Is this the list to choose from?
Amtrak
BNSF
CN
CP
KCS
UP
CSX
NS
Alton Junction
CONRAIL
Boy, that's a tough question, and the answer will vary depending on your motivations.
Are you looking for employment? All of the largest, Class 1 carriers seem to be doing well right now. If you're seeking clerical positions, stay close to headquarters because that's where the most jobs are. For BNSF that's in Fort Worth, Tex. CSXT it's Jacksonville, Fla. NS think about either Norfolk, VA or Atlanta, GA. UP at Omaha, Nebr.
If switchmen/trainmen positions appeal to you, that's a seniority situation meaning that, depending on the size of the seniority district, you'll likely be confined to a limited geographic area. Choose carefully and consider where you'd like to live long-term. We all have "home towns" that we became comfortable with, but your hometown, or railroad terminals found close by, may not be the best place to start a railroad career.
The same criteria about location applies to the mechanical and car department crafts as well.
Whereas all of the Class 1 railroads have brought in strong, first-quarter financial results, all but one have to keep the requirements of the investment community in mind as they make decisions about where to make capital expenditures and how much of a dividend they can afford to pay. The lucky carrier who is the exception is BNSF. BNSF management reports to only one stockholder, Berkshire-Hathaway, a conglomerate whose two top officers are well known for letting their operating companies generously re-invest earnings to build their various businesses for the future. Because BNSF senior management can now redirect its focus away from pleasing Wall Street quarter-by-quarter and towards improving reliability and customer satisfaction - the two drivers that make railroad service attractive or not - the longer term suggests that BNSF may have the brightest future of them all.
Short answer?
They all suck.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
zugmann Short answer? They all suck.
I was going to suggest that most of the authoritative answers (those by actual RR employees) would be "any railroad but the one I work for." Zugs answer is a little more comprehensive.
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...
Just out of curiosity, why are commuter and transit agencies usually absent from these discussions?
Hard to get into?
Not hiring?
Civil service restrictions?
Not considered real railroading?
Kevin
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)
Interesting what CShaveRR says about the inherited Missouri Pacific people. I heard something similar about the same group from a retired WP engineer in Portola, California!
Are these pretty much the same people who bungled the simple end-to-end merger of CNW with UP, then graduated to the spectacular UP+SP meltdown?
Someone else on another forum has as his motto or signature something to the effect of, ''Railroading - the worst job I've ever loved !''.
Just by coincidence, last night I was skimming through Part 1 of Fred Frailey's 2-part article -
River Wars 1: Life along the Mississippi Trains, May 1988 page 26 Competition and cooperation between UP and SP (MP and SSW) ( "FRAILEY, FRED W.", OPERATION, SP, TRACKAGE, UP, TRN )
I was a little surprised to see how many of the names mentioned in there were common to the UP's screw-ups in the 1990's, and how much the same happened to the MoPac and Cotton Belt in the late 1970's when traffic boomed - perhaps they never did learn. Also, most of the UP's melt-downs happened when Drew Lewis was CEO - he of the early Reagan-era ''Let's fire all the Air Traffic Controllers'' fame. If ever there was an incompetent in charge of a railroad . . . he couldn't really 'run' it, though.
- Paul North.
CShaveRR From what I heard, they even bungled the merger with the Katy! Their way was the only way to run a railroad (they couldn't even fathom what it meant to have to deal with other railroads around Chicago).
From what I heard, they even bungled the merger with the Katy! Their way was the only way to run a railroad
(they couldn't even fathom what it meant to have to deal with other railroads around Chicago).
[/quote.]
Based upon what Carl and Paul have both alluded to; Was it not a fact that when the deal was done between the Union Pacific and the Missouri Pacific; Technically it was the Missouri Pacific that had emerged as the Corporate entity that was, in fact, the Lead Corporation in the merger??
The preceeding being the reason, that in the aftermath of the UP+MP merger, there were locomotives painted in the UPRR's armour yellow and grey paint, but with their lettering saying Missouri Pacific, on their long hoods?
Also, there used to be an old saying in the USMC (other Services?) that,
" there were only two GOOD Bases--The one you had previously been stationed at, and the next one you were being ordered too!"
Might be a similar situation in most industries, but particularly, the RR industry based on what has been said above?
