crossings.
Model railroaders are just as biased...how often do they model a tie gang pulling spikes and humping in replacement ties, or a signal maintainer up a signal mast?
Never, because they rarely see these parts of railroading in real life.
Dispatching is something the public has no clue about.
Unlike air traffic controls operators, who do get some small press coverage, railroad dispatchers never get in the press as it were...
I would bet real money that the next time you go into a restaurant, if you were to ask the first ten people you meet what a railroad dispatcher is, eight of them would have no idea what a dispatcher or control point operator is or does...and out of the two who have heard of this job only one of them would have a vague idea about how its done or how much it affects all of us.
Take my job, a yard snake...I am a switchman foreman at a terminal railroad...now, outside of the railroaders on this forum, how many of the rail fans here really know what I do for a living?
But just like the MOW guys, the dispatcher, signal maintainers, the mudchickens and the car knockers, if I don't do my job correctly, the trains don't go.
So why would we expect a magazine devoted to the rail fan to offer anything beyond what the public knows about?
Even though those of us in the business already know that for every train you see, it takes five or six different crafts just to get it rolling and keep it rolling doesn't mean Joe Public recognizes, understands or even knows about it.
Trains magazine is simply selling to it customer base, nothing more.
23 17 46 11
It was a good article - but it is just scratching the surface of railroad careers. Maybe we can implore her eminance, the reining photography queen, to start with a spike maul and uncover the world of the track gang and civil engineering with the same finess.
I love our track gang. All we ask them to do at Golden Spike is to take 58 lb rail, on undersized, historically correct, untreated ties; with no tie plates and make it act like 133 lb continuous rail. Oh, and the government purchasing person does not know ballast from round rocks (and ordered the latter.)
dd
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Mechanical Department "No no that's fine shove that 20 pound set all around the yard... those shoes aren't hell and a half to change..."
The Missabe Road: Safety First
edblysard wrote: So why would we expect a magazine devoted to the rail fan to offer anything beyond what the public knows about?Even though those of us in the business already know that for every train you see, it takes five or six different crafts just to get it rolling and keep it rolling doesn't mean Joe Public recognizes, understands or even knows about it.Trains magazine is simply selling to it customer base, nothing more.
Granted, not everyone would read an article about railroad surveyors, or selecting the best kind of ballast, but I would. But then again, I'm the guy sitting at a wedding, staring at the ceiling, and wondering what size bolts they used to connect the beams together. OK, I'm an oddball. But, there are a lot of us oddballs around.
Maybe this is just the first installment in a series by Trains Magazine?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Corborn,
Simple, because Trains isn't an industry based magazine...it is a fan based magazine.
They form and shape the magazine around what the rail fan wants to read about...and for the most part, fans haven't asked about the mentioned careers.
I am not slamming Trains, quite the opposite...they are a smart bunch of folks who are selling a product, and doing it quite well.
They have identified a target group, railfans, and are selling to that group.
Ever notice how many photographs appear in Trains?
Grap a copy of Railway Age...big difference in content and the number of pictures.
Why the difference?
Because the target group for Trains likes photos of trains and locomotives...they are simply taking their trackside viewing back home with them.
Railway Age is for the guy in the industry who is buying equipment, or looking for people or a company to employee to work on his railroad.
Think about this...
How many subscribers are there to Trains magazine?
100,000?
But how many of them are forum members, even though the magazine promotes the forum a lot?
Not even a quarter of the subscribers are here on the forum...
Why would that be?
We discuss everything from track elevation, type of ballast, difference in rail weight; even yellow thingies...in fact, pick almost any subject related to railroading, and in all of the careers that can encompass...yet the majority of the readers of Trains are not here.
Because their focus is the trains...the visual appeal of the locomotive and the supposed romantic lifestyle of the T&E employees...
No one, or at least not enough subscribers, have yet requested in depth and detailed articles about the other railroad careers, and those that are interested in such things are here on the forum already.
Trains Magazine isn't going to change its content or style until or unless enough subscribers ask for a change...and from what I read and see, what they are selling right now seems to be working quite well for them already.
There has always been a public face to railroading, one promoted by most of the fan magazines, all of the modeler magazines, and the railroads themselves.
It's the one that sells best...impressive photos of impressive locomotives, short stories, romanticizing train and engine service...the long lonely road ahead type of thing...
