Freight trains remain reliable stalwarts of transportation and industry, carrying cargo across the continent every day. You could easily imagine the job of driving a train to be a relaxing and simple one—push go, hit the breaks on occasion, and lean back as the countryside passes by, but controlling that many tons requires a bit more work.
To learn more about what it's like to be a train conductor and engineer, we spoke with Troy Hiser, who has been riding the rails for eleven years hauling mixed freight with BNSF. He prefers it to an office job, but it's not without its challenges.
Tell us a little about yourself and your experience.
My name is Troy, and I hired out on the railroad in 2004 as a conductor and promoted to an engineer in 2005. I work for one of the largest railroads in the country, and operate trains on a 135 mile run in the Midwest.
What drove you to choose your career path?
My father, without a doubt, was the biggest reason I hired out for the railroad. He was an engineer for 38 years, retiring from the job several years ago. I spent many years in dead end jobs, never feeling like I was going anywhere, and he called me one day and said the railroad was hiring, so I figured, why not give it a try? I applied for one of ten conductor positions, sure I wasn't going to get hired, after all there were several hundred other applicants, but I stuck with it and landed one of the positions.
What kind of education and experience did you need?
Once you begin conductor training, which lasts for four months or so, you are thrown into a completely different world. The railroad is unlike any other job out there, you feel the history behind it, and it has it's own language and culture to go along with it.
Did you need any licenses or certifications?
After you complete conductor training, you can stay a conductor, or bid an engineer class as they come up. Bidding on a class just means a group of guys put in the paperwork trying to get into an engineer class. They go in order of seniority, so the guy with the most seniority gets in. Seniority is everything on the railroad; when you hire out as a conductor (or carman, machinist, any job on the railroad), you get a date, and if a guy has you by one day, they get the job before you. The guys with 30+ years on the railroad get the better jobs, pay or schedule-wise, just because they have a better seniority date. As guys retire, you have fewer guys in front of you, and have a better chance of holding the good jobs.
The only caveat is that once you bid on an engineer class, you either pass it, or you're out of a job. There's no going back to being a conductor if you fail, at least on the railroad I work for. This adds considerable stress. I was very fortunate to get into a class very early, pass, and establish my seniority as an engineer. To complete the engineer training I had a Mechanical test, General Code of Operating Rules test, Air Brake and Train Handling test, and several simulator runs, each one requiring a score of 90 or above. You also have 16 weeks of OJT, or on the job training, where you go out and learn your subdivision.
So, coupled with the conductor training, and the engineer training (which is about five to six months) you have just under a year of total training. You come out of engineer training with a federal license to operate a train.
What do you actually spend the majority of your time doing?
The most basic thing we do from day to day is the safe operation of the train. You get to know the territory you run on very well, and the rest of the time is spent trying to safely move your train from point A to point B. My run is 135 miles total, but often will take 12+ hours to get from terminal to terminal. This leaves a lot of downtime waiting on opposing trains. Our hours of service limits us to 12 hours of operating a train; after that we are "dead" and can't operate a train anymore. You spend a great deal of time just sitting there in the cab, so you had better hope you get along with the guy you're working with—otherwise it's a long, quiet trip. For a majority of your shift, it's just you and the conductor in an area not much larger than a small bathroom, so you work hard to have a positive relationship with them because the job is brutally unforgiving, and one small error can have disastrous results for yourself, coworkers, or the public.
A locomotive usually has upwards of 4,400 horsepower, and you have two or three (or more). What you haul changes every day, a coal train one day, ethanol the next, mixed freight, you name it, we haul it. Distributed power, the ones at the rear, are linked to the head end locomotives via radio, and match the throttle, or braking position, or can be run "split," with me controlling the head end and rear end motors separately. The biggest challenge is controlling the "in train" forces, or slack. Each joint between the cars has several inches of play, times that by 120+ cars, and it can be 25 feet or more. If you let the head end out run the rear, you pull your train in half, as the knuckles that join the cars are, by design, the weakest point because they are easiest to replace. If you let the rear run in on you, it can be a pretty hard jolt as 15,000 tons of train hit you—and nobody likes spilling coffee all over—so you try to not let it happen. It's a delicate balancing act that takes years to get good at. At the same time, you are constantly thinking ten miles ahead, to planned stops, areas you have to slow down, other traffic—it's a lot to juggle sometimes.
What are your average work hours?