"Was it not a fact that when the deal was done between the Union Pacific and the Missouri Pacific; Technically it was the Missouri Pacific that had emerged as the Corporate entity that was, in fact, the Lead Corporation in the merger??
The preceeding being the reason, that in the aftermath of the UP+MP merger, there were locomotives painted in the UPRR's armour yellow and grey paint, but with their lettering saying Missouri Pacific, on their long hoods?"
Don't know - I wasn't privy to the technical details of that one. It's possible - mergers sometimes are structured as ''a guppy swallowing a whale'' kind of a thing such as that, followed immediately by a name change from ''Guppy'' to ''Whale'', so that from the outside you'd never know it ,unless you were an insider or otherwise involved.
An alternative reason - and equally plausible, to me anyway - might have been an equipment trust, lease, bond indenture, or other such equipment financing arrangement and obligation that required those locomotives to clearly retain their identity as MoPac equipment, at least until they were paid off.
I was told once that at the time of the MP acquisition a buyout was made available to some in the managerial ranks. The thinking was that it would be mostly MP people who would take it. Instead, it was mostly original UP people who took it, leaving mostly MP people in charge or coming up on the ladder. I don't know how true that was, but that's what I was told.
Didn't the MP last into the 1990s, at least on paper? I seem to recall hearing the MP was finally, and completely merged into the UP sometime in the mid 90s.
Jeff
Sawtooth500In your opinion, what is the best RR to work for and why?
Depending on the job type that you hire in on, your perceptions will vary. Many jobs will have the 'job cashe' of working for a insurance company...shuffling papers all the live long day. Hire into a field based craft and it is a whole different kettle of fish....and as with fish, you have to get over the smell.
Your mileage may vary.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Pardon me if I don't grieve for PATCO. If you sign an agreement not to strike, and your union prez (Poli) convinces you to "hit the bricks" anyway, be ready for the consequences.
Regardless, Drew Lewis didn't cover himself with glory at UP, but wasn't Dick Davidson the CEO for most of the 1990s? I associate Davidson with the UP+SP debacle (for which he wasn't fired), and with lesser screw-ups. On his watch we also saw the management failures in the early 2000s such that Uncle Pete could hardly make money even during an enormous traffic boom, plus that mindless failed assault on calendar publishers and model-train manufacturers. Davidson (former MoPac man) was a disaster for the Union Pacific.
tree68 I was going to suggest that most of the authoritative answers (those by actual RR employees) would be "any railroad but the one I work for." Zugs answer is a little more comprehensive.
Sad part is that I used to enjoy this job. I still don't mind the work. It's just the fact that they refuse to hire anyone to even run the regular trains (much less cover extra boards). And it's somehow *our* fault that they don't have enough people.
And we're supposed to bend over backwards because the morons in charge refuse to spend the money to, you know, like, have enough people to run the damned trains?
zugmanntree68 I was going to suggest that most of the authoritative answers (those by actual RR employees) would be "any railroad but the one I work for." Zugs answer is a little more comprehensive. Sad part is that I used to enjoy this job. I still don't mind the work. It's just the fact that they refuse to hire anyone to even run the regular trains (much less cover extra boards). And it's somehow *our* fault that they don't have enough people. And we're supposed to bend over backwards because the morons in charge refuse to spend the money to, you know, like, have enough people to run the damned trains?
There on the transit blog !
videomaker Just out of curiosity, why are commuter and transit agencies usually absent from these discussions? There on the transit blog !
There seems to be a lack of commuter and transit agency people posting to these forums. Don't think it's much more than that...
ValleyX However, I do like the reasoning of one poster about why they think BNSF just might be the best carrier to work for now.
BNSF has windshield washers on their widecabs! how cool is that?
(now you have 2 reasons...)
Ask yourself, Sawtooth: what you expect from your job, what you expect from your employer, what you want to do in your job, what you want to give in your job, what you don't want to give or won't do or put up with, how much time are you willing to devote to the job daily and the endeavor over a longer period of time; what are you really looking for and why. Come up with enough answers that make you feel satisfied and comfortable now and forever and you've not only found the perfect job but the perfect railroad. Good Luck..