The other side of railroading, the nitty gritty parts, the car men changing brake shoes in the middle of the night, while its raining...the switchmen riding the side of a boxcar in freezing weather, the dispatcher eating Tums by the bottle because everything that could go wrong just did...none of that sells magazines the same way a cover shot of a brand new GE pounding the rails does.
Even here on the forum, the locomotive and the train are foremost....look how many threads are started about or along the lines of..."Look what rare locomotive I saw today" or "I rode the (fill in the blank) steam train today"...and how many photos appear here of locomotives...then look at the number of photos of tampers, or spike pullers, or the inside of a relay box have shown up on the forum...not many by comparison.
How many posting or threads here have "I busted my hump today driving spikes, man that's a hard job" or "I baked my eyebrows off welding on a frog point" in them?
Not many...
Granted, there have been a few Trains stories, mostly in Railroad Reading, about the other side of the tracks, so to speak...and a few major articles about dispatching, and how things, like locomotives are built, but for the most part, Trains Magazine customers are interested in the trains and the guys who run them...and the Trains staff would be foolish, maybe even unemployed, if they failed give their customers what they wanted.
So far, "the customer" has not asked for such articles, so...
Murphy,
I too am an oddball, but the Murphys and Eds are few and far between...
I happen to be interested in all the different aspect of railroading also...and like you, I look at things and wonder how it's put together, the "how did they do that?" mentality.
But that interest is not shared by all fans, or all railroaders for that matter...most carmen would have no clue what a flashing yellow wayside signal meant, and most conductors could care less how a axel bearing is changed, and none of us are interested in collapsing circuits and how they activate crossing signals...all we worry about is that the signals come on when the train is this far away from the crossing, the why it works part doesn't matter...its very rare for interest to cross craft lines.
Part of that is because we are trained to do the same thing over and over, almost by rote and because each of our jobs involves such different rules and different skills that there is no time to explore the other crafts.
We had a group of MOW guys who transferred into T&E service as switchmen trainees...and most left simply because it was nothing like what they had imagined it to be...I actually had one of them tell me it was too hard a job...this is from a guy who spent all day pounding spikes and digging rock!
But the rules we switchmen have to follow overwhelmed him...it didn't make sense to him that we do some things the way we do because if the needs of the road crews...
And as I pointed out in my last post...the above average railfan who does have an interest in something besides the locomotive is already here on the forum...imaging trying to cover all the different subject threads in the forum in print form...never happen.
Murphy Siding wrote: edblysard wrote: So why would we expect a magazine devoted to the rail fan to offer anything beyond what the public knows about?Even though those of us in the business already know that for every train you see, it takes five or six different crafts just to get it rolling and keep it rolling doesn't mean Joe Public recognizes, understands or even knows about it.Trains magazine is simply selling to it customer base, nothing more. I'd have to disagree with you there. Maybe I'm an oddball, but my interest in railroads is a lot deeper than seeing the smiling engineer operating the shiny locomotive. I find something interesting in nearly all facets of railroads and their operations. Granted, not everyone would read an article about railroad surveyors, or selecting the best kind of ballast, but I would. But then again, I'm the guy sitting at a wedding, staring at the ceiling, and wondering what size bolts they used to connect the beams together. OK, I'm an oddball. But, there are a lot of us oddballs around. Maybe this is just the first installment in a series by Trains Magazine?
Ed, Murph -
Methinks that an article about trackworkers, f'rinstance, could well have a "I didn't know that" quality if properly written. Granted, some of us do know, but even then, we gain the satisfaction of knowing that we already possess the knowledge.
An article could include several of the "hidden" jobs - PR, claims adjuster, maintenance scheduler, Carl, etc.
Another could be a day with Ed (or someone like him), outlining the high points and the low points, the usual and the unusual of working in an almost totally yard environment.
Articles in the past have touched on some of these concepts indirectly. An article about a container car manufacturer comes to mind. This series has possibilities.
dldance wrote:Maybe we can implore her eminance, the reining photography queen, to start with a spike maul and uncover the world of the track gang and civil engineering with the same finess.
Maybe we can implore her eminance, the reining photography queen, to start with a spike maul and uncover the world of the track gang and civil engineering with the same finess.