Our schedules are on call, 24/7. I get a two hour [in advance] call to show up to work, then take a train to another city, take my required 12 hours of rest at a hotel, then wait for a train home. I generally will be home for 12-24 hours, then an average trip will be 36-46 hours. If I get a start on six consecutive days, I get two off, or seven days, then three off. But even this is hit and miss, that's what happens when the government tries to regulate our rest. Things like deadheading (taking a bus instead of a train) does not count as a start that day, resetting my start count, and I have to try and grind out starts again. On the plus side, we can pretty much layoff when we need too; there's a formula to determine the number of days you take off in any given month, but to simplify it, you get five weekdays and two weekend days per month on our railroad. I don't have to find anyone to cover my shift, I simply mark off for the day and get 24 hours off.
Many railroaders will talk about the schedule, or rather the lack of predictability, as a negative, and I definitely see it as a double edged sword. I can get on the computer and have a general idea of when I'm due out, but that can change by 12 plus hours sometimes. Forget being home on holidays, or making an appointment more than a week out, because you simply don't know if you'll be home. But, if you get used to the schedule, you can make it work for you. My wife and kids, who I wouldn't be able to do this job without their support, understand that Christmas might happen a few days early or late, and that I'm not going to be able to make it to everything. But, we live more spontaneously, and might take a trip somewhere in the middle of the week because we can. It's very important that your spouse understand the schedule is very demanding, I was blessed to marry a woman who knew what she getting into; her father worked "section" (fixing the track) for a long time. A strong marriage is essential and divorce rates can be high.
What kind of money can one expect to make at your job?
The salary depends on how much you stay marked up and working, or which jobs you work, but they can range from $75,000-$100,000+. I take my allotted time off per month to better balance my time with my family, so I am in the middle of those numbers. People always comment how good the job pays, but fail to think about the 200+ hours per month we have to work to get it (the government has capped us to 276 hours a month, which many people get), or the fact I'm sitting in a hotel 135 miles from home for a good chunk of time.
What misconceptions do people often have about your job?
Common misconceptions that people have about my job are that we set out to inconvenience people. Nobody likes being stuck waiting for a train to clear a crossing, and most of all, we hate doing it. But it happens. I run off a footage counter, I input my train length into the computer and it counts down to when I clear something. Sometimes these are off, resulting in me not fitting somewhere I thought I would. On average, a typical coal train can be between 6,800 and 7,800 feet long, and between 16,000 and 21,000 tons. Sometimes we are not told if we are going to be stopping somewhere by the dispatcher, and end up blocking crossings. It sucks for us, because something we have no control over results in us bearing the brunt of the public's reaction. I've had bottles thrown at the cab, and I've seen so many middle fingers I've lost count. Generally people view trains as a nuisance: they are loud, and the six minutes or so waiting for them to clear a crossing is the end of the world. But, there are people in the cabs, doing their jobs, trying to get home to see loved ones, and they don't like it about as much as you do.
What's the worst part of the job and how do you deal with it?
Related to this, is the other negative. People often get so impatient that run around gates, and get hit. This is by far the worst part of the job. You feel helpless. Imagine if you're in your car doing 60 MPH, and see someone in front of you from a half mile away, and there's nothing you can do to stop. You are going to hit them, and all you can do is sit there and watch. I've experienced this three times in my short career, and each one is something I will never forget. It boggles the mind that someone trying to save a few minutes would endanger not only their lives, but their passengers as well.
What's the most enjoyable part of the job?
The most enjoyable part of the job is the pride and sense of tradition that comes from being an engineer. It's a long, storied career, and one that not everyone gets to experience. Every day presents itself with new challenges, from the train make up, to the weather, and a hundred different variables that make my job of moving a train from two locations in a safe manner challenging. I get to see parts of the countryside that others can't see from the highway, and many times we are just rolling along, somewhat isolated, doing a job that I really enjoy doing. I was fortunate to train with my dad, and the time spent with him, him teaching me his skills, was one I will never forget. It made me appreciate his sacrifices that he made for us growing up, and I enjoy passing along the skills he taught me to others. It's a family of railroaders now, with my brother also an engineer, we share many of the same experiences, and it's something we will always have in common.
I don't think I could ever sit behind a desk again.
Career Spotlight is a new interview series on Lifehacker that focuses on regular people and the jobs you might not hear much about—from doctors to plumbers to aerospace engineers and everything in between. If you'd like to share your career, email us at submissions+career@lifehacker.com .
Photos by Ivan Kruk (Shuttestock), Bob Wilcox, Kool Cats Photography (Flickr).
via Andy Orin
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