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Paul_D_North_Jr "Was it not a fact that when the deal was done between the Union Pacific and the Missouri Pacific; Technically it was the Missouri Pacific that had emerged as the Corporate entity that was, in fact, the Lead Corporation in the merger?? The preceeding being the reason, that in the aftermath of the UP+MP merger, there were locomotives painted in the UPRR's armour yellow and grey paint, but with their lettering saying Missouri Pacific, on their long hoods?" Don't know - I wasn't privy to the technical details of that one. It's possible - mergers sometimes are structured as ''a guppy swallowing a whale'' kind of a thing such as that, followed immediately by a name change from ''Guppy'' to ''Whale'', so that from the outside you'd never know it ,unless you were an insider or otherwise involved. An alternative reason - and equally plausible, to me anyway - might have been an equipment trust, lease, bond indenture, or other such equipment financing arrangement and obligation that required those locomotives to clearly retain their identity as MoPac equipment, at least until they were paid off. - Paul North.
Paul, your understanding is pretty close on the "MopUP" merger. On December 22, 1982, "merger day," the Western Pacific Railroad Company merged into the Union Pacific Railroad Company. Meanwhile both the MPRR and the UPRR became subsidiaries of Pacific Rail Systems, Inc., a corporate entity that was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Union Pacific Corporation.
The one more-or-less successful merger that the Union Pacific Corporation did have was between the Mop and UPRR. On paper, at least, they were operated as separate companies, but their operations were slowly integrated - first with marketing and sales, then accounting, then computer systems, and finally their operating departments.
As part of the transition process, at some point the "Jenks Blue" paint scheme was retired, and MoPac units began to be painted in Armour Yellow and Harbormist Gray; but, for awhile, those units retained the MoPac name on the long hoods. Not only that, but the lettering and number fonts were that godawful squared edges design that always weathered so poorly.
To say that the MoP became "the Lead Corporation" in the merger could be construed from the way early retirements and buyouts played out. MoPac's operating department officers were very often a half-generation younger than their counterparts on the Union Pacific - they were leaner, meaner and hungrier. U.P. business practices often ran on inertia with an Omaha-to-Ogden mainline that paid for a lot of bad decisions. By contrast the MoPac boys never took any carload of business for granted and were very aggressive about good maintenace and cost controls.
One important factor that made the U.P. + C.& N.W. merger such a disaster happened in a four hour period one weekend during the summer of 1995. U.P. designed a computer program that was supposed to go into each track, scoop up that track's car inventory as recorded in the CNW system and then put those cars back in the track as U.P./TCS inventory. During that four hour transition window, a westbound train might leave Proviso with a CNW manifest list ("wheeler"), but by the time the train reached its next crew change point at Clinton, Iowa, the outbound Clinton crew would have U.P.'s Train List Issue and Work Order Issue documents.
So what happened? What went wrong?
In the process of making a CNW system-wide change-over from their computer system to U.P.'s computer system, the conversion program lost 45,000 waybills, documents which specify what is loaded in each car and the car's routing among the carriers prescribed to handle it. By the time the problem was discovered, U.P. also determined that all of those lost waybills would have to be re-inputed into the U.P. computer system manually. For awhile, the railroad was effectively paralyzed until the database could catch up to the operation.
Now for one last comment, one which some "legal eagle" or very intensive his historian reading this may have to correct. Sometime between December 22, 1982, and 1997, Pacific Rail Systems was dissolved and the surviving Union Pacific Railroad Company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Union Pacific Corp. Shortly after all challenges to the DRGW+SSW+SP+UP merger were finalized or dismissed, the pre-merger Union Pacific Railroad Company was dissolved as a corporate entity, it's assets were transferred into the Espee corporate structure, and the surviving name was immediately changed to "Union Pacific Railroad Company."
Funny about the RR biz... seems like you ask most railroaders about their job and they say don't get into it... yet there are thousands of us railfans that would die to get in...
I'm one railfan that would not like to work for a railroad. Spending time with my wife and kids, and having regular time off is important to me. There's no way I could work on an extra board. I'll keep my normal everyday 7am-4pm job, and watch / photograph trains in my free time.
The two that I heard were the very best were Pan Am Railways and Progressive Rail (PGR).
Murray Sawtooth500In your opinion, what is the best RR to work for and why? The two that I heard were the very best were Pan Am Railways and Progressive Rail (PGR).
I heard that Pan Am Railways and Progressive Rail were two best lines to have used to work for.
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