It is fine for Trains to market to the popular interests of their fan base, but those interests only exist in the first place because they are relatively accessible to fans. Part of the marketing mission ought to be to teach rather than just reflect. Trains could help broaden their market base by teaching about what fans might find interesting if they were aware of it, rather than polling fans about their interests, and then just reflecting those interests.
So many lessons learned in your short visit to the museum.
Switch probably needed adjustment
People need to be shown how to properly and safely throw a switch
Proper foot wear and other PPE
Could this be a differentiation between a railroader and a railfan? Also a potential source of friction between those groups?
Full disclosure statement: My name is Steve and I am a railfan. In addition to getting paid to do something I love, I have been president of a railroad museum in the past, I look most closely at the power on a train although I always give the whole thing a roll-by inspection, I have a lot of old slides and photos I am trying to get digitized, I take a lot of photos at work of the job going on which often include a train.
The trade magazines provide much of the technical/financial/marketing info about the industry, but the fan magazines and related discussion boards such as this provide another perspective plus an opportunity to share some of the more esoteric knowledge all railroaders have.
My vote is for the MOW guys too. But lets not forget a welding career that you can have out here too. I just spent the whole summer keeping up on main line frogs, rail ends, and thermite welding. It always cracks me up when the RR's are so worried about the ops. dept. going out on strike, but when the MOW thinks about they don't really care. I just think to myself " How long are you going to be able to run your trains with no MOW or welders around." just my .02 cents
Thanks
CPRguy wrote: PigFarmer1 wrote:Right on, my brother. For some reason we are the redheaded stepchildren of the railroad. I don't understand it, but we sure are the forgotten railroaders. They sure aren't going to run their trains without us.My vote is for the MOW guys too. But lets not forget a welding career that you can have out here too. I just spent the whole summer keeping up on main line frogs, rail ends, and thermite welding. It always cracks me up when the RR's are so worried about the ops. dept. going out on strike, but when the MOW thinks about they don't really care. I just think to myself " How long are you going to be able to run your trains with no MOW or welders around." just my .02 centsThanks
Hey, welders are MoW at least on UP. We're all part of the engineering dept. You could spend your entire career on a welding gang. Of course, I don't know how you guys do it in the summer in my part of the world. I echo your sentiments about the way the RR looks at us.
edblysard wrote: Dispatching is something the public has no clue about.Unlike air traffic controls operators, who do get some small press coverage, railroad dispatchers never get in the press as it were...I would bet real money that the next time you go into a restaurant, if you were to ask the first ten people you meet what a railroad dispatcher is, eight of them would have no idea what a dispatcher or control point operator is or does...and out of the two who have heard of this job only one of them would have a vague idea about how its done or how much it affects all of us.
I can't begin to tell you how many blank stares I get when I tell people I am a dispatcher. It has gotten to the point that instead of describing what I do when people ask, I tell them it is like an ATC controller but with trains instead of aircraft. While not the most detailed account of what I do, most people then have a small idea.
An "expensive model collector"
Ed,
I believe what you wrote was right on. The folks at Trains know what sells and how to sell it. Afterall, it is called "Trains" Magazine not "Railroading". One would assume that that huge hunk of steel rolling down the tracks would be their primary focus by virtue of that fact.
While I'm expressing my views, I'd like to add my vote to including more informative articles of the other railroad trades that often go unrecognized. As it was stated before, those [trains] wouldn't even be there to be marveled at if it weren't for those who work behind the scenes to make it all happen.
Ed, I am cut from the same cloth as you and Murph with regard to my interest in how things work. I can't begin to tell you how many lawnmower engines and telephones I disassembled as a kid just because I wanted to know what was inside, much to my parents' dismay. I love to read schematic diagrams and especially... exploded views.
Now if I can only figure out this Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
Ted M.
got trains?™
See my photos at: http://tedmarshall.rrpicturearchives.net/
tree68 wrote:An article could include several of the "hidden" jobs - PR, claims adjuster, maintenance scheduler, Carl, etc.
My Forum Sister informed me that I have now been promoted to "job"! Thank you, Larry, for at least not calling me a "piece of work"!
