I live in the USA and work for NJ Transit, in New Jersey. I'm a carman/car inspector in the mechanical department on the rail side. I normally tell people that we pretend to inspect and repair the trains. I find that the workers here are some of the most backstabbing, gossipy grown toddlers I have encountered in my working life. I think it's because most my co-workers have too much free time since most of them only do like 1-3 hours in an 8 hour shift, so they have too much extra energy to spare. Does anyone else here work for a railroad and feel the same or care to share contrary experiences? Could you cite your job title and which railroad you work for if possible also.
I worked for CN for a decade. Railroaders are whiny entitled shit heads by and large. I still deal with railroaders in my new job, but I can hardly imagine having to wrangle those 'tards again.
>>2067112CN = Canadian railroad? What makes you write all railroaders are shitheads? Have you worked at more than one railroad?
>>2067134Canadian National. I've dealt with railroaders on every class I. Lots of them are shit heads. There are good guys everywhere, but they are vastly out numbered by people that couldn't hold a job as a Wal-Mart greeter.
>>2067136Lots of my coworkers at NJ Transit are shitheads and I hate them. Far more than are other jobs. There are some cool people, but the union protects the “loads.” Since it’s too hard to fire the worst offenders, it becomes a race to the bottom. To give an idea how bad it is:There was a Carman with rheumatoid arthritis(my diagnosis of him, I don’t know his actual diagnosis) so bad he had swelled joints in his hands looked like two lobster claws. So since he technically couldn’t work as a Carman he would just pencil whip all his inspections and sign off without checking anything and no worker or anyone in management seemed to end that farce. There was also a cleaner who I never saw clean anything when I worked at his location. Instead he’d invite anyone who called him lazy or any foremen who tried to tell him to do work to talk to him outside of company property and threatened to beat them up.What’s the worst you’ve seen?
>>2067138Just a bunch of selfish, lazy, liars, cheats, and thieves that don't want to accept responsibility. I was a yardmaster for a chunk of that time and joked that I babysat grown men that made $150k a year. I'm glad that I finished my degree and only work adjacent to railroads now instead of working for them.
>>2067139So you mostly dealt with conductors, hosteler conductors and some engineers? I don't deal with them as much because they are another department, the transportation department.
>>2067480I dealt with everyone. Transportation, mechanical, maintenance of way, signals, dispatching, CN police, etc. I was a conductor, yardmaster, and even worked in the track department for 7 months as a laborer when I was laid off.
I’ve read accounts from old timers that booze, weed and pills were once an everyday part of the job, then there was a big crackdown after a fatal commuter train crash where the engineer was stoned. Is getting loaded on the job still a thing? Do they pee test on a regular or random basis?
>>2067543>Do they pee test on a regular or random basis?Yes. Also look up the NTSB report of an IC derailment in Livingston, LA in the mid 80s. The crew was drunk, speeding, and letting a clerk run the engine. Several of these sorts of incidents led to much more strict drug and alcohol testing.
>>2067543>>2067553At my work, NJ Transit lots of the POS there have drug and alcohol issues. I’m “randomly” tested but I’ve been tested like 6-8 times while others haven’t been tested once. My union rep suspects in reality that they keep retesting the clean people to not make the company look bad.One of my old friends who is a drug dealer said he used sell drugs in one yard in his brief 6 months stint and that before they started installing cameras that people used to do coke on the engines.
>>2067139my dad did time and motion studies for CP on the prairie. said it was one of the worst times of his life. but you talking about 150k manchildren makes me feel like my email job is bullshit and i should've joined the railroad. i'm about to turn 28 is it too late? no degree
>>206809828 is far from too old to join the railroad. Especially if you're not married with kids. Be warned though, CN pays way better in the US than Canada. Still, any T&E job pays really well, but it will cost you your free time. I'll end with this. The top two career choices in my life, in no particular order, were working for a railroad and quitting a railroad. You'll be glad you did it, but equally glad if you ever get out. Just make sure to live within your means, and never be an idiot that needs the job to survive.
>>2067543It was the Chase, Maryland collision in 1987 that really got the FRA and DOT to start drug & alcohol testing. A crew on Conrail light engines were all under the influence and disabled the cab alarm then pulled out in front of an Amtrak train at speed on the NEC. 16 or 17 people died. Amazingly the Conrail engineer lived and basically blamed everyone and everything but himself. They came down very hard on him, he had to serve time.>>2068098You'd be crazy to leave an email job to do railroad work, unless it was also an email job.
>>2068104i make 50,000 dollars a year
>>2068098>>2068106If you're American, you can do 30 years with a railroad and get RRB retirement (equivalent to full social security and then some) at 60. In this economic climate its hard to find the kind of job security of union railroad work. The work is hard, but the pay is good (much better than 50k a year).Sometimes I curse my job, but at no point do I ever consider quitting.
>>2067110>I find that the workers here are some of the most backstabbing, gossipy grown toddlersI actually have a close friend that quit LIRR for that reason. Its a state job problem. I dealt with it at my last facility (LGA Maintenance), these obnoxious boomers act like fucking children or they have fucked families/home problems that bring it to work. Complete loser shit. They can't stand autismos too so they'll freak if you're not some volly firefighter retard from suburbia. Current facility I'm on nights and I'm cliqued up with a bunch of gen-X black guys who treat this shit like a fucking job because they have lives outside of work. Much more tolerable to be around even if I'm the only white guy in a group of brothas. Already got the pass. >>2068087Can tell you for a fact PA the supervisors don't get tested + have advanced notice of who's getting tested.
>>206810850,000 canadian dollars
>>2068100I started at NJ Transit at age 32. >>2068106You can easily beat 50,000 a year at a N. American railroad. Especially with overtime. >>2068108One of my co-workers has over 30 years but still can't get full retirement. He was too young when he was first hired and he needs to be 60+ years old. Plus retirement is a ponzi scheme so it always get pushed up in years, especially given the demographic collapse of the USA and elsewhere.
>>2067110You dont happen to work pascack valley line do you
>>2067110>Does anyone else here work for a railroad and feel the same or care to share contrary experiences? Could you cite your job title and which railroad you work for if possible also.Is it worth it? How can you get a good railroad job off the bat? I wouldn't mind working for Amtrak or something like that, it seems somewhat cozy. But all of the railroad jobs around me are for stuff like switch operator or yard crew or something like that, and it seems super stressful. I currently work in public rail transit in my city and I have coworkers that have taken significant pay cuts to leave the railroad and work for the city transit system because it's a much better work life balance. They all say the pay at the railroad was great but they couldn't take being away from home 28 days out of the month etc. But being on a dedicated Amtrak route going between a handful of cities seems like it would be chill. Is it possible to get such a job without prior experience? I've heard that they mainly try to recruit from freight rail companies
I'm sorry if this is blogposty but I'd appreciate some input from you lot. After quite a bit of soulsearching and some nasty depressive episodes, I decided I'm not cut out for my degree and gave up on it. I realized that if I'm gonna be stuck doing something all day for the rest of my life, I may as well work on a railroad since trains tickle my autism. Thing is, in my uropeen country, the railway company posts for like, ten jobs every year and they're all given through nepotism. And I got zero qualifications to get hired, anyway.I've seen anons itt talk about apprenticeships and such but how do I find them? I don't mind packing up and moving anywhere in the anglosphere or in the EU for that matter.