I actually fall in with the majority of the audience--interested in TE&Y. Had I not been a railfan with those leanings, I probably wouldn't have gotten a job. And my job, as a car retarder operator, still helps put the "Y" in TE&Y (not to mention the "Pro" in Proviso!). But I can promise you that I got a healthy respect for the other people I had to work around--section men, carmen, clerks, and especially signal maintainers. It had always been "intuitively obvious" to me that these people existed--in fact, I knew some C&O and GTW section foremen before I moved from Michigan--but I never got the full idea of what they did.
Soon after I hired out, I was spotted by some in-house "head-hunters" who wanted to lure me away from operating, figuring that someone with my tested intelligence would be good in stuff like computer technology (if they saw me now they'd be amazed--thank Goodness for computer-geek sons-in law!). I wasn't ready for that world then, I'm not now, and never will be--I'd dry up and shrivel away if I had to spend my railroading career away from the freight cars!
As for an article describing me and my job, I'm not so sure it would work. I can write (and yes, Angela knows about me, thanks to our visit there), and Kat has been up and seen me work, but I don't think I interview well. She saw how I work, and thought it was pretty neat, but it's just what I do. If I had to break it up into the processes I use, and what is actually involved in getting the car to go downhill past me at the right speed and in the right direction, and do all of the other things that help others do their jobs safely and efficiently, I'd be uncomfortable, putting it mildly.
But if anyone wants a piece of me, (s)he'd better get it before I retire. That may be the end of an era!
A job named...
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
CShaveRR wrote: And my job, as a car retarder operator,
And my job, as a car retarder operator,
CShaveRR wrote: Thank you, Larry, for at least not calling me a "piece of work"!
Only because up until now I had only the faintest idea of what you actually did.
Now I know.
It would still be an important part of a story about working in and around a yard...
Now wouldn't it though...
Car retarder operator, hump tower yardmaster, trim crew, all those jobs would make quite an interesting story if you think about it...one about jobs that most rail fans may not even realize exist.
You think people know that there is hump yard switching and flat yard switching, and what the differences between the two are?
Most of the public, and quite a few fan just see the cars, and never think about what it takes to keep those cars within AAR and FRA certification...to most people, the cars are nothing more than boxes that roll...if they got a peek inside the AAR Field Manual of Interchange rules or the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 49 they would be amazed at all the things Carmen and car repair forces have to pay attention to.
Say "Train Dispatcher" to someone, and they might recall a mental picture of a guy in shirt sleeves with a clip board and a telegraph key on his desk, hunched over a train sheet....imaging the surprise if they ever saw the inside of a modern dispatching center.
Trains did an article a few years ago, and it did focus some on UP's dispatching center...I think it was the Super Railroad issue...even had a shot of the big board in the background...so they have taken a few steps towards articles that explore "the other side of the tracks"
For my money, I would like to see a series along the "A day in the life of a (switchman, car knocker, car retarder, dispatcher, you fill in the blank)" type article...not an entire issue devoted to one craft, but a two or three page in depth article on all the careers and crafts involved in getting a train built and out of the yard, including locomotive engineer, conductors, the round house guys like Randy, shoot even switchmen and ground pounders like me.
I think the fans would be quite surprised at all the things that have to be done, and done right, before a train ever turns a wheel.
tree68 wrote: CShaveRR wrote: Thank you, Larry, for at least not calling me a "piece of work"!Only because up until now I had only the faintest idea of what you actually did. Now I know. It would still be an important part of a story about working in and around a yard...
dldance wrote: It was a good article - but it is just scratching the surface of railroad careers. Maybe we can implore her eminance, the reining photography queen, to start with a spike maul and uncover the world of the track gang and civil engineering with the same finess.I love our track gang. All we ask them to do at Golden Spike is to take 58 lb rail, on undersized, historically correct, untreated ties; with no tie plates and make it act like 133 lb continuous rail. Oh, and the government purchasing person does not know ballast from round rocks (and ordered the latter.) dd
dd:
(1) Not sure if I'd want to be around those ball bearings supporting tie and rail and soon to be headed for the fences.
(2) We tried real hard to get Kat, MikeY, Wrinnie & Crew to look at some of the AREMA committee work at Louisville and Chicago...and at Salt Lake City in a few weeks. They manage to skip out on us (and I think Bergie is in hiding somewhere -or- out stalking Wabash in his work environment, using a locomotive mirror as bait). This year they are hanging out with the operating bubbas in Chicago while we do our thing in SLC. They ought to look at AREMA's Education Committee and look at their efforts to attract the next generation.
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